"Most prolific" rapist reporting - male vs female victims

[QuentinWinters]

Was just reading that about the conviction of the "most prolific rapist" for raping over 100 men.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50987823

My impression was the reporting focused more on the impact on his victims and used much stronger language about him being a "monster" who preyed on men "just out to have fun with their friends" than reporting on rapists targeting women. There is a description of how being raped has ruined the male victims lives (previously I associated the terms "ruined life" with men who were found not guilty of rape).

So I looked up reporting on John Worboys as he came to mind as a similarly prolific rapist

In his initial reporting it is more focused on Worboys and describes him crying at the guilty verdict.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/england/london/7931975.stm

Later reporting as the scale of his offending has become clear is still much more focussed on Worboys and his reasons for raping, and more objective and factual about his MO with no discussion of the emotional impact on his victims.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-london-48702572

Seems like rapes of men are treated much more sympathetically than those of women. Quelle surprise.

But it does come down to women being of less value.

Absolutely.

When I heard about this, I predicted an immediate government call to action.

The fact women were saying on a thread yesterday that it didnt matter, because the important thing was now something would be done makes me despair.

Someone should have taken action around the time girls were bring routinely warned not to leave drinks unattended back in the early 00's. It shouldn't have waited until a significant number of men became victims in a very dramatic way to see this as 'a very bad thing'.

Groggy “ Someone should have taken action around the time girls were bring routinely warned not to leave drinks unattended back in the early 00's. It shouldn't have waited until a significant number of men became victims in a very dramatic way to see this as 'a very bad thing'.”

This.

@SuperSleepyBaby Thank you. I think male victims feel equally bad as female victims only they dont get the 'if you weren't out late wearing a short skirt' shit, they get the 'but you are a man and should have been able to fight him off'.

A woman's femininity and right to be female is questioned and a mans seeming inability to defend himself if equally questioned

Thank you for the link@SuperSleepyBaby. It shows how difficult it is for male victims to report rape to the police.
I am still shocked that, one of the first posts on this thread, claimed that of course, the men were believed. In fact, the only victim to come forward was immediately arrested and not believed. Rape is horrible and it is a terrible crime. This is an horrific case and there should not be less sympathy for these male victims just because they are male.

Also. our local school nurse team have been giving personal safety talks to KS4 since 2000 (if not earlier). It certainly covers the dangers of leaving drinks unattended.

an earlier poster said no helplines were advertised, I saw 2 mentioned, one for victims of rape generally and one for people who thought they might have been victims of this man
I think one difference in the victim blaming dynamic (why aren't these victims being blamed for being drunk and going to his flat) is that even if drunk, these men had no reason to think of themselves as at risk from this man, especially as he was so slight. Whereas women are constantly risk assessing and know that any man is a potential risk

apropos of the victims being to blame or not and the difference between women and men in that regard, there is clearly a difference not in 'blame', but in the dynamics of the situation in that men generally don't live in fear of being raped, and indeed most rape victims are female.

A man on a night out doesn't worry about being sexually assaulted on the way home.

That's not to say any rape victim is to blame, just that there is a difference here.

I tend to think that if the case had been covered while the trials we going on the papers would have covered the defences claims that it was consensual, that they were secretly gay, etc.

I wonder how common male rape is, given that the news film above said 90% of male rape victims do not report the crime and that reports of male rape are up 33%.
@ShootsFruitAndLeaves says
A man on a night out doesn't worry about being sexually assaulted on the way home
Young adult men are most likely to be the victim of violent attacks from strangers. Women are most likely to be victims of domestic violence.
Perhaps young men should be made aware of the dangers of sexual assault when out in the evening. Not just women.
At the same time, it is to be hoped that both male and female victims will be helped and appropriate measures put in place to encourage reporting of and prosecution for those who carry out sexual assaults.

Stephen Fry describes being raped as a young school boy by a Sixth Former when at Uppingham School. (Moab is my Washpot)
I should think rape was incredibly common back then at male boarding schools. I think many older men who attended such establishments were the victims of sexual assault but they never dared speak out.

@mrsmuddlepies I certainly see young men being aggressive towards other young men for no good reason. and for this reason it's true that young men are more likely to be violently assaulted than young women.

BUT statistics aren't really the point here. I mean if one man says to another man 'what are you looking at?' and the second replies 'you', and then the first man punches him, then the second man has defended his masculinity, rather than choose to de-escalate.

So even though one person comes off worse, it doesn't imply that either party lives in fear because there is not an inbuilt imbalance as there is between men and women.

so the fact that lots of young men get assaulted doesn't mean that young men are living in fear that they are going to be randomly assaulted in a dark alley.

All over the world women and girls are taught to be wary of men, who are likely to rape them. Whereas men do not worry about being raped by men.

