How rape myths cause miscarriages of justice (it’s not how you think)

Alexandra Fanghanel

Alexandra Fanghanel, author of Disrupting Rape Culture, discusses miscarriages of justice, unideal victims, and how rape myths still persist in contemporary society.

In the middle of 2017, a postgraduate student walked into my office to speak to my colleague, announcing that he was about to share some sensitive information. I made moves to leave the room to give him some privacy. ‘No’, he said, ‘I want you to hear this, too’, and informed me that he was going to go on trial accused of rape. He wanted everybody to know, so that he could be transparent. So that we would understand, if he was upset in class sometimes, why this was.

The previous week, another student had come to see me. She told me that she had been raped by her boyfriend. She was worried about doing badly in her assignment because she couldn’t bear to sleep in her bed anymore. She didn’t want me to tell anyone. She didn’t want anyone to know. She just wanted me to know. So that I would understand, if she was upset in class sometimes, why this was.

The two students did not know each other as far as I am aware, though they would go on to sit in the same lecture theatres that year, each dealing in their own way with their experiences of rape. His vocalism about being falsely accused matched only by her silence about accusing anybody.

As 2017 rolled on, a huge number of rape cases were being reviewed and dismissed before going to trial because crucial pieces of evidence had not been disclosed by the police to the defence. My student’s case was one of these 3,600 cases.

We all know the narratives based on rape myths which are patently untrue. The story about a woman’s thong being used as evidence against her, or women being told not to dress ‘like sluts’ in order not to be raped. We know that when people do use them to excuse rape, the public is rightly outraged.

But there are rape myths that persists despite the contemporary sensitivity to narratives like those above.

In the high-profile cases where non-disclosure of evidence led to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) changing its mind about pursuing a rape allegation, that evidence took the form of text messages between the plaintiff and the accused, in which she explained how much she loved having sex with him and how she also had rape fantasies. In other cases, pictures of the plaintiff and defendant cuddling in bed after the alleged rape took place were disclosed. Of course, maybe all of the 47 cases where rape charges were dropped as a result of the disclosure of new evidence are cases where women make false allegations of rape, though this would be unlikely. Maybe, it is rather is that the Criminal Justice System balks at cases where we are faced with unideal victims or unideal behaviour by victims.

It is a rape myth that a person who has rape fantasies cannot be raped. It is a rape myth that a woman would not cuddle with her rapist after he has raped her. Sure, these behaviours and desires are not easy to reconcile, but should only ideal victims have justice? The risk adverse approach of a CJS which will not prosecute apparently weak cases means that justice is not operating equally for all women and men, whether accused or accuser.

Instead, in the wake of these cases, we see a more troubling narrative emerging; one, like the case of my two students, that is dominated by the voices of the men accused and where the voice of the accuser is silent and absent. We see the phrase ‘miscarriage of justice’ used to describe what these men have suffered, without any consideration about what this miscarriage of justice might really mean for the women who accused them. This kind of linguistic slippage appears dangerously, almost absurdly, to turn what justice means upon its head.

Rape myths are what enable this. We are hoodwinking ourselves into thinking that we no longer believe them, yet they have never been more entrenched in the everyday grind of contemporary social life and how we understand justice more broadly.

Disrupting Rape Culture by Alexandra Fanghanel is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £60.oo, or get the EPUB for £21.59.

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Image credit: Chase Carter, via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Remember Rwanda: Should rape be accepted as an ‘inevitable by-product’ of war?

Author and academic Brenda Fitzpatrick writes a personal and powerful post about her experiences in Rwanda, what she saw and the stories she was told by survivors of ‘tactical rape*’ in the immediate aftermath of the conflict in 1994.

A Rwandan refugee camp in Zaire, 1994 Credit Wikipedia

Ngara, 1994. I stood on the bridge dividing Rwanda from Tanzania. In memory, the bridge was high above the water line, but I am no longer really sure.

I watched the constant flow of bodies, torsos and unmatched limbs drift, get caught in eddies and slowly turn on down the river. I had not registered earlier that black bodies turn grey when bloated.

I had come from Zagreb where a priest had shrugged, ‘It is war madam. Rape happens.’ I had asked him about rumours (later proven to be true) of rape camps and widespread rape of Bosnian women and girls. His reply was a chilling acceptance of this violation as somehow inevitable. Not good enough!!

Do you challenge everyday misogyny and ‘rape culture’?

In today’s guest blog post Miriam David explains why the need to challenge every day misogyny and ‘rape culture’ is more relevant and necessary than ever…

Miriam David’s book Reclaiming feminism: challenging everyday misogyny publishes today! For more details and to get your copy click here.

Miriam David

Unexpectedly driving down Park Lane, London the other day, I witnessed a most horrifying larger‐than‐life sculpture – the white marble nude body of a young woman draped over a muscular man’s bronze hand and arm.

What better evidence of ‘everyday misogyny’ and the objectification of women’s bodies and its violent treatment?

I was astonished to note its location behind Buckingham Palace Gardens and not half a mile away from Parliament and Trafalgar Square.

But on reflection, this area of real estate is prime for neo‐liberal international property developers, not known for their critiques of gender relations but currently raping London’s properties.

Call girls and escort agencies

Should Ken Clarke resign over rape comments?

What started off earlier in the week as proposals to change the way offenders generally are sentenced, soon turned into a media storm when Justice Secretary Ken Clarke made his incorrect, outdated, and downright offensive comments about rape. Accusing the media of adding ‘sexual excitement’ to the story by focusing on rape as opposed to other crimes and suggesting that some rapes are not as serious as others, have resulted in calls for his resignation.

So should he resign? I do my fair share of media work, so have some sympathy with feeling flustered when put on the spot and fearing that I will choose the wrong words and inadvertently upset someone. But Ken Clarke must have realised immediately from the response he got that this had caused an angry reaction, so why dig yourself in deeper? Why not apologise immediately if you did you not mean what you said and simply used the wrong words?

He has, reportedly, sent a written apology to the woman who audibly broke down on the radio phone in when describing what happened to her and the response from the criminal justice system. But he has caused distress to more than that one woman. He has undermined the hard work done by criminal justice and healthcare professionals, by rape crisis workers, by family and friends who support people who have been raped, and has likely caused distress to many who have been raped. In my opinion, Ken Clarke should offer a blanket apology to anyone who was offended by his words and he should sit down and listen to the experiences of people who have been raped by someone close to them. I can guarantee that he would make sure he chose his words more carefully if he really listened to the impact that rape had had one their lives. If he is not willing to do this, he should resign in my opinion.

The Ken Clarke media storm has also meant that a piece of good news has been buried this week. Rape Crisis Centres have just been told whether they have been successful in their funding bids for a contribution towards their costs for the next three years. For the Centres that have been successful, this represents the most stability they have ever had. It is something that the national Rape Crisis movement have campaigned for for many years and which has now come to fruition, with thanks to Home Secretary Theresa May.

I am glad that there will now be more access to Rape Crisis Centres and hope that a more sensible discussion can be had with the coalition government about how the criminal justice system can best improve its response to rape. Whether or not that discussion will include Ken Clarke is yet to be known.

by Nicole Westmarland, co-author of International approaches to rape, published in April 2011.