This is the official blog of ex-Sgt Ellie Bloggs. I was a real live police constable then sergeant for twelve years, on the real live front line of England. I'm now a real live non-police person. All the facts I recount are true, and are not secrets. If they don't want me blogging about it, they shouldn't do it. PS If you don't pay tax, you don't (or didn't) pay my salary.


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Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Yes, I did hear Dame Helen on rape...

My regular readers will know that I often post about rape. It also features in my book, where I try to demonstrate the complexities of it more deeply. Despite this, I am not a die-hard feminist who thinks all men are rapists, and that until we have a 100% conviction rate for rape we have failed in our aspiration to become a modern society.

This week Dame Helen Mirren has been quoted as saying that a woman who is raped because she changes her mind at the last minute "[can't] have that man into court". The usual suspects have come out with the standard quotations:

"This is not helpful."

"It's an outrage."

"It will make it even harder for women to report rape."

But Dame Helen is not saying that the kind of rape where a woman consents until the last moment, then refuses and is forced to have sex, is not rape. By contrast she tells us she has been raped in this manner herself. She is drawing attention to the fact that a conviction for this kind of rape is nigh on impossible to achieve and it is almost cruel to lead a woman to expect the case to go to court or have any kind of success. She might also be drawing a distinction between this kind of rape and the kind where a guy - without any reasonable expectation of sex - forces a woman into intercourse (whether with physical force or intimidation).

I would like to know, though, how Dame Helen draws a distinction between the following cases:
  • A woman has a friend round for dinner, they get a bit drunk and flirty and begin to undress. She changes her mind, he forces her to have sex.
  • A woman's ex-partner comes round uninvited and she reluctantly lets him in to discuss childcare. Without any encouragement, he forces her to have sex.
The first situation fits into Dame Helen's description of "date rape", where the woman has been toying with the idea of sex but decides against it. The second is out-and-out rape with no mitigating factors.

In court, the two examples would be portrayed by the defence in exactly the same way.

In court, I have seen convictions for both kinds of case, and acquittals for both.

I try not to dwell on conviction rates. Rape is a hard crime to prosecute and even harder to convict. Plus a court case may not always be the best option for the victim, in the same way that it isn't always the right answer for domestic violence, child abuse or racism.

Whatever your views on rape, its credibility and the right process for dealing with it, it is wrong to label Dame Helen's remarks as "unhelpful". She speaks from the standpoint of being a victim herself, so how can her view - or the view of anyone who has first-hand experience of such a crime - be ignored?

The system we have now does not appear to be working - either to victims' satisfaction or accuseds' - therefore all discussion on the subject should be welcomed and nobody's opinion should be dismissed out of hand. As long as we treat all parties involved in these cases with dignity and respect, and we make our decisions based on common decency and hard facts rather than Home Office targets and public outcry, we can hope to improve.


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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

22 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

A thoughtful and well-constructed post, Ellie.

Rape is, to my mind, the very worst offence and we should always be striving to better the conviction rate. I know someone (very well) who was what we now call, as if to trivialise (at least in my mind) it, "date rape"d. She was distraught afterwards but absolutely would not, despite my strongest protestations, report it. Which was very hard for me to accept, esp in my/our position. The man was, supposedly, a friend and it was the classic "out for dinner, back to the flat" thing. Horrible, even now to be honest.

My partner has a good friend who was "stranger-raped" and she, according to my partner, dealt with it well, for want of a better word. He was caught and convicted so perhaps that made it easier. This was in the days when the rapist could question the victim in court about all sorts as well.

What more can we do as Old Bill to improve the whole dreadful experience for victims please?

03 September, 2008 08:05

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with what you said - a well-written considered blog post, showing that you cannot expect to judge each rape case the same.

