Adding insult to the injury of rape

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority has acknowledged its rules were applied ‘wrongly’ when 15 rape victims who had been drinking on the day of their attacks were told they deserved only three-quarters of the compensation the law provides for them. The full figure is a paltry £11,000. That’s how much the UK legal system holds our bodies to be worth should we be intimately violated. Yet, while the news channels are rightly making a huge stink over the insult the CICA added to extreme injury for these people, there’s another, just as outrageous, factor to consider: how many rape victims, male and female, ever get told they can make a claim for compensation? And that they can apply even when their attacker is never caught?

Of course there is nothing in truth that can compensate for someone being raped, but the knock-on effects are always devastating to various degrees. The victim who received a letter in which she was told ‘the evidence shows that your excessive consumption of alcohol was a contributing factor in the incident’ was raped five years ago on a night out in the West End of London. The woman, whose attacker was never caught, complained to the Metropolitan Police about the way her case was investigated. As a result of her complaint, she received an official apology and two officers were disciplined. So the poor woman was not only raped but suffered humiliation and abuse from those charged with not only seeking out criminals and bringing them to trial, but respecting the victims of crime and ensuring they get the support they need after being attacked.

This is nothing new. I personally know someone who was raped and afterwards treated very badly by the Police. On the night of the attack he—for it was a he, which may account for some of the hostility he encountered from the Metropolitan Police—had all his clothes removed for forensic analysis and had to consent to an intimate examination. He did this, determined even then to do the right thing for himself, and to help prevent his attackers harming anyone else. Where many rape victims are concerned, they become, without a doubt, heroes for a time. Those who come forward should be applauded for their courage. But the questioning by the Police was aggressive and cruel.

I got a phone call and had to take clothes to the police station where he was being held, and, upon leaving, the victim was handed a leaflet on birth control. Yes, birth control. Just in case his violent assault led to him being the first male ever to become pregnant after being raped, I guess. Either the police were stupid and offensive, or they were planning ahead by several centuries to a time of new possibilities. Maybe a time when not only men become capable of carrying babies to term, but when the Police actually give up their cherished bigotries and bullying ways. I think, given what I know, that of the two, male pregnancies are far more likely to happen.

A letter was received two years later asking the victim if he wanted his clothes back, and telling him that if he didn’t collect them they’d be destroyed. It was blunt to the point of rude, and a cruel reminder just at the point when he was starting to recover from his ordeal.

Needless to say, he didn’t reply to that letter. Between the rape and that letter he was forced to endure a number of police interrogations, and it was suggested to him forcefully and repeatedly, by male heterosexual officers, that he had consented to the violent attack by two men, who had in fact kidnapped him from a busy London street during peak traffic hours in the early evening, at gunpoint, and had bundled him into the back of a car. They said he was using the allegation of rape to hide his ‘little adventure’ from his partner. And yet, it turned out that the victim wasn’t alone—a number of young men and women had been raped in the same area, and had described the same attackers: one white male, aged around the mid-30s, one Asian male, aged around 40.

Perhaps those male heterosexual officers were confusing sickening rape porn with rape fact.

Signs put out on the street where the kidnap happened did not provide any suggestion of sexual assault having taken place. The victim was told this was because the public don’t respond if they think the victim was male. But a taxi driver came forward nevertheless, in response to the sign appealing for information, who said he saw the person I know bundled into the car, and he provided the number plate of the vehicle. However, he refused to testify and, at the time, I was led, along with the victim, to wonder why the taxi driver was not compelled to do so by the Met Police.

The men were caught, but were not identified by the victim when presented with a line-up. Bear in mind, the victim came to that line-up after several days of being told he was a liar, promiscuous, and ‘up for it’. And so the two rapists were allowed to go free, despite eye-witness testimony from a witness. Presumably the men’s other victims were not brought in to see if they could identify them. We can also presume they went on to rape other men and women, confident in the knowledge that the Met’s bigotry and wilful incompetence meant they had been given carte blanche to rape again without fear of being brought to justice.

