rape law

[littlemisstired]

i have been reading the bbc news site about the current rape laws in this country.

85% of women raped are known by their attacker. this makes rape cases hard to prove when it gets to court.

i was raped by a guy i knew briefly.(friend of an ex). he asked me back to his place, said he was having a party and others would be there. to cut a long story short, i was very drunk, he spiked my drink (can't prove it) but i think he did, and was raped.

i never went to the police because i knew i wouldn't stand a chance if it went to court. I voluntarily went back to his place, was drunk when it happened so rather than put myself through the stress i didn;t bother.

i feel guilty though because who knows if he has done it to some other poor woman.

i know the answer would be not to get so drunk, but a lot of women do when they go out, and don;t bother reporting it to the police for the same reasons as me.

what do YOU think needs to be done to make more women come forward and report rape?

Just interested to know what you think should/could change.

littlemiss your story is awful and I am so sorry for what you went through.

I have just been reading about acquaintance rape and the appalling conviction rate. A lot of the problem is that the court process is very much weighted against the woman (who's prosecuting). Defence have better representation and although the judge can still choose to introduce ghastly evidence of the woman's past sexual history et al(including usually totally irrelevant stuff such as whether you've had abortions, whether you've slept with men of another race, and in some cases passing round the knickers the woman was wearing at the time of the rape, etc...) the man's sexual history and character are practically never questioned. So if, as you say, this man had done it before and even if you knew the woman involved and wanted to call her as a witness, you would probably not be able to.

Rapists also seem to take advantage of the acquaintance 'rules'- many of them seem to know that to get off, you only need to know your victim slightly. The only way, it seems, to get convicted, is to attack with extreme violence a woman you have never ever met before. Otherwise the woman's credibility is immediately impossible to establish.

It's so shockingly awful that in 2006 95% of cases which get to court are dismissed. That is either a lot of pathological female liars or thousands of traumatised women who are also being brutalised by the legal system.