To have no idea how to explain to my 9 year old DD what The Rapist Ched Evans did

[Hoppinggreen]

DD has obviously picked up some snippets about this and has asked what happened. She does know about sex but we haven't discussed what rape is and I don't know his to explain why the victim went to the hotel and what went on from there. I don't want to victim blame but I do want to perhaps talk to her about personal safety.
I also want to make the point that what The Rapist and his apologists are doing now is wrong and how Jessica Ennis ( who she worships) has done a great thing by condemning Sheffield utds actions.
Any suggestions?

Would YOU say to a DV victim 'Well this is the fourth consecutive abusive relationship you've been in. Unfortunately there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent yourself getting into a fifth abusive relationship.'

Really?

From Rape Crisis:

One reason women and girls tell us they are reluctant to talk about their experiences is a fear of not being believed, or of being blamed for what has happened to them, as well as feelings of shame or self-blame.

Rape and other forms of sexual violence are understandably topics that many people find difficult or uncomfortable to talk about. Because of this reluctance to discuss or acknowledge them, however, myths and misinformation about sexual violence are common. Myths are also often unfortunately fuelled by ill-informed or unbalanced media reporting of sexual violence stories.

Do you really think that going on about whether the victim was drunk or not, whether she should have gone out, or stayed at her friends house, talking about her 'responsibility' in the incident, is beneficial to victims, or in line with that Rape Crisis statement?

I haven't a clue why someone's brought the freedom programme into this

Titchy, in response to your previous post, once again the statistics state that approximately a third of women have had something alcoholic to drink before being assaulted, not how much they have had to drink.
The statistics are not saying that a third of women were drunk before being assaulted.
As alcohol is also in cough medicine, lots of food and types of chocolate, should women also refrain from these in case it puts them at risk?

The statistics may show that women from lower socio-economic classes are more likely to report being sexually assaulted in surveys, but this does not mean that sexual assault does not happen to all classes of women, the same as surveys show that domestic violence is more likely to happen to women of a lower socio-economic class, and yet the MN relationship boards show how women and men of all classes are victims of DV. Is it possible that surveys just aren't asking the right questions to the right people?

Instead of teaching our daughters not to get into risky situations, we should be teaching our sons exactly what sexual assault and rape is, and to respect themselves enough to never have sex with anyone who doesn't want them.

Sabrina

Telling our daughters when they are at an appropriate age about staying safe is not victim blaming.
Educating them about not getting themselves into situations where this is possible is surely the way to go.
This isn't victim blaming but teaching them to be savy, and whilst of course rape is the most awful thing to happen, unless somebody literally jumps out in front of you and attacks you there are things you can do to make sure it doesn't happen.

I think you might have misunderstood what the word "definition" means Sabrina.

We need to be very clear, in order to argue against rape apologists, what kinds of responsibility we are talking about, where it begins and where it ends. We need to be clear that being responsible for a poor decision does not, in any way, mean being responsible for crimes committed against us having made that poor decision. We need to understand what might be poor decisions so that we can help educate young women about making better decisions. To call this victim blaming is to silence a very important conversation that we need to be having.

Potatoprints - I am not talking about giving children safety advice.

However, I am objecting to the victim blaming of a 15 year old child:

Let me remind you what dingle said. "the stark cold fact is that if they had not lied to their parents, if they had stayed at the friend's house and not gone out, they would not have been raped that night."

If your 15 yr old was raped, would you want people picking apart her behaviour and saying 'she had a responsibility to keep herself safe" - this is exactly what happened to CE's victim, and this is what I am objecting to.

I'm sorry but yes I do think we have a responsibility to keep ourselves safe and our children.
Of course if the person wasn't there at that time it wouldn't have happened, that's not blaming the victim but stating a fact and hopefully giving the message for girls and women to stop and think about situations that put themselves at risk.
Rape happens and it is disgusting imo its important and your responsibility to try your hardest to make sure it doesn't happen to you.

Ok then, tell your daughter never to go out, or have male friends or boyfriends, never spend time with male relatives, take a bus, train or taxi, walk alone, live alone, live with a man, get married, or use a public toilet.

That should keep her safe.

Society does blame rape victims, in a way that no other victim of crime is blamed - as a society, we need to take the onus off the victim, and what they did, and put it 100% on the rapist. Rapists are 100% responsible for their crimes but...she was drunk/wearing a short skirt/walking alone... just doesn't do that.

For argument's sake, say there were women-only carriages on trains. I believe they exist in some countries and I've definitely heard people suggesting them in the UK.

If I chose not to sit in one and was raped, would that be my responsibility because I wasn't stopping and thinking about all the situations where I might put myself at risk?

Lets spare a thought for all those men who are raped because nobody told them that the key thing is not to let alcohol pass your lips.

Tbh I would prefer to be the victim rather than Mavis.

I have a very supportive husband and a huge support network.

I'm not saying it would be easy thing to cope with but maybe Mavis hasn't got what I have.

unless somebody literally jumps out in front of you and attacks you there are things you can do to make sure it doesn't happen.

Ok, so what are they....

I'm going to bow out now because it's very clear from this, and the other threads on the topic, that some people appear to be flinging statistics around ("more likely to be raped by someone you know") without understanding how statistics, and probability in particular, work.

In order to work out the probability of person X being raped you have to take into account how much time they spend doing certain activities. It's complex and requires an understanding of maths. The simple numbers of categories of rapist doesn't give you that information.

The MOJ, Home Office, and Office for National Statistics published a statistics bulletin in Jan 2013 "An Overview of Sexual Offending in England and Wales" . The link to the download is here. It includes all sexual offences not just rapes.

On p. 13 -14 it states "risk of victimisation for females varied by other personal and household characteristics" It lists the risk factors - among which is
"Sexual victimisation rates were higher for females who reported visiting a pub at least once a week (4.3 per cent) or a night club one to three times a month (5.6 per cent). Those who visited a night club at least four times a month had the
highest victimisation rate of any characteristic covered by the CSEW (9.2 per
cent). "

Trying to tell young women that drink is not a factor is, quite frankly, irresponsible. (unless you want to argue that it's the music in the clubs that is the key factor here, not the alcohol).

I repeat, the assessment of risk is not something you can do from the simple numbers some of you have been throwing around. Some patterns of behaviour bring with them more risk. It is not victim blaming to look at the statistics and point this out.