Handbook on Sexual Violence (46 page)

Social stigma has left large numbers of rape victims and children born of rape rejected by their families and communities. Many cases of HIV and other infections remain untested and untreated. Fear of going to fields

and markets – sites where rapes often take place – has resulted in spiralling malnutrition and economic loss.

(Pratt and Werchick 2004: 6)

Outside of war, brutal regimes use sexual violence as a tactic in their military control of populations. Under the Taliban, oppressed and terrorised Afghan woman ‘suffered massive, systematic, and unrelenting human rights abuses that have permeated every aspect of their lives [ . . . ] on the basis of both gender and ethnicity’ (Human Rights Watch 2001: 2). Under such a regime women who had sex outside of marriage or were accused of being prostitutes were executed. Married women who were raped were deemed to have been unfaithful and faced being stoned to death. The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice enforced restrictions against women through public beatings.

It has been argued that ‘The Northern Alliance (NA) may be viewed by the West as a great improvement on the Taliban, but Afghan women do not see it that way. In 1992, after the NA entered Kabul and other cities, it embarked on a spree of murder, rape, plunder and torture, attacking men and women from 7 to seventy. They killed more than 50,000 people in Kabul alone between 1992 and 1996’ (The Guardian, 7 March 2002). Just imagine, 50,000 people; that would more than fill a football stadium. Indeed, many of the executions took place in sporting stadia, under full public scrutiny.

(Jones 2005: 591)

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC 2010) recorded 184 cases of self-immolation by Afghani women in 2007: women desperate to escape sexual and domestic violence. This rose from 106 in 2006 and an estimated 90 per cent died from their serious burns. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) says on its website:

The US ‘War on terrorism’ removed the Taliban regime in October 2001, but it has not removed religious fundamentalism which is the main cause of all our miseries. In fact, by reinstalling the warlords in power in Afghanistan, the US administration is replacing one fundamentalist regime with another.

(RAWA 2009)

The World Health Organisation suggests that ‘in many countries that have suffered violent conflict, the rates of interpersonal violence remain high even after the cessation of hostilities – among other reasons because of the way violence has become more socially acceptable’ (2002: 15). In December 2009, United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) suspended operations due to evidence showing their operations had contributed to human rights violations. Over the first nine months of 2009, the UN recorded over 7,500 cases of sexual violence against women and girls across eastern Congo, probably representing only a fraction of the total. Most

of the women and girls were gang raped, some so violently that they later died. Many were raped repeatedly and some were mutilated and then killed by machete or shot in the vagina (Reuters 2009). The power of the military to control the peace extends to controlling violence in the examples of Kosovo where women have been trafficked into the country for forced prostitution by the military, Somalia where a teenage girl was bought as a birthday present for a Belgian paratrooper and reports of sexual violence committed by Italian peacekeeping forces in Mozambique (Amnesty International 2004: 54–5). Mexican women ‘pay the price’ of rape in exchange for not being deported from the US by border militia (Falcœn 2006: 120), while male prisoners of US detention camps at Abu Ghraib and Guanta´namo suffered numerous forms of sexual violations, including being forced to adopt homosexual group sex poses (Wood 2006).

Sexual violence in war, in so-called peacetime under male oppression, such as under the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and by peacekeepers, demonstrates the widespread nature of such violence. These sexual violations illustrate how rapists in these contexts capitalise on their institutional power over women in similar ways to those by which violence is perpetrated at a local level by men known to women (Canning and Tobin 2010). A more comprehensive understanding of the motivations for sexual violence is critical to the development of effective strategies for prevention and response. Nation states have duties under international law to respect, protect and fulfil women’s rights: in other words, to take effective steps to stop violence against women (Stewart 2004: Jones and Wachala 2006). On a local level, justice systems often fail to deliver justice despite the existence of legislation to protect women. Societal tolerance of violence, patriarchal cultural norms and a lack of political will often combine to nullify the law in practice and instead provide a context for the perpetuation of rape myths.

Challenging myths

Within sociology, theories of sexual violence existed prior to the second wave of feminism; however, few dealt directly with social structures. Instead, theories suggested that individuals learned to behave violently, or that biochemical processes might be the cause of abnormal behaviour. It has been suggested that biological theories of sex differences ‘have come and gone like fashions in hem length’ (Walter 2010: 203). Some theories took a psychological path in considering how jealousy, fear and blame might result in sexual violence, while social learning theories prioritised learning, differential association and intergenerational transmission of violence (Bourke 2007). Yet in many locations, rape remains an everyday event rather than an out-of-the- ordinary violation (Stanko 1990; Coleman
et al
. 2007; Lovett and Kelly 2009; Banyard 2010). Utilising such theories, men have been able to excuse themselves as victims of their own sex drives, or blame their own upbringing or women themselves for stepping outside of accepted gender roles. If existing theories of violence were too limited (and there is little doubt of that) and if the different expressions of sexual violence are connected (and there is little

doubt of that), then what is needed is a coherent approach that goes beyond current provisions. If public and political responses are to change, the change has to come from society as a whole. While society continues to accept the myths surrounding male violence against women, the actuality of violence will not change.

