Rape of elderly lady in the news *potential trigger warning* title edited by MNHQ

[ifyourehoppyandyouknowit]

Not sure if you have seen, but an elderly woman was raped in Rochdale earlier this week and I'm just really about the way it is being described and represented on the news.

Lots of interviews with local residents describing how 'abhorrent' and 'vile' it is that an old woman was raped. As if her age makes the crime worse? It seems to imply that if she wasn't 90 years old they wouldn't be so disgusted by it; the implication being that rape is more understandable when it happens to young women? And then something else is bothering me too, some sort of implication that older women are somehow asexual or sexually off limits so sex crimes are infinitely worse when they happen to them? (The fact that rape = power rather than sex seems missing from all the reports I've seen).

It was on the radio this morning and I was muttering darkly to myself in the car and wanted to write it out.

Have I got a point?

Now that I think about it the reporting of what she was wearing (the Times also carried it, I have just seen it) must have come from a police media release, which was then just mindlessly parrotted by all the papers.

WHY do the police issue this kind of information? It's totally irrelevant and does great harm by promoting the idea that what you are wearing could be linked to whether you get raped or not.

I understand your pov but I don't agree. I think the rape of a very old woman is simply more newsworthy.

There isn't enough time or space to be aghast at every rape, and there never will be. For a rape to be reported nationally it has to have further aggravating factors.

And yes I did physically shudder when I heard the headline. I dont always do that when hearing about violent crime or even rape. I can only apologize for the narrow mindedness of my visceral reactions.

Well quite Bom.

They have swung from one extreme to another, with both extremes doing fuck all to assist with the general situation with victims of sexual violence. Or indeed this actual victim.

A monumental fuckup all around who is letting these idiots talk to the press?

Just I haven't seen it but other posters haven't mentioned it was in a "please come forward if you saw anything" style. Like I say, not seen it myself though.

It's not my impression from the reports that the clothing is being mentioned with a view to finding witnesses - and if the police wanted to appeal to witnesses they could simply say 'this road, at this time', as that is known.

There really isn't any justification of printing these details in the national press as I wouldn't have thought they are likely to get new witnesses through national news reports anyway.

The only function it serves in a national news report is satisfying the curiosity of the knobs who will say 'Oh but what was she wearing?' where the subtext is 'was she responsible for it?'.

The Police need to explain their media releases on this.

I doubt the woman had any control over them at all.

So, the same rape myths are now being applied to this elderly woman as would be if this had happened to any of us? Why am I not surprised?

What has upset me about the reporting of this two things...

Firstly, that it made the news at all. Now, don't get me wrong, I would love it if rape were such a rare crime that every single time it happened it made national headline news. But it's not a rare crime, it's a depressingly common one that happens all over the country every single day. So why was this one reported. Yes, as others have said, because she was old. Which busts just about every rape myth out there, and no rape apologist in the world is going to say that a 90-year-old was somehow asking for it. Other cases don't make the news because at the heart of it, the general consensus is that the victim brought it on herself somehow.

Secondly, that every time I've heard it, they have added the disclaimer about no evidence being found. As if the default is that she's probably lying. Because as the rape myths would have us believe, most allegations of rape are false. The only question is, why would a woman of such advanced years make a false allegation? We know why younger women do it - regret after sex, revenge etc etc. But a (probably) asexual elder woman? What a mystery?

So basically, the only reason this is news is because it flies in the face of rape myths. Oh, and it's sensational, because who on earth would want to shag a granny in the first place, right?

I especially dislike the term sex attack about this sort of thing. Call it rape, attempted rape, sexual assault anything. It's got fuck all to do with sex.

I'm so disturbed anyone's first assumption is she's lying.

I read it and assumed (and I know this is an assumption based on her age) that something awful must have happened to her and she'd become confused. I didn't know rape doesn't always leave forensic evidence. I just thought there are so many things that might have happened, either sexual assault then or something in the past, that she might be thinking of.

It reminded me of the horrific bit in Jennifer Worth's memoirs where she talks about nursing a woman who'd survived appalling things during WWII then come to the UK. When she was dying, she thought the catheter insertion was some kind of sexual torture. It is awful.