You may not have heard, but a few days ago the proposal for rape charge anonymity was dropped by the Ministry for Justice.
Now, this is a very touchy subject, and I was not planning on talking about it for a while, but circumstances are what they are and it seems foolish not to talk about this one at the present time.
Rape is a horrific crime - I'm not going to say otherwise, and I doubt anyone else will. We should do all that we can in order to help victims of rape, and to take those who commit it to justice.
However, there is a serious problem when it comes to being accused of rape: in the eyes of society, you are not innocent until proven guilty. Once your name is publicised, you are guilty and you will not get that stain off, no matter what the courts may prove. It doesn't matter if you are acquitted, because once the suggestion is out there, you are highly unlikely to escape it. "No smoke without fire" is not a truism, but it is the unfortunate motto that the court of popular opinion carries.
Now, before I go on, I would like to make an important point. One of the primary arguments the opposition to the proposal have used, as stated in the above article, is that
"People are no more likely to be falsely accused of rape than of other crimes. Why this attempt to further discredit and discriminate against rape survivors?"
Well, here's the thing: in the public eye, rape is trumped only by paedophilia. No other crime accusation is going to cost you as much as that of rape, as I will go into below. And no other crime accusation is taken by the public on face value as much as rape; and even if one is (say, there is a high-profile murder and everyone 'knows' who did it) but then they are exonerated, everyone knows. It is trumpeted loudly, top headline on the evening news, front page in the newspapers. When one is accused of rape and it appears in your local paper, you bet it's on the front page - and it might even make the nationals. When you are exonerated? Chances are it will be buried in the middle of the local, and not make the nationals at all - nobody hears about it. And even when they do... no smoke without fire... he just got away with it...
I said no crime other than paedophilia is more reviled than rape, and I mean it. Even murderers may get excused by the public due to their motives. They may get excused to a degree by judges depending on their motives. There's even a subset of people who will send them love letters and proposals of marriage - to the extent that men as despicable as Charles Manson find themselves with fans and would-be lovers.
And, of course, there's always Lorena Bobbit. You tell me that wasn't as bad as rape and I'll show you an idiot. And she made it onto the chat-show circuit.
So, an accusation of rape sticks. Well, how bad can that be? Without going into too much detail, false rape accusations can and do lead to men losing their jobs, their friends, their families, their homes and even committing suicide. This happens more often than you would be comfortable knowing. And the kicker, the real twist of the knife, is that because rape accusers are kept anonymous no matter the outcome of the charge... they are able to do it again! There is such the thing as the 'serial rape accuser', and because she is kept anonymous even after her accusation is proved false, it means that not only does she usually go unpunished, it also means that juries in later rape cases cannot take her history of false accusation into account. That, at least, may be changing.
There are numerous arguments that groups protesting the proposal have brought forwards. I do not believe any of them justify preventing anonymity:
1) Anonymity will stop victims from reporting rape.
Anonymity for accused rapists under 18 exists, and that doesn't seem to have stopped anyone from reporting, charging and trying them. Even without that, there is actually no logic to this statement - there is no evidence whatsoever that anonymity will stop people reporting.
2) Anonymity will stop other victims of that particular rapist from coming forwards.
Whatever happened to 'innocent until proven guilty'? This is based on the presumption that one accused is already guilty. If he (or she) is convicted, and his (or her) name is released, other victims who want to come forward can do - safe in the knowledge that they will be fully believed and the rapist won't be free to come after them or anything similar - and the new evidence can be used to re-try and extend the sentence.
3) Anonymity promotes the idea that the victim is lying.
How? This one I really don't understand - protection of one person's identity does not imply guilt of the other in any sane person's mind.
4) False rape claims only make up a small proportion of all claims.
So??? Is it now ok to reverse Blackstone's formulation so that now it is "better that ten innocent persons suffer than that one guilty goes free"?
Besides that, we really don't know how many rape accusations are false. In looking at various articles published on Sunday, I came across the figures of 2%, 9% and 10%. But other studies put it as high as 50%. HALF!!! The truth is, we just don't know.
5) Why should men accused of rape have special protection over those accused of other crimes?
Because rape is not like other crimes, and has far more potential to damage and destroy lives of those implicated. There is a reason the (alleged) victim is kept anonymous - because it is not akin to other crimes, and we all know it.
6) Women don't lie.
Seriously, I have encountered this one. Women don't lie, and especially don't lie about rape. This story, of a woman crying rape on a complete stranger who wouldn't buy her a beer, begs to differ.
The simple fact is that rape is a special case, and needs to be regarded as such. I have never seen a convincing argument against anonymity for the accused, whilst I have seen very convincing arguments for it's necessity - and I promise you, I'm only scratching the surface here. The implications of this proposal being dropped disturb me greatly. The new government has set a precedent, and not a good one - when faced with a very vocal but ultimately insubstantial opposition, they have backed down. Any progress for the issues I talk about here is now going to be that much harder to achieve.
There's a great deal of information, statistics and news stories to be found at The False Rape Society's blog. I strongly urge you to have a look.
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