By Kaleigh Werner, EIC Lifestyle
According to the latest report on sexual assault cases by RAINN Statistics, retrieved from the National Crime Victimization Survey data from 2017, 770 cases out of 1000 go unreported. When it comes to the 230 cases that are reported, RAINN Statistics estimates that only 46 of those reports lead to an arrest and nine cases are brought to prosecutors with five of the cases leading to perpetrators being convicted of a felony.
The question is, why do only five out of the 230 cases that are reported get prosecuted? Ultimately, only a small number of cases of sexual assaults are prosecuted each year due to the large acceptance of rape myths and a widely accepted concept of who the “ideal victim” and “ideal perpretrator” is by prosecutors and the majority of society.
Rape myths are the misconceptions about the perpetrators, victims and situations of sexual assualt. These myths can stem from social and cultural norms that support violence which includes ideas that women hold responsibility for controlling the sexual urges of men and that “sexual activity (including rape) is a marker of masculinity” (SOC 2169: Violence Against Women, Week 3 Lecture, PP Slide 19). However, the specific rape myths that affect a prosecutor’s decision to move forward with a reported case are more related to the particular situation of sexual assault. One common misconception is that there needs to be signs of physical harm (choking, holding, punching, slapping, etc.) for it to be considered “assault” or “rape.”
When a prosecutor decides to take a case, they think about whether or not they have the best chance of winning a conviction. If the accepted norm is that for a case to be considered, there needs to be clear signs of physical harm, a victim claiming they just didn’t verbally give consent and was sexually assaulted would not convince a prosecutor to move forward with their case.
Prosecutors focused on taking cases they know they can win are subscribers to “the ideal victim” myth. “The ideal victim” that a prosecutor would look for is the most convincing to them and a possible jury, would convey a physical characteristic of weakness. Specifically referring to the table that was presented in the week eight powerpoint and “The `Ideal’ Victim v Successful Rape Complainants: Not What You Might Expect,” by Wendy Larcombe, this would make the victim either a child, sick, old, female, white, or from the middle class. An “ideal victim” would also have been doing something “respectable” at the time of the incident rather than drinking out at a bar or doing drugs. At the same time, prosecutors are looking for the “ideal perpetrator” which would most likely be a male and a stranger to the victim.
A case that which is likely to result in a conviction is analyzed in Zsuzsuanna Adler’s book , “Rape On Trial,” where she conducts a study on the direct relationship betwen rape myths and conviction rates. The common factors, which can be otherwise referred to as the typical beliefs about rape or sexual assault incidents, were the ideal victim, a victim who is sexually inexperienced/has a respectable lifestyle, assailant is a stranger, victim fought back, victim suffered physical injury, made a prompt report to police and there was more than one assailant/defendant. Adler (1987) found that a case which had at most two of these factors, had a 33% conviction rate, three or more had a 72% conviction rate, and zero of the factors meant the case would have no convictions. While it was discussed in the sexual assault introduction lecture that there has been some rape law reform since Adler’s findings, rape myth motivations influenced by a higher conviction rate still exists for prosecutors.
When prosecutors belief in rape myths and let them influence their decision to move forward with a case they are setting an example which perpetuates rape culture. In Kate Harding’s book (2015), Asking for it: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture — and What We Can Do About It, she quotes feminist scholars Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, and Martha Roth on how they have defined rape culture. She states, “In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence… A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women and presents it as the norm.”
Rape culture is the reason why these issues is important due to the treatment it condones which includes victim blaming and slut shaming. Both of which not only contribute to a lack of reporting when women are victims of sexual assault because they are made to believe that they are to blame for the violence against them, but also long term mental effects such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can appear.