03 September, 2008 08:07

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The thing that annoyed me about the version of Dame Helen Mirren's interview i saw was the way she trivialised her drug use as 'a bit of fun' and only stopped because she realised she was funding a nazi war criminal; firstly i question why she is telling us this? is it just to look streetwise in the same way as our beloved politicians maybe. Secondly, does she think that kids reading it are going to think "that sounds like fun, but all the money goes to bad people so i wont do it" or just "that sounds like fun". I think it will be the second option, and if Dame Mirren thought about it i think she'd think the same.
Keep Safe everyone, apparently its a jungle out there!

03 September, 2008 09:36

 
Blogger staghounds said...

A while back I had an interesting case, a difficult of conviction rape- victim lost her job and was sad, brought a friend over to watch movies and eat popcorn and such. He pressed drink upon her, she drank too much, and passed out. He had intercourse with her while she was unconscious. Bot parties were 20. As I said, difficult to convict.

Here's the interesting denouement. The police arrested him at his house, and he was brought out in handcuffs on a Saturday morning.

That evening, an eight year old neighbour girl asked her parents,"Why did the policemen take Johnny away?"

Father told her, "He must have done something bad."

"Will they keep him in jail?"

"I suppose they will."

"Can he get out?"

"I don't think so, they keep them pretty well."

"Good."

"Why good? I thought you liked Johnny?"

"I did. But then he did some bad things to me..."

The child victims are piling up on this character. And we might never have known if the adult had not reported her almost certain loser rape case.

And after the preliminary hearing, it's not a loser at all. He picked the wrong sad girl to rape, jut an excellent witness.

One of the things I often hear from reporting victims is that they hope he's convicted, but even if he isn't they have two comforts.

One is, that they didn't just take it- that they won't just let him get away with it. They may be physically weak, or foolish, but they aren't the losers the rapist thought they were.

Second, they won't ever have to find out that he's done it to someone else, and blame themselves because they didn't try to stop him.

And if it gos to trial- I'll never forget the victim in one of the few on on one, word on word loser rape cases I failed to win.

After the verdict came back, she said, "I don't care. I told everybody in that room what he did, and he had to take it, just like I did that night. He stuck his dick in my ass but he didn't get my pride."

03 September, 2008 20:39

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I served on the jury for a "word on word" rape case. Sitting through that has to be one of the worst experiences of my life. God knows how the victim got through it.

After we brought back a guilty verdict, we heard his long, long list of previous offences - all sexual. The victim, with immense dignity, mouthed "thank you" to the jury.

03 September, 2008 20:46

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I too was once on a jury for a rape case. I still remember how my heart stopped when the charge was read out and I realised what was ahead.

03 September, 2008 22:18

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"She speaks from the standpoint of being a victim herself, so how can her view - or the view of anyone who has first-hand experience of such a crime - be ignored?"

Reggie Kray had some views on GBH but I don't think we should build them into our thinking on the subject!

Why does everyone assume that just because someone can act or sing, their views are worth listening to?

Bah humbug!

04 September, 2008 00:01

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've just realised that just because someone can write a Blog doesn't make them worth listening to either i.e ME so ignore the first comment please?
Hurrumph!

04 September, 2008 00:03

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Leaving aside the question as to why a talent for acting makes her views on rape relevant, I think that , as usual, the title of the crime has made her opponents confuse the right to justice with the practical difficulties in obtaining it.

All she was pointing out is that in the circumstances she describes it's unrealistic for victims to expect a conviction at court for the simple reason of lack of supporting evidence. That's a harsh truth, but the truth just the same.

It's very different to suggesting that such victims have no RIGHT to justice, which I don't think she was saying.

Rape is a heinous crime but to prosecute it successfully we still need evidence just like any other crime.

However I think that genuine victims should still report it as at the very least a pattern of offending can be established. (For any innocent man to have several such allegations from different victims is more than bad luck.)The latest report may be the final piece of a bigger jigsaw. Occasionally there may be a real result like the one Staghounds describes.

We already treat the offence very differently in the criminal justice system than other offences, but actually altering evidential requirements is a whole different ball game.

