The process of reporting and investigating rape varies from country to country. In the UK, the government and police clearly set out the process that a person goes through and explains each stage in detail so you know what to expect when you initially report a rape.
As you will have read and watched on my content over the past month, although rape is one offence category it can vary from case to case. The most common type of rape is one where the victim and offender know each other. Rape can occur in relationships, amongst families, in prisons or an unknown location with an unknown offender. You can report a rape that has only just occurred or you can report a rape from an earlier time. It is up to you when you feel comfortable to report rape.
When reporting a rape, there are several stages. The first stage is your account of what happened. An officer will ask you about what has happened as soon as possible once you have reported it. Their first priority will be to check on your welfare and find out if you need any emergency medical assistance. They will ask you questions about who did it, what happened, where it happened and when it happened.
The police will then look for and arrest a suspect. The decision to make the arrest will be based on both your wishes and what the police feel is in the wider public interest. You may be taken to an area of the police station called a comfort suite if it has one. Comfort suites are dedicated rooms where victims of rape and serious sexual assault can talk in privacy and comfort.
Once you’ve given an initial account of what happened, the police may assign a dedicated officer to your case. These officers are specially trained to provide you with the help and support you need throughout the investigation and any subsequent judicial process. The police will take any physical evidence that is available and this may include taking pictures and swabs from intimate or non-intimate parts of the body.
If a suspect is arrested, they will be interviewed and evidence collected. All of the evidence will be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and will detail the circumstances surrounding the offence. A specially trained lawyer at the CPS will review all of the evidence and, together with a second ‘reviewing lawyer’, decide whether there is enough evidence to proceed to a trial.
If the CPS recommend a trial, the first stage will be ‘heard’ at a Magistrates’ Court. The suspect, who will be referred to in court as ‘the defendant’ will have to attend. You won’t need to attend at this stage. The police and CPS can apply to the court for ‘special measures’ that can assist you when you subsequently give your evidence in court. Special measures can include giving evidence behind a screen or via a video link from another room.
If the defendant pleads ‘not guilty’ to the crime, you will need to go to the Crown Court and appear as a witness. In this case, you will be referred to as a ‘witness for the prosecution’.
If you attend court as a witness, it is against the law for the media to use your name or give details that would make it clear who you are. Only 1.5% of rape cases reported in England and Wales lead to the suspect being charged or summoned to court (compared to 14% four years ago) and there needs to be a change.
I did a video about the psychological effects of being raped last week. Unfortunately, there are still myths that people believe about rape. A person who has been raped can be questioned in court and defence lawyers can question them to try to discredit them. Obviously, this is distressing for those who go to court. The whole process can be very daunting and knowing what to expect ahead of time can help prepare you for it.
I looked over a lot of websites about the process of what should happen, but it all lacked real emotion. I found the best account of what the process was like from an article in the cosmopolitan magazine. The article gave some positive and some negative accounts of what the process is like for someone who has been raped.
One woman who had been raped by an abusive partner found that she was having to defend herself for staying in an abusive relationship. She said:
“I used to think rapists walked free because of a lack of evidence, but that wasn’t why I hit record on my phone as I was raped. I reported the rape a few weeks later after we broke up. I told the police all I could and handed over my phone. I thought the more evidence they had, the better. When I played the police officer the recording, he said it was the most horrific thing he’d ever heard. The case went to court this year. Everyone was adamant there would be a conviction. I thought: now I’ll be safe and no one else will have to go through what I did with him. We were floored by the verdict. Under Scottish law, a case can be found not guilty, not proven or guilty. He was found not proven. That means the jury thought he was guilty, but there wasn’t enough evidence for a conviction. But what more did they need? All he had was his word – he claimed it was role play.”
In some cases of rape, it can be one word against the other. However, many people have positive experiences about reporting and prosecuting rape. Another woman wrote:
“Hearing that the verdict was ‘guilty’ was the most empowering moment of my life. I felt validated. I’d reported the assault straight away because I had to: my friend was about to marry this man. It was extraordinarily tough. I had to go over every detail with the police. Rape takes away your control, yet the police and the medical team did everything they could to give it back to me. The police said they wouldn’t stop me from jumping in the shower but added it might wash away any evidence. Then, when I was getting medical tests, they made sure I was never left on my own. In court, I gave evidence behind a screen so that the only people I could see were the judge, the barristers and the jury. I looked into all of their eyes. I didn’t have to see the man who raped me again. I wouldn’t have coped with that. The jury made their decision in 15 minutes.”
Having the support and being prepared for what may happen can make a big difference. There are many charities that offer support and guidance if you have been raped. They will not push you to report it if you don’t want to. Of course, it is not just women who are raped. Men and children can also be raped and there are specialist support services available in many countries.
It is a well-known fact that rape happens in prison. There are always debates about the numbers as the majority of incidents are never reported. Whenever we think about rape, we immediately think of a man raping a woman. However, men can also be raped.
