Really… what?

I read this article from the Guardian earlier and cannot express in words just how angry it made me.

For the link-phobic, long story short is that a woman contacted the police to say she had just been raped 6 times by her husband. He was charged with rape. A couple of months later, she told the police she wanted to drop the case, even though she maintained that she was raped. She then said the allegations were untrue. She later said that she had actually been raped.

Her explanation for the altering of her story and her wish for her husband to be prosecuted are that she was being emotionally blackmailed by the (now unsurprisingly estranged) husband. The person she alleges raped her. His sister also added to the emotional blackmail.

After she had said that the allegations were false, she was told that she would be charged with making a false rape allegation. However, once she said that she had actually been raped, those charges were not dropped. Instead, the charge was altered to one of “making a false retraction”. And she’s been found guilty and imprisoned for this.

This sends out such an awkward message to victims of rape. Rape is obviously an emotionally sensitive subject. It’s estimated that 47,000 women are raped in the UK every year. Of these, 75%-95% are not reported. Obviously, because of this, it’s hard to get exact figures but it’s still way, way too many. In 2004, only 5.3% of reported rapes resulted in a conviction.

The reason for such a low reporting/conviction rate? People are scared to come forward. Scared to put out there what happened to them. Scared that the rapist’s legal team will try to say it was all the victim’s fault. Scared what people will think of them. Scared of recriminations. * It takes a lot of emotional and mental strength to go through with reporting a rape, reliving what happened, leaving yourself open for ridicule and cross-accusations. Now, there’s yet another thing for rape victims to beware of – that if they decide that they can’t take the trauma of going through with a prosecution, they may be charged and found guilty of making a false retraction. What message does that send out to rape victims?

(* it’s important to note that with this, I am not in any way including false accusations)