Dont read further if sensitive.
At 8 I'd experienced SA from a policeman who'd discovered how we lived and blackmailed me. Two years on my mother died and I was sent away to the posh half side of my 'family.' As a 'bastard' I didn't do well. Mentioning what had happened to me was considered scandalous and I assume untrue.
Mid 1970's 5 years on, 13 un-trendy, I was tricked by a 'sophisticated' 14 yr old with an invite to a party. I dressed up for it excitedly.
She wasn't there, just her adult boyfriend and his dodgier friends who where part of a gang, in a filthy hotel basement. Once I discovered I couldn't beg and plead my way out of it, and this was happening, I drank most of a proffered half bottle of vodka neat for courage.
My guardian reported me missing when I didn't return that night, and I was rescued from round 2 in the morning covered in vomit with ripped clothing. Police took me home, and my guardian took my clothes while they where there. Guardian responded to whatever they'd been told by informing me that "no decent girl enters a mans bedroom."
I understood it was all my fault, but was confused when then nothing happened.
I later found out that guardian considered the girl who tricked me to be "from a good family" and my illegitimacy made damage to me of lower worth. But the police?
However my guardian decided to now share guardianship with a parks police officer, who swiftly moved into predatiion.
Three months later I was with a group of what I thought where friends and around 10 others, and two of the men who'd raped me turned up. Pulled out of the room forcibly and struggling, by one of them, and raped next door.. No one tried to stop them, no one said anything. Later I found out that once you'd been raped by them, everyone knew and you where considered 'turned out' and their property by everyone. Everyone knew. Most of 'their girls' became their sometimes prostituted girlfriends, and the rest where just prostituted and generally abused.
I didn't go out after that, putting me iat the mercy of my guardian, and I was soon pregnant. Social services basically gave me a choice of forced adoption
or marry him when old enough.
My male social worker lead me to believe he might have a third option, but it soon turned out to be just an attempt at coercive sexual access.
Husband later tried to use me to pay off a drugs debt to the gang who'd raped me, and also encouraged his older colleagues to try their luck. They at least backed off when they realized force was required.
That gang operated in the open, which is how the police where easily able to find me when I was missing, and my guardian also operated openly, not only with me, but other girls subsequently. Everyone knew.
We were commodities, and tragically so where our children.
Later I saw first hand what happened in the care system and the disinterest in stopping these men. Everyone knew.
I've written all this because the point is, it isn't a specific group, or race of men, or a time, or a place, it's a type of man and a society that blames and shames their vulnerable victims, and sometimes some politics thrown into the mix and when it is taking place, everyone around it knows.