You are not responsible for the rape or sexual assault you endured

[differentnameforthis]

In light of many threads about Ched Evans' & his victim & in light of those who believe she could have prevented it by being sober (!), I thought it was important to raise this issue.

It doesn't matter if you were drunk
It doesn't matter if you were alone
It doesn't matter if you got into a taxi/car/train/bus with him
It doesn't matter if you went to a room with him
It doesn't matter if you knew him
It doesn't matter if you didn't know him
It doesn't matter if you started to have sex with him & said no
It doesn't matter if you had sex with him an hour/a day/a week before
It doesn't matter if you had sex with his friend
It doesn't matter what you were wearing

YOU ARE IN NO WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RAPE/SEXUAL ASSAULT YOU ENDURED.

We believe you

Looking back over what you did is normal behaviour, but pointless. How does it change or help anything apart from making you beat yourself up about "the road not taken"? You could never do that particular thing again and still end up raped again (as happened to me) or assaulted again or whatever.

So, the question is, what is the point in looking back over what you did, if what you did didn't actually cause the incident?

It isn't logical behaviour you're right but it still happens. If I left the house 5 minutes later and ended up being attacked, I'd still spend a while thinking maybe if I had been ready earlier I would have missed the attacked completely. It doesn't make sense to think this way because you can't change what's happened and even if you could, it might still have led to something bad. But it happens.

Ok, it happens. It's illogical and contributes nothing to anyone's wellbeing. In fact, it makes many victims of assault feel like they were responsible for the attack. So, why spend a whole thread defending it?

You haven't answered my question, though, Aduaz. While thinking "if only..." thoughts may well be normal after something awful happens to us, why are these thoughts so commonly shared publicly after sexual assault to a degree that doesn't happen with any other type of crime/tragedy, to the point where it frequently affects the outcome of conviction of the perpetrator?

Aduaz I know someone whose baby died of a stomach disorder years ago. When feeling down she still occasionally talks about if only she had been more forceful with the GP, and if only she had gone to A and E sooner. Everyone always tells her not to think in this way, that she is only giving herself pain for something which can't now be changed. Because that's what anyone with a heart would say.

What's the difference?

coming to this thread v late and really am only here to echo what the majority of posters have said.

It depresses me beyond belief that we still need to keep repeating this stuff in 2014, why doesn't everybody get it by now???

I, in my younger days (a bit past it with a toddler now :) so it's a long time ago) frequently went out in short skirts, got drunk and flirted with men I didn't know from Adam. Very generously, none of them raped me.

A 'friend' sexually assaulted me (still have a huge problem thinking of it that way; despite my firm stance when it comes to other people I have a lot of trouble seeing it that way for when it happened to me :( unfortunately) when I was 19 at his birthday party. I was horribly drunk, yes, a fact that he absolutely knew when he made me do what he made me do; however I was significantly less provactively dressed than I have been on many other occasions in my life.

I was sober and wearing jeans and a jumper the second time he did it, too (and I can't believe how pathetically stupid and naive I was to put myself into that situation again with him, knowingly; I was very screwed-up at the time and thought it was just 'what happened') :(

Still can't quite accept it was a sexual assault because I didn't fight him off or anything (the first time I was incapable of speech tbf but even so) but, counter-intuitively, I would never feel this way if anyone else told me this as their story. I would tell them, without a shadow of a doubt, it was a sexual assault.

Anyway, just to add my two pence worth. for all who have posted with their own stories of assault/rape, most of which are far worse than mine.

I remember going to a party at university once through some society I was part of. I was chatting to a girl I barely knew who was knocking back the drinks. It was getting late and she was very drunk, so I asked whether any of her friends were there for her to go home with. No one was. So I helped get her home, along with another guy who she vaguely knew. We got back to her room, made sure she was alright (water etc). It was a bit awkward because we didn't know each other and I could tell neither of us wanted to leave her alone with a random man when she was that drunk. After a few "After you"s we left at the same time.

Woohoo, high five for myself for managing not to rape someone! Aren't I amazing!!

But then a friend from university was assaulted in London in the middle of the day. She wasn't drunk, not 'provocatively' dressed, not 'taking risks'.

Which of those women was 'responsible'?

Yes there is good advice to keep safe. This applies to men and women. I know far more men who have come to harm when out at night. It is good advice to stick with your friends, try to diffuse or walk away from aggressive situations etc. It has fuck all to do with rape though.

for you Emeraldgirl. I can relate to your description of your feelings and I'm sorry that some of the nonsense on this thread supports internal negativity. Keep telling yourself the things you would say to someone else - you matter just as much.

