05.7 - Licence to Rape

British Home Secratary Jacqui Smith, the person in charge of Britain's justice system, has been warned by antirape advocates that the lack of attention to helping rape victims recieve justice by the arrest and conviction of their perps has gave British rapists a licence to rape.

5.7% is the number of British rapists which are convicted after being prosecuted. Sorry I don't have a James Bond poster.

A plea to the Home Secretary from the women's rights campaign group the Fawcett Society backed by MPs and peers of all parties, calls for the Government to do more to help rape victims.

The campaigners claim three out of four local authority areas have no services for victims of rape, and even where there are rape crisis centres the average waiting list is three months long.

There is also no 24-hour rape helpline for women to phone for support or to find out what
services there are in their area.This is despite a Government promise to introduce one as quickly as possible in July 2003, they claim.

The group also claims the criminal justice system is failing victims of rape.

Only one out of every twenty (5.7%) rapes reported to the police results in a conviction, with less than one in five rapes even leading to a prosecution and only 12% making it as far as court.

"We are calling for the government to work to change attitudes to rape through public campaigns and education in schools; improve police investigation of rape; and invest in sustainable funding for rape crisis services" Sarah Campbell of the Fawcett Society told Sky News.

In a letter to the Home Secretary, the campaigners say: "Every 34 minutes a rape is reported to the police in the United Kingdom. Thousands more victims do not come forward.

"Yet despite the scale of the problem, the Government has failed to provide the support that women want and need.

"Not only are women who have been raped denied access to support, they are also denied access to justice.

"This failure to bring rapists to justice amounts to a near 'licence to rape'."

It's not just government. The fact that many types of psychological sexual coercion like pressured sex are legal and acceptable, and that rape victims are blamed, sometimes to the point of being blamed for choosing the wrong partner when he rapes, contributes to this dynamic.