I utterly refute any suggestion that we don't take rape allegations seriously. For many years now in my experience(at least for the last 15 yrs) every single rape allegation gets a full 'circus' turn out regardless of how obvious it is from the outset that the chances of conviction, or even a charge, are. This is often at the expense of other crime investigations.
The fact is that it is usually a 'one word against the other' crime and without at least some sort of supporting evidence, even if we can prove sex took place (not difficult) proving rape is about state of mind of both parties as well as the act itself.

I imagine the conviction rate for unwitnessed robberies where intimidation only was used (no evidence of assault) and the victim was too drunk to provide reliable evidence, is appalling. However the same poor rate for rapes with similar lack of evidence is seen as a national scandal and must be someones fault. Suggest that drunks make themselves vulnerable to robbery/assault and it's generally accepted as common sense. Suggest the same of rape victims and you are a rabid mysogenist.

Again, I'm not in any way saying that drunk victims of any crime are not genuine victims with a right to justice, it's just that the particular cirumstances make conviction less likely.

Touching on the issue of compensation raised in an earlier post (I was on holiday at the time)the whole CICA system is a civil process therefore I don't see any reason why issues like the 'balance of probability', and 'contributory negligence' shouldn't be applied. For less serious crimes like burglary my insurance company will pay out less, or even nothing at all if I left the front door open. No one has a problem with that, however the lobbyists on the rape issue can't see that any rape victim could possibly put themselves 'at risk' but victims of other crimes can. (I bet they all lock their doors when they go out - why not? It's their 'right' to leave their house insecure without permitting a burglary.)

04 September, 2008 02:10

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think that Dame Helen Mirren was actually rather brave to be so open and honest in an interview for public consumption. Having smoked cannabis whilst enjoying a bit of a "wild time" years ago, REALLY is no big deal, and not the slippery slope to hard drugs, or personal destruction that the press [and government sometimes depending upon who it is!] like to make out.

It is the hybrid genetically modified skunk which is the "problem", and NOT the old fashioned variety of cannabis - which has been around and in use for thousands of years, as a natural grown herb. It may well be illegal in this country, but alcohol really does do far more harm to people, than the moderate use of cannabis for relaxation - obviously kids should not indulge in either. Plus knowing what teenagers are like, I doubt that Helen's comments will encourage them to smoke it. They tend to do the opposite of what any mature person thinks is okay!

Her comments about being raped were in fact HELPFUL, in that her experience could help other women to avoid that sort of situation, or to not feel so bad about it having happened to them too. She moved on from the incident and didn't let it drag her down too much. It happened to me years ago and I didn't report it either, because having to tell strangers would have been even WORSE than the rape itself, which wasn't violent, just unpleasant. This sort of thing can happen to a female who perhaps isn't worldly wise, or who is lacking in self confidence, or who is intimidated by a more dominant male.

Many years ago a husband could actually demand sex as his "marital rights", whether the female wanted to or not. When I was in my twenties and newly married, my husband forced me to have sex and I just had to allow him for the sake of peace and harmony. My experience had probably been the experience of thousands of women over the centuries, hence the old fashioned phrase of "lie back and think of England". Being forced to have sex with him "killed" the feelings I had for him and the marriage broke down shortly afterwards. At the time of the rape it was not considered to be a crime, but became a criminal offence shortly afterwards. He was also an unfaithful cheat and an argumentative Bas***d, who was a Mr Nice guy until he had the ring on my finger, at which point I had a sinking feeling of Oh God, what have I done in marrying him.

He turned into an even bigger bas***d over the divorce, probably realising that if I reported him for the rape, he would be in trouble. He deliberately set out to ruin my name by slagging me off to mutual friends and blaming myself for the breakdown of the marriage. He destroyed it himself by his unfaithfulness and that one act of enforced sex - rape, which of course did not get mentioned in any legal documents. He went on to psychologically damage my daughter by obsessing constantly about trying to blame myself for the break up, to make himself look good in her eyes. BASTARD.

