Why does it have to be "rape victim"

oops sorry Whirlpool, I didn't RTFT :) just in response to the title

I think perhaps when people use "survivor" it's to assign a greater degree of seriousness to the crime - we use "survivor" to indicate mortality being threatened usually. Maybe it's misguided but at least well intentioned.

My dad, the day after it happened to me and I'd gone to the police and everything, very sensitively told me that he didn't see me as a victim but as a survivor. I appreciated that he was so thoughtful about how my self perception could have been affected. I'm not sure it helped me other than that though, that he'd really thought about what to say to me. To me the word victim doesn't mean generally vulnerable, just vulnerable to an absolute arsehole.

EVB (Ending Victimisation and Blame) have written a post on a similar piece in the Daily Mail about the use of the word allegedly.

Here

Yes, I don't think a hospital in this country in similar circumstances would have stated there were no 'adverse health effects'. For one thing, she's just had a C-section aged 11, so a major piece of surgery. She may be recovering physically quite well from that, children do bounce back quickly after all. But the effect on her mental health must be profound.

Yes, I think Avila-Guillen's comments meant seeing unwanted pregnancies was a regular occurrence, the refusal of the government to allow the termination requested by the girl's mother was due to a lack of understanding of the consequences for a girl of that age (surely it's in fact child abuse to force a child to go through a pregnancy - although one could make the same argument about her being forced to go through an abortion too, there is no good outcome for that child).

That said, she also jumps on the education bandwagon in an alarming way, saying "If women and girls feel comfortable about their bodies, know what is appropriate and are comfortable talking to their teachers and parents they would be able to denounce abuse a lot earlier and feel empowered to say no to abusive situations". Except the girl's mother did report the abuse to the authorities, who appear to have done nothing about it. And how on earth is a 10 year old meant to say 'no' to being raped by someone she has to share a room with?

It would be nice to imagine that in both cases this education includes educating boys and men that rape is wrong (although in fairness I don't think education can do much to deter child abuse).

Is Avila-Guilien not referring to attitudes to abortion there?
Rather than rape?
Because that's how I read it.
So her "fight" is to change the attitudes to abortion.
And the cases she is talking about are pregnant children cases (although also rape obviously), but her perspective is regarding abortion because that's her job.

A doctor at the Reina Sofia hospital in the capital, Asuncion, said the baby was born with a normal weight of 3.55kg (7lb 13oz).
"The mother is recovering well from the surgery," Dr Mario Villalba told the local Radio Cardinal station.
He said there are two other 12-year-old girls waiting to give birth at the hospital and several other teenagers.
"They are fighting," Dr Villalba said. "You must invest in education. There is nothing else to be done," he added.

Have I read this wrong? Is the "invest in education" regarding the young girls? Educate them not to be raped?

I'm hoping I've misread and it means educating boys/men not to rape them.

Off track, my auto correct keeps changing rape to rare,take,rake... Anything but the word rape.

The sad thing is, Amnesty would have been very happy to have given the Beeb a quote for balance, as they have been campaigning on behalf of this poor child for months.

This was the Grauniad's report on the same story.

I also agree with tribpot's first post. Especially the last paragraph. It's telling that that statement by the doctor wasn't challenged. Again rape is almost always viewed from the perspective of men.

Absolutely agree with Pacific (who said what I was trying to say much better). There are ways of saying that the perpetrator hasn't yet been confirmed in completeness by a jury of his peers but the victim was still raped, without saying she was allegedly raped by the perpetrator. It took less than 30s thought to rearrange that sentence.

The language around sexual violence is very very telling and so very very important.

x-post too.
I don't think other crimes are reported differently.

That was to Whirlpool - x-post.

Yep, so true

tribpot agree with you.
This kind of non-committal reporting is routine in any ongoing case, rape or not.
New reports report the trial, what people said, what people allege, etc.
Our local paper does it all the time: "prosecuters say the man was hit in the face with a glass". He was clearly hit in the face with a glass, but the prosecutor says it in court and the paper reports it in a way which could be seen as ambiguous.
Agree the BBC should make it unambiguous here though.

I suspect that there is also an element in the writer of the piece tying themselves in knots trying to avoid any kind of legal comeback by not putting " " or 'allegedly' in front of everything, instead of being a Good Pedant.

I haven't read the article, just commenting on why 'raped'/raped. Agree, though, that the title is just plain misogynistically wrong.

Btw I think the 'officials say' bit is around her age when the crime took place - I assume the Beeb cannot independently verify the girl's exact age, and thus can't be certain she wasn't 11 at the time of the crime. Like that would make the slightest difference.