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?

Please lets not equate rape with being run over. VERY very rarely (can anyone recall a case) does a man go looking for a women to run over.

One is an accident, one is deliberate.

Meod do you not believe that advising people to take safety precautions might minimize their chances of something happening?
It might not prevent it but at least be given the chance of minimizing the risk of it happening,

The only way you can prevent, or take steps to prevent a rape is to not be in the company of rapist. And seeing that we don't know who is & isn't a rapist...

If a man wants to rape a woman, he won't care if she is drunk, sober awake or asleep. He wants to exert his power & control over her, what she does/says will make no difference.

Ched Evans had NO idea what condition the victim was in when he diverted his taxi. Would he have continued to have sex with her if she had objected? I think yes, because he is a rapist. That is what rapists do.

skylark2 - Jessica Ennis has received horrific abuse and death threats for making her stand. As this now happens to any woman who dares draw attention to herself, I think it was brave of her to make a stand knowing what the likely consequences would be for herself.

But the OP doesn't need to discuss that with her DD.

You only have to look at the vitriol that JE & Chloe Madeley (sp) have been a victim of to see what men think about rape & women. BOTH have been threatened with rape for standing up for themselves...neither were drunk, wearing revealing clothes, walking in a dark alley etc etc (insert rape myth here), yet plenty of people think they deserve to be raped...or in JE case, that Ched himself should rape her (vile & oh so ironic)

So now should we also stop talking, stop objecting to what men say, stop making a stand, make sure our parent doesn't have differing opinions from the general public?

Because that is all JE & Judy Finnegan (aside from the fact that I believe she minimised it) did...yet people (men, mainly, it has to be said) want to see them raped.

To suggest a woman is able to "prevent" or at least should "try to avoid" being raped is taking men back to infantile beings who cannot control themselves & is suggesting that we, as women, need to make sure that they don't do 'anything silly' like force sex on us.

Like up until 1992 that it was our duty to have sex with our husbands, because they 'have needs' and can't control them.

exactly - I think people like a false sense of security - sadly this also wont prevent rape

I was run over as a child it was completely my fault. I didn't stop look and listen and just ran out.

The lady who hit me with her car was doing under the speed limit, driving carefully and had all the relevant documents to drive.

There is no way she could have stopped in time.

I am not comparing rape to being run over, I was referring to the safety precautions example that an earlier poster referred to: looking both ways when crossing the road compared to not looking.

As I earlier explained (when the discussion was about giving advice to DD's) my own mother taught me, amongst other things, never to walk home alone at night & always to get a taxi.

This was because she had been raped by a stranger, who dragged her off the street when she walking home alone. The rapist in her case (he had done it before & did it again before he was caught) always targeted young women who were walking alone on quiet areas, late at night.

I followed the advice given to me and will give the same advice about taxis to my own DC. If my my DM had got a taxi home on that night then she wouldn't have been a target for that man. Does that mean I think it was my mother's fault because she walked home alone? No.

I know that stranger rape, with men dragging a women off the street, only accounts for a small percentage of overall rapes. Does this mean I will ignore the fact that it happens? No.

Will I tell my DD's that is the only situation where women are raped? No, of course I won't.

I have been honest about the advice I would give to my own DC about personal safety, linked to 'nights out' & to alcohol. It may not be the same advice that others would give, but I am not going to lie about that advice in case I am accusing of 'victim blaming'.

If I am in my own home wearing a pair of short shorts and a vest top ( which is quite a lot) and I have had 2 bottles of wine does that mean my husband can rape me, does it make it my fault that I got drunk at home and wasn't wearing my lounge trousers and t-shirt.

"The stuff about 'not understanding' in some of those examples is bullshit."

'Won't accept' is not the same as 'not understanding'. I don't know why you would read them as synonymous. 'Won't accept' is refusing to take that refusal as valid and doing what you want to regardless.

"It has even been suggested on this thread (lougle) that spotting a vulnerable person is what triggers men to rape. So the victim actively causes it to happen!"

I haven't done any such thing I asked a question which is valid. Do vulnerable-looking women get targeted more? I think yes. That doesn't mean they actively cause it.

Hostility towards people who are trying to engage in discussion to further their awareness of the dynamics of rape is not very helpful.

I know it isn't fair that having a vagina puts you at risk of rape, but as approximately 50% of the population (and probably 99% of the MN population) have vaginas, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to want to discuss it in more detail than 'men are rapists and there's nothing you can do about it.'

my niece was raped when she was 15. She had lied to her mother about staying over at a friend's house - a small gang of girls went out into the town centre having drunk vodka, they ended up back at a house with some older men where two of them were raped. They didn't tell any parents (until it came out in their mid 20's) because they didn't want their freedom of movement restricted .
My SIL is in bits because

• she didn't know and her dd didn't feel able to tell her
• it explains all kinds of behavioural issues that went on at that time
• her dd doesn't want anyone to "go on about it", seems fine, but SIL is worried that the shit will hit the fan if she's repressing rather than dealing with it.

The only person guilty of the rape here is the rapist but 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. It's not victim blaming but it is recognising personal responsibility for our own actions - and some actions, like getting drunk, mean that we are less aware of danger and put ourselves in situations that we would not put ourselves in when sober.

The fact that most rapes are not like this does not mean that rapes like this do not happen - and like my dn, I suspect that most of them go unreported so the figures may be totally skewed anyway.

Actually, Dingle, that IS the very definition of victim blaming and it's not on.

I think Dingle's point is that if they hadn't lied to their parents, they wouldn't have been allowed out to drink vodka so it wouldn't still have happened, because the girls wouldn't have been in that situation on that night. That is a fact. The men would still be rapists.

I don't think 9 is too young to be told that "nobody should be made to have sex if they don't want to". I'd already told mine that, at that age.