Add to this twisted mess the fact that the police forensics came back saying that there was insufficient evidence from the victim’s physical examination on the night of the rape to say with any confidence that non-consensual sex had taken place, although the sperm samples taken were linked to the men who were caught, and released without charge. Yet the victim went, the day after the rape, to a local GU clinic and his internal injuries were said by the doctor examining him there to be ‘absolutely without doubt’ the consequence of a most violent rape. Perhaps, again, there was confusion on the part of the Police, brought about by ignorance, causing them to fail to recognise that the effects upon the body of consensual anal intercourse are completely different to the internal wounding caused by the same act violently and repeatedly being enforced upon an unwilling, struggling, terrified party.

But should it need a gay male officer on hand to be able to tell the difference?

The victim had actually endured over four hours of being raped by the two men, in fear for his life, before being thrown out of the car. He staggered into a chain-owned petrol station to ask to use the phone to call the police, and was told the phone wasn’t available for the use of the public. That’s another scandal, one which led to the chain in question writing to apologise to the victim, telling him it was company policy to offer assistance to all victims of crime, and that the employee who callously said no to the victim using the phone had been reprimanded—whatever that means. The victim had to use a payphone to call 999, so forgive me now as then for saying the response at the time, and the subsequent letter, fell short of every moral absolute we should be requiring from human beings in our community.

But, as I say, according to the Police, it was all just a little adventure behind the boyfriend’s back. It was all just an average day in the life of a young gay man.

At no stage was the victim told he could complain about his treatment by the Met Police, at no point was he told he could make a claim for compensation. Money, of course, can do nothing to erase the memory of such a hideous ordeal—but it can help a person to pick up the pieces afterwards. The victim took over two years to recover, spent a considerable amount of time off work, had to undergo counselling, and spent months on antidepressants. The same story can be told of many rape victims, regardless of gender. Oh, and he was told Victim Support—a voluntary organisation—would be calling him. Nobody did.

The overwhelming majority of reported rapes in the UK never lead to successful convictions, or even to the rapists being caught. Part of the reason for that is the attitude of the Police, which is supposed to have changed over the past two decades. But many of us, the victims and the friends and family of victims, see no evidence of change for the better. Sadly the news that evil attitudes towards rape victims, as evidenced by the 25 per cent cut offered to one who had been drinking, are still extant in our society comes as no surprise to many people whatsoever. But at least a little light has been shed upon the disgusting mess of our legal system today, and from that 15 people have achieved a rough approximation, a small slice, of justice.

The victim I know went on to heal with the help and love of friends and family, and made a success of his life in ways that the rapists no doubt never did. They had no courage; he had it in spades. Maybe they’re still out there, ostensibly free men, cruising the streets of London in their battered old car, looking for new victims. But I like to think that, sooner or later, their evil caught up with them—if not in terms of being tried and sentenced for their crimes, then as a karmic response that saw them go on to live tawdry little lives of absolutely no consequence whatsoever, filled with stress and struggle and dissatisfaction. And, on their death-beds, whenever the fates decree that they shuffle off this mortal coil and leave the world that little bit better a place, I also like to imagine that as they approach their final breaths, they remember their crimes and go into the dark fearful of what they may face when they cross over.

When there is little justice on Earth, we can but hope—even if some might say it is in vain—for a kind of justice to be metered out in the afterlife. But it’s long past due time the Metropolitan Police, and other forces around the country, started to learn the difference between criminals and victims. We can only philosophise and argue over concepts of natural justice, karma, heaven, and hell. But we can push for concrete measures to be taken in the world we know, the world that is real, and tangible—and it can be changed, if—and only if—the will is there to make it happen.

Let’s just pray that future generations of Police officers, judges, lawyers, and compensation board members get past the Stone Age mentalities that have held back justice for too long a time.

categories: rattle bag