Despite the legislative reforms of the mid 1970s surrounding socio-economic rights (Equal Pay Act 1975; Sex Discrimination Act 1975; Employment Protection Act 1975; Sexual Offences Amendment Act 1976), women were still not equal within the private domain of the home and it was not until 1991 that marital rape became a crime in England and Wales (Jones and Cook 2008). Within mainstream sociological theory the family is a primary social structure and ‘remains symbolic of security, stability and the known’ (Wykes and Welsh 2009: 105). The family functions as a location for sex-role behaviour within society and rape within marriage disturbs the myth of the family. Utilising the concept of the continuum of violence has helped to reframe individual harms into social problems (Kelly 1988; Banyard 2010). Women in many parts of the world have come to redefine the violence they experience as a crime. Whether they receive justice or not is dependent on institutional responses from the state. This is where the police, prosecutors and legislators still have far to go in translating sociological understandings into social transformation. Any action along the continuum of sexual violence that diminishes autonomy, choice, bodily integrity and equality is more than an individual harm: it is a challenge to justice.

If we ask how well these different models work to explain the statistical data on sexual violence the question cannot be answered adequately as most quantitative surveys have not been designed with explicit reference to theoretical models. Although statistical data fail to account for one in 20 rapes (according to the accounts from victim organisations (Jones and Cook 2008: 71)), it can be argued that sexual violence against women appears to be widespread across history and within different cultures. Sexual violence is not necessarily a universal phenomenon, but where sexual violence is embedded in social systems (in peacetime and in warfare) a key sociological endeavour should aim to understand the function of rape myths, to ask who benefits from rape myths and whether men and women have different understandings of rape myths.

Rape myths function to give people a false perception of the reality of sexual violence. They may operate in providing women with a false sense of security by minimising or denying the extent of sexual violence. Such myths are comforting to believe because individual women can reassure themselves that they are safe from rape: ‘I would never walk in the dark, wear those clothes, or drink too much.’ Myths often work by blaming the victim and making excuses for the perpetrator. The generally held assumptions and myths that surround sexual violence include Box
8.1 (however, this is not an exhaustive list).

Box 8.1
Assumptions and myths around sexual violence

Myth – sexual violence is rare

Reality – around 21 per cent of girls and 11 per cent of boys experience some form of child sexual abuse; 23 per cent of women and 3 per cent of men experience sexual assault as an adult; 5 per cent of women and 0.4 per cent of men experience rape (Rape Crisis 2009).

Myth – false allegations of rape are common

Reality – there is no reliable evidence that more false complaints are made in rape cases than in other serious crimes. In fact, 40 per cent of adults who are raped tell no one about it and 31 per cent of children who are abused reach adulthood without having disclosed their abuse (Rape Crisis 2009).

Myth – rape victims should put up a fight and show signs of struggle and a victim will sustain genital injuries

Reality – not all rape survivors sustain physical injuries. However, support groups highlight the harms that go beyond immediate physical injuries: ‘Direct physical health consequences of sexual violence and child sexual abuse include physical injury, sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancy. Long-term consequences of sexual violence and child sexual abuse include post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and panic attacks, depression, social phobia, substance abuse, obesity, eating disorders, self harm and suicide, domestic violence and in some cases, offending behaviour. Child abuse can also impact on educational attainment and school attendance. The overall cost to society of sexual offences in 2003–04 was estimated at £8.5 billion, with each rape costing over £76,000. Much of this cost is made up of lost output and costs to the health service resulting from long-term health issues faced by victims’ (Rape Crisis 2009).

Myth – most rapes are committed by strangers

Reality – most rapists are known to the victim and are likely to be a partner or former partner, friend, colleague, acquaintance or health professional (Walby and Allen 2004; Wykes and Welsh 2009).

Myth – stranger rape is more traumatic than rape by a known person
Reality – sexual assault can be more traumatic if a breach of trust is involved (Stanko 1990; Walby and Allen 2004).

Belief in such myths means that women’s credibility, if they do speak out against sexual violence, is questioned and their accounts frequently discredited. This may be challenged as rape myths received media attention in March 2009 when revised policy guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service directed prosecutors to challenge ideas that women provoke rape by the way they dress, if they get drunk or if they do not scream: ‘Other myths to be challenged are the way a victim acts proves whether she was raped or not, victims cry rape if they regret having sex or want revenge, only gay men are

raped and prostitutes cannot be raped’ (Whitehead 2009).

However, societal attitudes are hard to shift. Within military cultures there is a code of silence that prevents soldiers reporting on each other (Falco´n 2006) and the same is true of men in other contexts (Temkin 2000). There is often a claim that there is too much media and not enough news but in the reporting of sexual violence there is a lack of portrayal of known perpetrator rape. Media reports tend to focus on stranger rapes, which obscures the extent of sexual violence that is perpetrated by men known to the victim (Wykes and Welsh 2009) and encourages the myth that if the perpetrator is someone known (and especially if there are no physical injuries) then there has been no rape. This, together with inefficient reporting systems and lack of proportionate levels of investigation staff across many police areas (Fawcett 2009), means that a failure to report known perpetrator rapes acts to negate their importance and may add to an institutionalised distrust of rape victims (Burt 1980; Grover and Soothill 1996; Temkin 2000; Fitzpatrick 2001). For jurors in court this might mean that ‘If they have little or no personal or sociological knowledge of sexual assault and abuse, this may entail referencing media images where rape myths portraying typical victims and offenders flourish’ (Bufkin and Eschholz 2000: 1338). The sexual offender is therefore seen as deviant, monstrous even, and above all a ‘stranger’, abnormal from ‘ordinary’ men, standing outside of the marital family.