Victims not reporting is how we got here? How is that not victim-blaming? And you’re blaming those who didn’t report because they were too terrified or too sure police wouldn’t believe them or unable to face the kind of hell the public puts victims through for the perpetrator’s lousy logic?
Do you think that male rape doesn’t happen? Sorry, but if you think men don’t get raped you are mistaken. Male rape victims are just as in need of justice as female victims. And, for those who go on about unreported rapes
So please fight your own ignorance and recognise - and reform - your sexism.
You have to give him credit, he is quite good at this.
Quartz, men do get raped, but at much lower rates than women. Women getting raped is a much bigger problem than men getting raped, and accordingly should receive much more effort at a solution. Everyone in this thread knows all of this, except for you.
I think my mother didn’t report because she felt trapped in the marriage. How do you manage in the 1950’s to take care of 4 children (14-female,9-female,5-male,4-female) once you have left the man who is systematically raping each of his daughters? I think it may have been a bit of a relief to her when he was abusing the daughters, because he was not abusing her. She did finally put a stop to it when she found him raping the second granddaughter. My dad was a “pillar in the community”-scoutmaster of the church Boy Scout troop, president of the Elementary School Dad’s Club, helper of widows, etc.
Pudytat72, I am so sorry to read this. Nobody deserves a childhood like that.
These boys didn’t either.
When I was in college, I found out that a man at the church I attended as a tween was a serial child molester; he was exposed when two of his granddaughters found out he had abused them, after which they proceeded to tell their mother, who had also been abused by him, and she went to the police. One female relative after another came forward saying he had done the same thing to them; this man’s wife denied knowing about the abuse, as did their son. Even though this man did not abuse me, something I did tell my source, it did not surprise me at all, because all of his kids, including the son who denied being abused by him, made horrific decisions when it came to picking spouses.
I do wonder if his wife said she didn’t know about it, because saying she did would have had some rather dire consequences. Both of them have since died.
What the actual fuck is the matter with you, dude?
Ideally I would prefer it if the victim reported it. However, the victim should do what they think is best for him or herself. They’re under no obligation to report for the good of society. They need to look out for their own needs first.
Just because he does it repetitively doesn’t mean he is good at it. It is completely transparent to anyone who is paying attention.
Of course victims of rape and sexual assault–male, female, trans, et cetera–should be encouraged to report the crimes, and the victims treated in a manner to allow them to retain as much dignity as possible. And false claims should be prosecuted, although false claims are rare and generally pretty obvious to experienced investigators. The problems with victims not reporting–because of shame, fear of reprisal, lack of support, and all too often because they are not believed or the claims are not pursued even if they are as sexual assaulters often pick a scenario in which there are no witnesses–does contribute to the pervasiveness of such behaviors, which argues for making the training about what to do in case of an assault or threat go down to basic childhood education. Many victims are not even aware that what is being done to them is sexual assault or abuse, and they don’t report or complain because everyone else around them tacitly accepts it even though something feels really wrong about it, which is a fundamental social problem rather than just victims not stepping up.
In short, we need to create an environment where victims feel that they can report such violations without being shamed, blamed, or ignored, which is all too often not the case.
Stranger
When I worked as a rape crisis counselor, this is not the approach we took. Survivors (yes, women and men) had just had their agency taken away from them in often horrific ways. We talked them through their options. We told them we would be there for them every step of the way if they reported (in CA this is their right). We answered questions, and helped them begin to process emotions. We never told them what to do or told them that they had to do anything (with exceptions for safety, and minors). We did encourage them to seek medical attention for their own health, but encouraging them to report? No. Doing so was their own decision.
Yes, this has to be the answer. No one should have to walk this gauntlet of shaming in order to seek justice. Let alone cases that are never followed up on, evidence that is never processed, police that never even show up (Alaska - I’m looking at you). The process is broken.
…narrator: “This actually wasn’t how we got here.”
I’m for reporting,
BUT
that means it needs to be ok to report. When the cost of reporting is being kicked out of the house, or leaving your younger siblings in a more vulnerable position, or… then it makes sense to not report. Ideally we should have societies where it never makes sense to not report. Of course, ideally we’d also never need to report, but hey, only because you don’t think you’ll make it to Broadway doesn’t mean you should never sing.
Note that the same applies to many other situations; in fact, to any situation where the person who has something reportable feels threatened. Blackmail, direct threats, insults, forced marriage, (non-sexual) assault, the list is very long, but what it’s got in common is that they are situations where the main reason to not report is that you are convinced it will not help or will make things worse. It’s a big problem for crimes where the victim is an immigrant for example: even if they’ve got all their paperwork, very often they are afraid to report.
In the case of a person who attacks multiple women, then if everyone reports, it stops being a “he said, she said” matter. The police can say, “She’s saying it now, and we have three previous reports from these other women against this man and zero previous reports against 99.9% of the other men in the city, so you do the math.”
As I’m sure most of you know 
Spanish nouns and adjectives are usually gendered; the masculine plural also counts as neuter plural. But in the last couple of decades it’s not uncommon for a man who finds himself surrounded by women to say “to hell with grammar, all these masculine plurals are making me feel self-conscious; if you don’t mind I move that we use feminine plurals.” Whenever we are talking about sex crimes it’s a similar situation: it is important to remember that choosing a specific gender or noun in certain situations where not doing so would be awkward doesn’t exclude all other genders and nouns. It is a shorthand, not an exclusion.
The OP references both male and female. Drop the hijack of whether male victims exist.
[/moderating]
Let me be clear here: I don’t blame someone for being sexually assaulted - I don’t care what they were wearing, if they could have prevented it by walking on the other side of the sidewalk or wearing different lipstick, or whatever minutiae people claim they could have done to avoid the incident. The attack is 100% on the attacker.
What someone does after - that’s on them. Being a victim of a crime doesn’t absolve someone of all responsibility, personal and social, for infinity. The Golden Rule is still in force, and that means considering what you would have wanted the last victim to do before the assailant got to you when you’re plotting your course of action.
…the “victim of a crime” bears no responsibility for the future actions of the person who perpetrated that crime either now, in the future, for infinity. The “victim of a crimes” first responsibility is to themselves.
I don’t think this “Golden Rule” actually exist. Where is it written? When did it “first come into force?” How come I’ve never heard of it? Did you just make this rule up for this thread?
I think reporting or not should be up to the victim, but if asked, I’d strongly encourage it, and not reporting childhood incidents is a big regret for adult me. On the other hand, I’m quite familiar with the instinct to just put it behind you. The pervasiveness of patriarchal rape culture doesn’t help, for any gender of victim.
IIRC, many states have huge backlogs of untested rape kits. This is an enormous slap in the face to the women who were brave enough to report being raped.
Vaginal or anal tearing should at the very least create a rebuttable presumption that intercourse was nonconsensual. (IOW, the burden would shift to the defendant to prove it wasn’t rape, if it wasn’t disputed that he and the victim had a sexual encounter.)
I have never been in the situation of having to decide whether to report a rape, and being a middle-aged man, chances are I never will be.
In a better world than this, it would be a good deal less traumatic for a rape victim to report her assault to the police. But given that this is far from the best of all possible worlds, I would not pass judgment on anyone who chose not to report.