Hey! so i just got out of lecture for my Women and gender studies class-WGST1808 at Carleton University. for the past few weeks we have been discussing violence against women, a serious subject to say the least. today we focused specifically on sexual violence. during the lecture one horrible occurance was pointed out to me, that i had never realised before.
Firstly, many sexual assults go unreported, as i knew, but one possible reason why is a little astonishing. when making a report to the police survivors (using the word "victim" creates a stigma for the women who have suffered) of sexual assult, they are often turned down. police are slow to believe women. and deem a lot of caess as "unfounded"-such as cases of sex workers, or if the person was your boyfriend.Police will acusse you of lying and this can be very damaging to the woman. This is vaiable as a reason why some women wwouldn't even bother reporting it to the police. Even if police believe your account, most cases are "unsubstantiated" and therefore not taken to court. in certain cases the women who were at first believed, are then faced with disbelief and ridicule and accused of lying.
Only 33% of cases are brought to court--and from the cases reported and believed there is only a 2% conviction rate.
This fact keeps women silent and prevents women from reporting and it denies their experiences.
Is anyone else as disturbed by this as I am??
I know this was a rather serious and unfun first blog post but this situation and the inability of our justice system to deal with cases of sexual assult is astonishing and horrifying.
Please let me know if you agree!
sources:
http://www.rainn.org/statistics
and from Prof. Ekholst's lecture
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