I was also repeatedly raped as a child, but of course that never got to court, because they were cops and judiciary, with a handy mate who was a shrink ready to provide defamatory "professional" evidence against a victim who spoke out. My word against theirs.

They were the "respected" grown ups and I was just a child, who had been the subject of psychological abuse as well as sexual abuse. Threats and intimidation were used to make me comply with their deviant demands, and to keep my silence. I endured a frightening ordeal for over 5 years, including having to literally fight for my life at the age of 6, nearly 7 years old. Then I blew the whistle on them because of what I witnessed done to other kids, who did not survive to tell the tale.

Because of who the attackers were, the Home Office was contacted and special branch officers spoke to a number of kids who had been abused.
Nobody really wanted to deal with it because there were judges involved. One was a high court judge and a Lord. All the adults were too frightened to take a stand. Their line of talk was "well would you really want to stand up in court and tell them what they did to you", as if suggesting that it would be a bad idea, and even worse for you if you did. It was stressed, well it's your word against theirs. Thing is, there were LOADS of kids who were victims, which I pointed out to the special branch cop at the time.[1957] In truth they just didn't want to deal with it then, and the people in power STILL don't want to deal with it and acknowledge the truth. One of the kids did bring it out into the open when he grew up. Chris Jons challenged them and went on TV. Sadly he did not survive to get them into court, and nor did his brothers and their father.

And as Inspector Gaget says-
YOU COULD NOT MAKE IT UP!

04 September, 2008 04:27

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good of the poster to share her moderate views on illegal drugs in this forum before the Aliens came..

04 September, 2008 07:37

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the blog entry,

One poster said “Having smoked cannabis whilst enjoying a bit of a "wild time" years ago, REALLY is no big deal, and not the slippery slope to hard drugs, or personal destruction”
I take issue with that, I reckon it’s a fair bet that 99% of A class drug users started with pot/resin/cannabis/etc. I am not saying that 99% of people who smoke dope become crack/H/Coke users. And this from an Amsterdam resident!

“but alcohol really does do far more harm to people, than the moderate use of cannabis for relaxation” Yes apparently, unless you happen to have certain racial backgrounds which will make you likely/prone to developing a split personality after smoking dope. The other big difference however, is one is legal, one isn’t.

Back on subject, I think Dame HM’s comments were helpful in highlighting at issue that exists. As a civvie with very little experience on this subject I wonder whether a solution might be a two tiered conviction/punishment approach.

One being “Forced Sex” or “Non-consensual Sex” which requires less evidence (perhaps?), has a wider definition and carries a lot less of a sentence, perhaps 6m suspended and entry onto a/the sex-offenders register.

One being the as is “rape” crime. For which we could ask the Daily Mail readers to suggest a punishment..

I wonder if the two tiered system might allow more victims to come forwards and by having a specific ‘date/friend-rape’ crime lessen the chances of it happening? Prevention being better than cure etc.. I assume that many men are unfeeling bastards not in touch with their female side who don’t consider shagging a flirty date as rape. By having a lesser charge specificlally for this, it might make these twats think twice.. I don’t know but I imagine its worth considering, the yanks define Pre-meditated Murder and Murder separately don’t they?

Lastly, just to say, when I played the field as a younger man I always asked at the moment just before ‘entering’ a young lady “is it OK?”, it breaks the passion a fraction, but shows respect I think (this was after the late 80’s case of the Uni student that slept with a another student but then refused to date her and got charged with rape IIRC?). After asking I was able to relax and FWIW, I never got a “no”!

04 September, 2008 07:38

 
Blogger PC Bloggs said...

I suspect a two-tiered approach would lead to the main offence of rape never being charged. Look at how manslaughter is used in lieu of murder quite often for no good reason other than it is easier to convict. I agree there should be differences in sentencing for a violent stranger rape and another kind of rape, but this is already the case with mitigating and aggravating factors.