Poor-taste jokes are often shared about not dropping the soap in the shower rooms. However, there is nothing to be light-hearted or joke about when it comes to rape and sexual assault in prison. Sexual assaults, including a number of very violent rapes, have been happening in our overcrowded and understaffed prisons for years.
In this blog, I am going to concentrate on the rape of males in the UK prison settings. It is possible for women in UK prisons to be raped. This can be by any male who has access to prisoners.
According to a UK police website, rape is when a person intentionally penetrates another’s vagina, anus or mouth with a penis, without the other person’s consent. Assault by penetration is when a person penetrates another person’s vagina or anus with any part of the body other than a penis, or by using an object, without the person’s consent. It is the former that will be explored in this blog.
Adult male prisoners in the United Kingdom are raped and sexually assaulted within the system, and often the abuse is not always acknowledged, nor are records kept of sexual offences committed against prisoners.
In many cases in recent years, when a prisoner makes an allegation of sexual abuse/rape, they often end up being removed from the prison they were in, and the abuser stays behind, leaving the ‘victim’ even more traumatised by the whole event.
In 2010, the figure for assaults in English and Welsh jails was 137, but by 2015 the total had more than doubled to 300. There are more than 80, 000 males held in prisons in the UK. This makes the amount of reported male sexual assaults in custody relatively small. This means that it only occurs in around 0.3% of males in the prison population. However, there is a lack of reporting of rapes and assaults in male prisons.
There appears to be a devaluation of male rape which is evident in general society and law enforcement. It was only 26 years ago, in 1994, that the rape of males was even classified as “rape.” Before this, it was seen as “non-consensual buggery” and had a maximum ten-year sentence, compared to a maximum of a life sentence for rape.
Unfortunately, rape is still often seen as an issue for women and women alone despite changes in the law. There are many support groups and support resources for women. However, there are less available for men and even less for men who have been raped in prison.
There are a number of studies that have found male rape in prison is under-reported much more than male rape amongst the general public. Male rapes that occur in prison are rarely investigated or prosecuted. When a complaint is made in prison, the only action taken is to move the victim to another prison.
Around 2015, there were multiple headlines about sexual abuse in prisons and the need to rectify this issue. These were the media’s reaction to the latest report by the Commission on Sex in Prison, set up by the Howard League for Penal Reform and the first-ever independent review of sex inside prisons in England and Wales.
Lovisa Stannow of Just Detention International said: “We have seen first-hand the importance of serious, nationwide research to determine the prevalence and dynamics of sexual abuse in detention. With reliable data in hand, we have managed to move away from denial and toward a recognition that prisoner rape is a nationwide crisis.”
Research by the Howard League for Penal Reform found a range of failings within prisons. Prisoners said that rape and sex happened out of necessity. It is important to highlight that sexual activity does occur inside prison between inmates with consent.
Dr Alisa Stevens, a lecturer in Criminology at the University of Southampton who conducted interviews for the Sex in Prison report, said a national survey of serving and former prisoners were needed to better understand the scale of consensual and coercive sex in prison.
During interviews, one heterosexual former inmate explained how he had sex with gay or bisexual prisoners to satisfy his sexual needs and had continued seeing girls when he was released.
He said: “I’m completely straight; what happened then was just about having my sexual needs met, in a particular time and place, where I couldn’t get [heterosexual] sex.”
However, this report also found that inmates would be forced to offer ‘sexual favours’ in Payment of gambling or drug addiction and debts. It was found that vulnerable inmates who were socially isolated or lacked financial support from friend’s ort family outside of prison were targeted. Or ‘groomed’ for sex.
Three male interviewees told of how they had been raped in prison and three others had been threatened with rape by fellow inmates. One interviewee had been raped five times in a cell and required medical treatment.
But he refrained from making a formal complaint in fear of gaining a reputation as a “grass” and as a prisoner serving a long-term sentence, fellow inmates would “mark his cards” for the remainder of his time inside and would increase his chances of being raped again.
During this research, I came across a blog written by an inmate while he was incarcerated. He wrote in his blog:
I know from personal experience that a great many sexual assaults – ranging from an indecent grope right through to full-scale rape (both anal and oral) – are often not documented, even when they are reported to prison staff. I know for an absolute fact that there are no records of the sexual assault I experienced in August 2013, because I have seen my own prison security records and it is not mentioned at all.
I could list literally dozens of similar cases, including a particularly brutal rape that I believe led one young prisoner to hang himself in despair back in 2012. I’ve seen both the unpublished report into his death prepared the Prison and Probation Ombudsman, as well as the Coroner’s inquest findings and the entire issue of the sexual assault has been whitewashed out of existence. In his case, the suicide was attributed to depression, even though I know that two wing governors knew the real reasons he took such a desperate course of action to evade further attacks from the alleged rapist. I know because we discussed the issue at length behind closed doors months before the inquest.
As I’ve previously mentioned in a post on this blog, I’ve witnessed a group of heterosexual cons debating whether to accept an offer of oral sex to clear a tobacco debt. Opinion was mixed, but no-one really expressed much outrage over the suggestion.