AnnieLobeseder they aren't exclusive to rape cases. If a friend said to me they were attacked walking home on their own at night while I would only blame the attacker I would definitely suggest to the victim they should get a taxi next time or walk home with friends. No one in their right mind could say that was victim blaming.

As whats has said, it's actually more dangerous for a man to be out alone and drunk - the chances of physical assault are much higher for him than the chance of rape for a woman. But we don't see posters with screaming men on them, telling men not to drink do we? I wonder why that is?

DH has been assaulted on the street. I haven't. I have been raped though. Neither time was I drunk or out alone.

Aduaz you have already admitted that that sort of reasoning - looking back over the event and thinking about what you can do differently - is illogical and that it changes nothing. I have said that it does have the effect of damaging victims, which you have totally ignored.

The mature thing to do would be to actually engage in the discussion and see that your viewpoint was perhaps not well thought through and that actually your way of dealing with things can be (unintentionally) harmful. Instead you're just repeating the same things over and over. You seem to want to hang on to your viewpoint no matter what.

There seems to be no point in talking to you.

Wow Aduaz you really are invested in making this about women's behaviour, aren't you? I called you naive at the start, then started to think you were deliberately disingenuous but now your agenda is rather concerning.

I think some poeple on this thread are being rather obtuse, whether deliberately or otherwise.

Yes it is normal when something goes wrong to ask yourself if you might have prevented it. It is not always a healthy thing to think, but still, it is normal to think that.

What we are talking about here is situations where someone else - someone potentially with power - is looking in and saying well what did you do wrong then, that you didn't prevent this?

So it's a national newspaper saying "if you go home with a footballer what do you expect, it's a DJ saying "well if you got into bed with a man what did you think was going to happen" it's society saying "well what were you doing walking home by yourself anyway" it's the police when hearing a report of rape asking the victim "why did you stop and talk to the man when he asked you for directions" or "are you really surprised this happened you were out in X bar on a Friday night" and so on and so forth.

All of this questioning what the victim did wrong, what should she have done to prevent the attack, points the finger at the victim and away from the attacker.

Interestingly when young men are raped, as with children or the elderly, it is rare to see the press ask these type of "what were they doing there anyway hmmmm?" questions. They seem to be reserved for girls and women aged between about 14 and 50 and there is a reason for that.

Girls aged 14 are of course children as well. But when it comes to sexual violence they are treated by society and the media the same as adult women. Time and time again.

A big problem is that the vast majority of rapes that end up in the news are the stranger rapes, or similar. So when rape is discussed that is what people think of. The Ched Evans stuff is similar. It is convenient to think that this is what rape is like because then you feel you can control the situation. 'Well I would never do what she did, so I'm safe'.

It's similar to paedophiles. The stuff you hear about in the news is of strangers abusing children. So we can put that in a box as something we can try and have control over. Of course, the majority of abuse is perpetrated by family members or close friends. Bit more scary to think of that though isn't it?

Seven - I've seen a 13 year old been described as a "sexual predator" by the media - in fact I think it was reporting what a judge said about her.

Aduaz - do you not have the intellectual subtlety to understand the difference between what you have called "victim blaming" and what all these women (many of whom have been sexually assaulted or raped) call it?

You don't get to define what victim blaming is and then say that anything short of it simply cannot be. For God's sake listen to what these women are saying.

Earlier in this thread when I accused someone of being hard of thinking what I was really saying, perhaps, is the fact that we have all - men and women - been socially and culturally conditioned in a way that can make it difficult to see the world in a way that's different to how we've been conditioned to see it. To some extent that is understandable.

What I find depressing and cannot forgive is those who wilfully refuse to see that there might be an alternative way of seeing the world. Particularly when so many women describe the issue so clearly and eloquently.

SevenZark that is a very good post, expresses what I feel but I never manage to put it like that.
I'm a very highly-educated and successful grown-up woman but, as I said upthread, I have a MASSIVE problem with accepting that what happened to me wasn't my fault (in fact I have a huge problem accepting it as an assault at all, have to remind myself that I was unable to speak and that he locked me in a bathroom with him and pushed me down and opened his flies and just sort of made me get on with it) and I think a large part of the reason for that is the prevailing attitude that girls/women need to take very good care never to put a foot wrong or do anything 'silly'.

I dunno SevenZarkSeven, there was quite a lot of victim blaming apparent in this case.

and I agree 100% whatsthatcomingoverthehill, it strikes me as the same phenomenon as the paeodphile thing, people want very much to put this sort of thing in a box marked "this will never happen to me or anyone I love because I take the correct precautions". Which, I guess, is human nature to an extent and I think people can be forgiven for instinctively feeling that, we all have ways of making ourselves feel better. The thing that goes wrong, i think, is when people don't challenge that thought and realise the reason they're maybe thinking that way.