The current threads on rape culture in this subforum and IMHO brought this topic to mind.
Even today, there are places where an accusation of rape are not likely to be dealt with sympathetically or professionally by the police. If a rape victim judges that it is extremely unlikely that reporting his or her assailant to the authorities would do any good, and that it is extremely likely that he or she will be further humiliated by the process of trying to get the assailant prosecuted, has that victim the moral (or ethical if you prefer) obligation to do so anyway?
I would say that the victim of any violent crime has a moral obligation to report it to the police, and cooperate with the prosecution to the fullest extent possible. Civil litigation is another matter - that’s the victim’s call, as the function of litigation is to compensate the victim. Criminal laws, however, exist to protect society as a whole. A victim who fails to report a violent crime leaves the criminal entirely free to repeat his crime - thus, this victim endangers his or her fellow-citizens.
Failing to report a violent crime is akin to failing to report a fire. The fire department may be incompetent, the conflagration may be utterly beyond all control - but you still have a duty to try and protect the public.
I have heard that rape is a very underreported crime, and also that a significant portion of rapes that are reported are spurious. I can understand the latter, but how the hell to do they know the former?
As someone who’s been raped, though, I can sure see why you wouldn’t want to report it. The stuff at the hospital was the second most traumatic part of the whole ordeal. (The most traumatic part was thinking I was gonna die, and real soon.)
I would have been happy to prosecute him (or kill him, in fact). I did not get any sense that it was up to me whether to prosecute or not, and anyway first the police had to catch him.
However, I had no idea who the guy was, he had something over his face. Even if he hadn’t, it was dark and I didn’t have my glasses on or my contacts in, so making a positive ID that way would have been pretty dicey. It was long ago, so no DNA evidence.
I’ve always taken it they are comparing the numbers of rapes projected to have occurred from the results of surveys to the numbers of rapes actually investigated by the police.
I would say no. I would certainly see it as a commendable public service to report their assailant, but I don’t feel that they have any moral responsibility for the rapist’s future actions just because they were the last victim.
A rape victim is in an awkward overlap of positions. On the one hand, she’s the victim to a crime, and it’s not just to require anything further of someone who’s already a victim. On the other hand, she’s also a witness to a crime, and in a society of laws, a witness to a crime has some moral obligation to help the police. I’m not sure of the full answer, here, but certainly we should do as much as we can to not actively discourage rape victims from cooperating with the police. If, for instance, the typical encounter with the authorities is traumatic, as Hilarity reports, then we need to find out what’s traumatic about it, and work to make it less so.
IMHO the victim needs to forgive totally, and not prosecute, which is state sponsored revenge. Forgiving them totally will either help reform them or make their present path much much worse, revenge will help them continue in evil, even through this may or may not be evil committed in jail.
Forgiving them will take the healing out of the hands of the state and their process, and place it in the victim’s.
I think you totally don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Not everyone subscribes to your variety of brainwashing. The victim of a crime is under no obligation to forgive anything.
What kind of limb-wristed, pussy bastardisation of Buddhism is that?
Every religion, even the ones with a big emphasis on forgiveness, have a place for a justice system.
A man who commits an actual rape belongs in jail - if you think the emphasis should be on rehabilitating him, then so be it - blind forgiveness is not the answer.
And reporting a crime is not “revenge”. It’s allowing the state to take care of catching a criminal – to ensure that said criminal does not hurt anyone else.
*everytime I think Kanicbird couldn’t get any worse…
THIS. I have a friend who was stranger raped in a DENTIST’s chair. She did not want to prosecute. I don’t know why, but I strongly suspect that her parents made her think that she shouldn’t (she really can’t think for herself, and parrots what her mommy and daddy want)
I don’t get at ALL why she didn’t think that "oh if something like this happened to me, I have the obligation to prevent other women from going through the same thing. A stranger attacking you in a dentists chair is just BEYOND biazare.
I mean i can kind of understand since rape victims get portrayed as sluts and things like that…but I really think she doesn’t understand that ANYONE would find what happened to her VERY VERY odd, and put that THING that attacked her into a mental insistution for the criminally insane for life.
Whoever rapes is a VERY dangerous sociopath. VERY dangerous.
The rape victim will continue to suffer until she forgives him, because unforgivness is a barrier to healing, forgiveness is something that the victim can do independantly of the rapist or the state, healing is totally in her hands.
Yeah, well, not everyone believes in Jesus, let alone YOUR version of Jesus. In my world, the rape victim gets a lot of relief knowing that the rapist is behind bars, where s/he can’t abuse other people, especially the victim.
If you want to forgive your rapist, go right ahead. But for most people, knowing that the rapist has been tried and sentenced is far more healing.
As a rape victim we have both, but if we are not treated with compasion and simpathy coming forward feels like we are being raped again. And as far as forgiveness, with some it can only go so far. Forgiveness can’t erase the flashbacks or the feeling of helplessness that you feel and some people just don’t deserve to be forgiven.
I had an incident (not rape) happen to me and I clammed up. Years later, watching the sleaze interact with another young girl, I was hit with a wave of guilt.
I found out later someone else had an incident with that perpetrator years before I did, and I didn’t hold her responsible in the least.
In retrospect I am disappointed in myself, but at the time, I wasn’t capable of it then. So while I think it’s best if a victim does report, it’s very understandable why they don’t.
A rape victim’s first responsibility is to herself. If she can’t bear the extra victimization of prosecuting the rapist, then she isn’t morally obligated to do so. If we, as a society, require more of the rape victim in the way of trauma on the way to a conviction than the rapist is going to experience, there’s something very wrong and it’s ridiculous to hold the victim to a higher standard of strength and morality than the animal who raped her.
And sure, a victim might get some closure from having her rapist behind bars, but the reality of our legal situation is that even if she does cooperate fully, she might have simply YEARS of having a trial hanging over her head, during which time she knows not only that her rapist is running around loose, but also that he knows who she is (and she might not know who HE is) and perhaps he also knows that she’s pursuing prosecution, which gives him simply oodles of incentive to shut her up in any one of a number of unsavory ways. I totally understand why rape victims don’t prosecute–and if anyone would like to get a better understanding of why this is, go volunteer to be a rape patient advocate during the intake portion at the hospital when the rape kit is deployed and the initial questioning by police is done. The number of times you might have to intervene to stop the cops from asking inappropriate and unlawful questions might rather astound you, as would some of the unspoken attitudes you’ll see.