All of the research and headlines I found on the issue of male rape date from 2015 or earlier. It appears as though the report that was conducted by Howard League for Penal Reform created a wave and calls for change that did not last.
We are placing men in prison because of the crimes they committed. Time spent in prison is aimed at being a combination of rehabilitation and punishment. It is not so that these men can become victims of further crimes. We have a moral duty to protect those in prison, regardless of their offence. Nobody – regardless of age, gender, or criminal history, deserves to be raped.
I know from personal experience, that the crime of burglary is deeply distressing. We consider our homes to be a safe haven, a place where we keep our treasured possessions and feel safe from the outside world. When someone comes into our personal space and takes our belongings, we feel violated. Very recently I had my mobile phone and debit cards stolen. The offenders used my debit cards in several shops. I felt a deep sense of loss and violation. Someone had taken one of my belongings and spent my money without consent. I cancelled the cards and blocked the phone and sim card, and my bank refunded the money. Everything was replaceable, and it only caused an inconvenience to replace it. However, I felt wronged and violated that a personal item had been taken. All of my photographs and messages were on there for them to potentially go through. Luckily, the phone was locked and they could not have got to my information, but it was still a violation.
Burglary is an intrusion of our personal space and is felt by some victims as a violation second only to rape. Although there is not normally any kind of confrontation, there is still an interpersonal interaction between the offender and the victim. The burglar may be committing the crime for a variety of reasons. It may be for monetary gain, for a sense of fun and excitement, peer pressure of group solidarity. When a burglar enters a home, they are not likely to be thinking about the victim, they are more likely to be focusing on themselves and their own needs.
In the past, people thought of offenders as impulsive, indiscriminate, opportunistic. We tend to think of burglars as not being intelligent, however, the process of choosing a suitable property, method of entry, doing a systematic search, and choosing what to steal requires certain skills to be acquired.
Several studies have found that burglars tend to select targets within 2 kilometres of where they live. There are several factors that a burglar needs to consider when deciding which property to target. They need to consider how they are going to get to a safe place to store the goods they steal. The burglar also considers ease of access and escape routes. One research paper by Luedtke (1970) found that houses near a major highway were more likely to be chosen than houses further away from major routes.
Of course, not all burglars are the same. The majority of studies into burglary highlight the differences in the level of experience or ‘professionalism’ in their crimes. Other studies have focused on the level of interaction with the residents. David Canter (1989) highlighted the interpersonal aspect of burglary and suggested that the victim and the offender become ‘intimate strangers’.
The method of entry and whether or not they work alone or with another person can reveal a lot about the offender. In general, criminals target the easiest targets. This is also true of burglaries. If an offender sees a property with an open window, on a street that is not well lit, no lights on in the house, and an easy escape route, they are more likely to target that property than one with secured doors and windows, a burglar alarm, lights on, and in a well-lit area.
Those with less experience tend to co offend with juveniles. Those with a mid-level experience are more likely to be older and work alone, have a specific target planned, and will result in higher-value losses. Those with high levels of professionalism or experience are likely to work with other skilled offenders, are selective about their target and plan well in advance.
Nee, a forensic psychologist from the University of Plymouth, has found that burglars have a complex cognitive toolbox of advanced, automatic skills – much like a chess player or football player. Nee found that burglars approach entry to a property systematically. Much of what they do occurs on automatic pilot. According to Routine Activity Theory, most crime is committed as part of everyday life. For a burglar, this means spotting potential properties whilst walking a dog, or walking to the shops. Planning the burglary usually begins before the day of the offence. However, the offender is always assessing the level of risk and may change their minds quickly if they see an easier target or anything that puts them off a property, such as people being home.
Burglars usually have a characteristic way of entering a property. Some may smash a window with an object nearby, others will bring tools with them to pick a lock or disable an alarm. Some will enter on the ground floor and others from a higher vantage point. Once inside the property, Nee found that the offenders operate on automatic pilot and will do a systematic search of the property. They usually avoid big electrical items and instead look for wallets and cards in pockets or jewellery.
Nee found that experienced burglars mostly followed the same route through the house. They begin upstairs in bedrooms searching for designer clothes, cash, cards, and other small items before heading to the living room. The experienced burglars spent around four minutes in the property. Burglars are not as concerned with alarms now, because they know most neighbours fail to call the police within the first 20 minutes of hearing an alarm.
Given their automatic behaviour, Nee suggests that a better deterrent would be something that the burglar wouldn’t expect. She says this would interrupt their internal script and abandon the crime.
Nee suggests. Playing a recording of someone’s footsteps, or even something as simple as gentle white noise might be distracting enough to perturb the burglar. Equally, you could layout your house in a distinct way – anything that confuses their automatic mental maps. “The thing is, you have to be innovative over time because burglars will get used to whatever you do,” she says.
Nee thinks one of the best strategies is to pretend that someone is always in the house; almost all the burglars she has interviewed report that they will do anything to avoid a face-to-face encounter. For example, if you are leaving your house shout goodbye at the front door to give the impression that someone is home.
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