Suggesting that listening to Dame Helen is the same as listening to Reggie Kray is a bit of a leap. There are no controversies when it comes to prosecuting GBH, as it's generally assumed the victim hasn't agreed to being seriously assaulted. It's also pretty much accepted that if the victim doesn't want to prosecute then that's their business and they don't have to feel the weight of society condemning them for not being brave enough to speak out (leaving aside cases of witness intimidation). You don't get posts like the above from Anon 07:37 about GBH and murder. Rape is different, hence the debate.

04 September, 2008 10:23

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have the best part of 10 yrs service during which i have dealt with a few nasty rapes both female and male. I have dealt with many more false allegations. Honestly you would have to be there to beleive them. These range from and affair where the partner finds out so the allegation is made to show they didn't mean it all the way to one case of a girl who was late home and to escape her mothers reprimand blamed the taxi driver of rape.

People are arrested lives ruined only for a few weeks down the line the truth be revealed. As we all know this occurs we must assume so will a jury. Therefore when a true case gets to court it is much more difficult to overcome the shadow of a doubt issue. How do we stop it and help the real victims.

None of the false allegations are ever truly punished its just case closed NFA. If there were consequences to making false allegations would it stop the allegation in the first place or would it just make them push all the way to the court and what about the real victims, would they be put off coming forward?

Thougts anyone. (This was a bit of a rant please excuse my dyslexic fingers spelling errors)

04 September, 2008 13:43

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gaz the Cloggie....Most people "start" with alcohol, which may or may not lead to smoking a spliff......which does not always lead to harder drugs.

Just as most people who enjoy a pint or two of beer, or a bottle of wine on a regular basis don't turn into alcoholics and end up as tramps drinking cider or even metholated spirits. The moderate use of cannabis for many really does not lead to using or getting addicted to class A drugs.

It is "damaged" people who tend to use "substances" to block out mental/emotional distress. Alcohol, which is far more addictive and harmful than the old fashioned type of cannabis, just happens to be legal and a cash cow for the taxman. Alcohol addiction seriously damages lives, families and health, including brain function. Strangely I do not see any press campaign spouting forth on the evils of drink and how it should be made illegal.

One man's meat is another man's poison. Natural grown herbs that can and do have a medicinal affect, really should not be illegal.
It makes no sense whatsoever.

05 September, 2008 03:29

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another very tough question. A friend of mine who was very keen on SOTO stuff gave it up when the first 10 allegations she dealt with all turned out to be false. I just don't know how we'll ever get away from that.

05 September, 2008 15:23

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Slightly OT but connected; I'm a rape crisis counsellor and have been asked to participate in a training event for SOLO's. Does anyone have any thoughts on what the most useful areas to cover might be from a police perspective or any particular questions that need to be addressed?

05 September, 2008 22:11

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sadly when a jury is asked to decide on a rape where it is one persons word against another and there is little other evidence can we expect a jury to convict and perhaps jail someone for many years?
The benefit of the doubt will be given.
It might well help a jury if come to a conclusion if a defendants conduct both in terms of previous convictions and allegations that were of a sexual nature were known to them. I realise such a course would also help a potentially guilty rapist - but only once.

05 September, 2008 22:45

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for continuing to talk about rape Ellie. I'm so glad to see the silence around it being broken.

Love

A Survivor

07 September, 2008 12:49

 
Blogger Wheelie said...

Well, I'm very, very old. Bit like Dame Helen. Sad that she had to feel compliant.

Bottom line is, even if a lady is drunk, undressed, and in bed with a fella, and changes her mind - a no is a no. Just discussed this with my 19 year old daughter, and her view is, "if he doesn't accept it, do what it takes to get outa there" Yup.

07 September, 2008 13:59

 
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15 April, 2009 10:54

 

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