Anonymity in rape cases

[MumsAccount]

Hello,

I'm a sixth form student from Scotland and I'm doing a project for Modern Studies. I've chosen to look at anonymity in rape cases because it is a complex subject that has a big impact on people's lives and there are strong opposing views.

I'm looking for people to complete my short survey and my Mum suggested I ask on here because she said there's good chat about these types of subjects.

I'd be very grateful to anyone who fills out my survey or leaves a comment here. I'm worried I may not have enough men completing the survey so if you could pass this on it would be great.

Anonymity surveyy_

Thank you!

If people want I can share the results here later.

Curious about the age ranges you've used. Why do they cover very unequal age ranges and proportions of the population?

Thank you for filling out my survey.. I read an article about designing surveys and it suggested these ranges and I thought it made sense because people change more when they are younger. I'm now thinking I should have had more options but too late im afraid

Sorry, didn't mean to strike out the word filling. I am v grateful for people completing the survey and it's giving interesting results

@MumsAccount

Thank you for filling out my survey.. I read an article about designing surveys and it suggested these ranges and I thought it made sense because people change more when they are younger. I'm now thinking I should have had more options but too late im afraid

Gotcha.

You’ll have to see what you think when the results come in. Would be nice if you’d post your results when you’re done.

Good luck.

Thank you. I'll definitely share the results here. There's quite a big difference between men and women already.

I filled in the survey even though I'm in Ireland, maybe give you some food for thought to see the perspective of someone raised in a different district and laws, could have influenced my answer unconsciously

Filled it in, I will also be interested to see the results.

Hello @Rainbowshine, @DublinFemale, @NumberTheory and everyone else who was kind enough to fill out this survey. Hello, I'm the Mum, using my daughter's pseudonym on my own account (bit convoluted, hope you're following!).

Just to say a big thank you for completing the survey. She had over 200 responses and was able to get some interesting insights. Most importantly she learned a lot from the very thoughtful comments. I was v interested too, it made me reassess my own views.

I tried to attach a pdf with the results but can't get it to work. If anyone who completed the survey and wants to see the results in full (minus the comments, which she doesn't want to share) then please DM me. But here are the key findings:

71% think alleged victims should be anonymous forever with 23% thinking that gets retracted if accused is found not guilty. For men those figures are 61% and 30% and for women thet are 79% and 18%.

70% think alleged perpetrators should be anonymous. For men it is 79% and for women it is 62%.

There was a question about people's attitude towards someone acquitted of a crime. There was more suspicion / hostility if the crime was rape although it wasn't massively different to common assault. Women more likely than men to be more suspicious about rape. Huge correlation with age: 75% of under 18s, 56% of 18-24, 40% of 25 to 39, 35% of 40 to 60 and 10% of over 60s would be more suspicious about someone acquitted of rape relative to the average of the other crimes.

Whilst women would themselves be more suspicious about rape than other crimes; they are much less likely than men to agree that society stigmatises acquitted rapists. Overall 66% thinks there is societal stigma although 11%, mostly women, thinks there is less stigma for rape.

Wow, I hadn't meant to write an essay, just post her results but ended up writing this because the pdf wouldn't go through!

Interesting results; I think its safe to say that men and women have different opinions on rape. Perhaps women are more aware that the conviction rate is artificially low? I wonder how much pre conceived attitudes affect jurors.

To be honest, given this is a feminist board the responses from here may be biased and not representative of society as a whole.

That's very true MargaritaPie. She couldn't think how to get truly random responses to her survey so we tried many different networks and hoped it would be OK. But a combination of her school friends, her parents' university and work friends, Mumsnet feminist board and Facebook is probably not representative I admit. I wonder if my son's rugby club mates may have redressed some of the balance! Anyway, regardless of bias I'm very grateful to this board for giving her some responses and also some very thought provoking comments. .

Well if you want to talk about bias, society as a whole seems content with an extremely low rate of convictions for rape, and feminists aren't. So there's that.

@MumsAccount

That's very true MargaritaPie. She couldn't think how to get truly random responses to her survey so we tried many different networks and hoped it would be OK. But a combination of her school friends, her parents' university and work friends, Mumsnet feminist board and Facebook is probably not representative I admit. I wonder if my son's rugby club mates may have redressed some of the balance! Anyway, regardless of bias I'm very grateful to this board for giving her some responses and also some very thought provoking comments. .

I don’t think that’s something to be too concerned about. There isn’t a realistic way for someone with no real resources to get a random sample, especially not one that’s big enough to draw population wide conclusions from. Better to simply be aware of the fact that it can’t be considered representative and note it in the write up.

Hope your DD has found it a useful exercise it it helps her both with thinking about this issue and with how she reads survey results she comes across elsewhere.

Thank you for the report back.