And indeed specifically in this case gay men are worrying about their image and saying 'don't be bigoted and say that straight men should be scared of being raped by gay men'. whereas clearly if you said to a woman that you are not allowed to be scared of men, then that would be ridiculous.

the default position of the world is that men go off seeking some degree of danger - I think Rory Stewart wrote a couple of books about doing this in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the only thing seen as untoward about it was the fact they are warzones, whereas when Pippa Bacca was gangraped and murdered during her walk in Turkey, the attitude was 'well what did she expect'?

No, @ShootsFruitAndLeaves the attitude of 'Well. what did she expect' is not helpful. If there is a pervading fear of female solo adventures so that women dare not venture out, it is so negative and curbs the freedom of all women. I remember clearly the 70s and 80's female walks, to take back the night and to stop being fearful.
Being sensible is important for men and women but so is the opportunity for both men and women to live the lives they want.
if you just dwell on the 'What did she expect', you are curbing the freedom of all women.
This prolific rape case is terrible but it is a reminder that threats to both sexes exist and it is up to society to work at changing attitudes not spreading the 'What did she expect' reaction.

BUT statistics aren't really the point here. I mean if one man says to another man 'what are you looking at?' and the second replies 'you', and then the first man punches him, then the second man has defended his masculinity, rather than choose to de-escalate.

So it's the victim's fault, then. Thanks for clarifying.

FFS.

I am still shocked that, one of the first posts on this thread, claimed that of course, the men were believed. In fact, the only victim to come forward was immediately arrested and not believed

To be fair, he was arrested because he phoned 999 and said he thought he'd just killed someone, and when the police and ambulance turned up the rapist was very seriously injured.

If a woman phoned the police and said "I have just been raped and I've stabbed him and I think he's dead", she'd likely be arrested too.

@SonicVersusGynaephobia, your comment also sounded like victim blaming. This thread is focusing on this most prolific rape case and there seem to be a lot of posts minimising the crime because the victims were men. I am sure that a woman in this situation might have been arrested as well but the point was that one of the opening posts suggested that the reasons the victims were believed was because they were men. In this case, that statement is not true.

SonicVersusGynaephobia, your comment also sounded like victim blaming. This thread is focusing on this most prolific rape case and there seem to be a lot of posts minimising the crime because the victims were men.

Nobody is minimising it because the victims are men. We are saying it is NOT WORSE because the victims are men. Yet the perception seems to be that it is worse because they are men. And the reporting is markedly different, because they are men.

Where does it say that these multiple cases of rapes are worse because it is men? Please give the actual links otherwise it sounds like the poster who claimed that these men were believed and women are not believed. It sounds as if you are trying to claim something without evidence and it is therefore supposition.

11th rule of misogyny: Whatever women suffer from, it is worse when it happens to men.
The police and the courts demonstrate this on a regular basis.

But this thread is about a specific case. In fact there were at least two threads that were conflated to discuss this specific case. Male versus female reporting
@SonicVersusGynaephobia says the perception seems to be that it is worse because they are men.
I have asked for specific links to articles that claim that these rapes are worse because because the victims are men. Rape is a terrible crime and there does seem to be an attempt by some posters to claim that these victims have somehow been treated more favourably because the victims are male.
Where is the evidence?

I think you're showing your hand rather too much here, muddles.

There are not specific articles which state "rape is worse when it happens to men".

There is, however, a marked difference in the way this specific case has been reported and the way it discusses the events without any suggestion of blame towards the men (which is correct), in contrast to the way rape cases are reported when the same series of events (meeting outside a club, too drunk, lost friends, decide go back to a strange man's home) happens to women.

And where has anyone "minimised the crime"? What we've all said from the beginning is that this extremely serious crime appears to have been taken very seriously (by the police, CPS, media, society), which it should be, and it should be taken just as seriously when it happens to women.

I don't know what you mean by showing my hand, Sonic? I just find many of the claims on this thread unsubstantiated. I found it distasteful that one of the first posters on here claimed that the men in this case were believed. That was not true. I am being specific to this case because that is the focus of this thread. It is an horrific case and I am sure that if the these rapes had been carried out against women, the outcry would also be huge.
Do remember that the focus of this thread is this specific news story. It feels that some posters are trying to diminish this case by saying worse things happen to women. I am sure there are many terrible cases of female rape but the focus is on this particular news story. It is not a competition.

The reason the police took these 159 rapes seriously was because they had hard evidence in the form of the videos. If the videos of the rapes had not been found would any of these cases reached the courts?

BBC article on the fathers comments also contains two separate links

One if you’re directly affected

One if you’re affected by the issues. That page goes through to a range of helplines.

I hope this becomes standard when the BBC publish any articles about a woman being raped.

I just looked up the case of Stephen Port because I saw a documentary some years back on these rapes and murders. I remember the families of the victims claiming that the police failed to take these cases seriously and missed so many opportunities to catch the perpetrator
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/23/stephen-port-convicted-of-of-four-men
Surely the right approach is to push for better policing with regards to all sexual assault.