Lil devils x said:
Lauren is terribly ignorant and sadly too arrogant to actually understand how this works in reality in western society. It is naive and gullible to think that most rapist are actually prosecuted. Most rapes are never reported and most rapes that are reported are never prosecuted. I was raped, my sister was raped, my best friend was raped, my grandmother was raped all by different men, only 1 of those rapist were prosecuted, and had raped many children before that ever happened. Most people do not understand that it is isn't some " scary rapist bad guy" who does these things, it is friends, brothers, uncles, fathers, teachers, coworkers and other people we are surrounded by every day. Rapist are a part of our lives, families and social circles. It is much more complicated than "report rapist rapist goes to jail". It is far more worse in this society to report a rape than it is to just try to forget about it and move on. You have to be willing to let them ruin your life and become " rape girl" in order to prosecute them and for most, allowing a rapist to not only take their body, but ruin their life as well is simply not worth being the " good guy" that stops the rapist. No one wants to " be the hero" because it isn't as peachy keen as people tend to think it is. Her trivialization of how difficult it is for people to report rapes and how hard it is to get those rapes prosecuted only goes to show her lack of actual understanding on the subject. Most want to forget about it happening and try to move on with their lives, not be forced to relive it over and over again and be publicly ridiculed and forced to deal with threats from the rapists family and friends. The reality of our current society is chances are if you are actually raped, you will be branded as either " someone who asked for it to happen to you" or a liar regardless of the actual facts. The first thing that happens when a girl tells she is raped, is they ask or think: " what did you do to cause this?" "Was it an actual rape or did you want it?" " maybe the guy just thought you wanted it due to how you were behaving." the fact that these and equally wrong ideas are what comes to mind immediately when someone hears of a rape is part of why, yes the West is still a rape culture. When someone says " my wallet was stolen" , the first things that come to mind are " did you call your credit card company?" where were you at?" ( so I can be careful when I am there), and "did you call the police?", not immediately start to defend the thief with your questions and thoughts. The biggest problem with even trying to tell anyone you were raped is " will they even believe me if I tell them?"
The man who raped me as a child was wealthy, athletic, attractive and well liked by the community. I was just a kid who was scared to even talk about it and just wanted it to go away. He raped more girls after me, he was not prosecuted for the first 2 that reported, and it was not until another girl reported much later was he finally charged because they not only had witnesses, they were able to find his films. IF the rapist is not stupid enough to have films and witnesses, chances are no one even believes it happens even when girls do turn these guys in.
Most rapist do not ever get prosecuted, and those who do it is after they have raped many times. Even at my school, the rapist teacher had raped 142-144 boys before he was prosecuted. Much of the time people tend to defend the rapist rather than the victims allowing it to continue.
Wow, what a pure one sided view. More importantly, what a setup to make it unsolvable.
Reality is, rape is one hell of a mess of a problem. It's one of the hardest crimes to prosecute, if not THE hardest mostly because in most cases it comes to word against word. And, idealisticly, first priority of justice system is to protect inocent not to punish guilty.
Rape is attack on something humans, in vast majority of cases, hold dearer than health and limb and quite often even life. And that's both due our internal bilogical drive and social conditioning. Coming out with it is, for most, sacrifice by giving up on part of yourself, making it no longer yours but propery of public and held in THEIR controll.
As you mentioned most rapes are conducted by people victim either trusts, loves, adores or idealizes (or any mixture of the mentioned). That makes it even worse emotionaly since it creates deep and strong emotional conflict in person.
When one lays such a heavy accusation on a person that doesn't have established pattern of problematic behavior, most people don't tend to look at that person as guilty first EXCEPT in cases of rape. But even that, given that even accuations of rape often significantly change lives of accused, and rape conviction is social death sentence, people are rightfully hesitant to take it at the face value.
Most criminals are not caught because of their first criminal act, with murder being closest to that ideal if I remember correctly. Rape is no different. Sad but true.
And, let's not forget that victims of rape (at least Female ones) in western world get legal, health, psyclogogical, moral and any other imaginable support by society. Both through goverment and through direct donations and actions of members of society.
Vast majority of humans doesn't live in "rape culture". If we did, there wouldn't be so much effort to both prevent rapes and to help victims (well, at least female).
