On Hogan-Howe and presumption of belief

I don’t pretend to know a lot about law, about the reporting system, or about the inner workings of the police force. But when I read in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago that the policy of presumption of belief was being challenged, I couldn’t help but be angry.

In the training I’ve had and the talks I’ve attended since becoming part of It Happens Here, one of the most important things people stress is that you should always believe victims of sexual abuse. Because so much abuse gets swept under the carpet, and because ours is a culture of victim blaming and willful ignorance, it is so important to show that you believe what somebody tells you. That act of showing belief could be the catalyst to a victim building the confidence to report their assault, if they wish to, or to seek help. And even if the ‘presumption of belief’ policy is not as strong or as coherent a policy as we might hope it to be (see this link for a better explanation), it is a positive start to a journey towards a more respectful treatment of victims of sexual violence in such professions.

So when I read about Metropolitan police officer Sir Hogan-Howe’s claim in the newspaper, I was initially shocked. The idea went against everything I had been taught since I first started learning about sexual violence. Then I started thinking about the possible thought processes behind the suggestion. Wondering whether this had stemmed from false rape and abuse accusations, I started looking into figures.

I already knew that a very, very small proportion of rape accusations are false. A 2005 Home Office survey claimed that the percentage is 3%, and the numbers don’t appear to have changed much since then. Some sources believe that the number is somewhere closer to 2%. I considered the logic of basing a policy on such a small number, in comparison to the number of potential claimants who might be deterred by a change in policy. To me, the logic just wasn’t there.

Looking further into Home Office reports, I decided to see how many reports went on police record, looking in particular at rape claims. A 2013 Home Office study estimated a three-year average somewhere between 60,000 and 95,000 of people who experience rape every year. Somewhere between 16% and 26% of those estimated rapes end up on police records, or 15,670. Such a low number made me wonder why so few of these crimes were being reported. The report cited that a popular reason was that many victims ‘didn’t think the police could do much to help’. That got me thinking. If you’re already unsure of what the police could do to help you in such a situation, would it make things worse to know that the presumption of belief they once held as policy was to be lifted? Is this more or less likely to make potential victims report the crimes? Is this the kind of culture we want to create within the reporting system, in reaction to the very small number of cases that turn out to be false?

Of course, I understand that there are a minority of people who falsely accuse, and that the result of that causes a great deal of pain for many people involved in the process. The fact that this minority receives so much attention from the media, however, means that there is a risk of skewing our policies in their favour. I also fully understand that people want more than just to be believed. Full investigations conducted rigorously and with care are incredibly important not just in a legal sense, but in showing a complainant that their accusation is being taken seriously. However, the presumption of belief is a critical starting point for a culture that legitimises victims rather than silencing them.

I hope that by using statistics, I don’t come across like I’m reducing the topic to numbers. I have experienced the process of deciding whether or not to report rape, and that’s one of the reasons I was so interested in the topic. It just didn’t make sense to me to risk discouraging people from reporting sexual violence by removing the presumption of truth policy for the less than 5% minority of people who falsely accuse. It would be really interesting, for the sake of my own personal curiosity more than anything else, to hear other people’s thoughts on this: it’s a sensitive topic with scope for a myriad of opinions, and I did hope that Hogan-Howe’s suggestion would raise more voices, initiate more discussion, than it has. For me, I can only hope that the policy is not reversed, because for the short time it has been in place it has given me a glimmer of hope that the police force and the judicial system were finally starting to align with what I believe are really important principles in the discussion of sexual violence.

Originally posted on It Happens Here Durham's blog.

Why rape jokes are never acceptable

Last year, I wrote a blog post about rape jokes. It was a response to the most recent of many jokes my housemate had made over the year. At the time, it received some positive comments, and it seemed like people were relieved to see something written to try and address the issue. Unfortunately, though, the post hadn’t reached the person I wanted it to in the way I’d hoped. My friend spoke to my housemate the day after the post, and he was confounded by it. He didn’t see what the issue was, and anyway, he said, “it’s not like anyone in the house has been raped.”

There was the issue. He’d made an assumption about the environment in which he was making the jokes, based on no proof except the fact that no one had disclosed an experience of sexual violence to him personally.

It was clear that the arguments in my blog post hadn’t hit home. I linked to an article that described the effects of rape jokes on potential rapists, which has gained more and more relevance in the wake of studies like the one in Violence and Gender in 2014. With a significant proportion of people admitting that they would force someone into having sex, as long as the term ‘rape’ wasn’t used, it’s clear that jokes trivialising sexual violence could have an effect on more people than we might initially expect. After all, contrary to popular belief, rapists are not distinguished from ‘ordinary’ men by long black coats and an evil-looking disposition. Indeed, they are ordinary men. They are fathers, sons, brothers, friends and housemates. They are potentially people in the vicinity when you tell a rape joke. And by telling that joke – which trivialises and mocks the very act of violating a person’s basic human right – you are telling people that rape isn’t a serious subject, and that people can get entertainment out of it. In this sense, rape jokes – and jokes about all aspects of sexual violence – validate the thoughts of potential rapists, and can even empower them.

This argument doesn’t even begin to take into account the effect of these jokes on survivors of sexual violence. With a 2010 NUS report showing that 1 in 7 female students are subject to serious sexual or physical assault, and a 2015 report by The Telegraph asserting that 1 in 3 have endured sexual assault or unwanted advances, it seems obvious that jokes about sexual violence are deeply inappropriate on campus. One cannot make the assumption that no one in the vicinity has suffered sexual assault in some form with these statistics in mind. To that end, it seems obvious that making a joke that can have a profound effect on someone who hears it is morally wrong.

At this point, I can hear the cries of protest. “Jokes are meant to offend,” they’ll say. “You’re just being too PC! If jokes weren’t offensive, they wouldn’t be funny!”

I can think of lots of jokes that are funny without being offensive. The one about coral being stressed about current affairs is one of them. But without getting into the philosophy of joke-making, there’s an obvious reason not to make rape jokes. They are not just offensive, but they are potentially triggering for survivors who hear them. They demean those who have suffered sexual violence and trivialise their experience. They reinforce the rape culture that dominates university campuses around the UK. They are rooted in an aggressive and violent culture that normalises rape, diminishing the responsibility of rapists and the need to tackle such behaviour. It has been shown in studies that ‘dark humour’ is used by law enforcement officers to desensitise themselves to the scenes they witness as part of their job. This desensitising effect is the same in the case of rape jokes, but the agenda is very different. Rape jokes are not used to help people cope with emotionally taxing work, after all. Rather, they help to increase insensitivity to survivors and their families, thus contributing to the endless cycle of victim-blaming that pervades on and off campus.

If you’re not convinced by the arguments above, at least consider what making rape jokes means for you. Offensive jokes are often seen to represent the attitudes of the person making them towards the subject, even if that isn’t true. So while you don’t condone rape, what other people are hearing is that you do, and not just that: you find it funny. So if not for the survivors who might be triggered by them, or the potential perpetrators who may be empowered, don’t tell rape jokes for the sake of your own reputation. Think about what you’re promoting.

If you’re interested in reading further, more coherent articles about the effect of rape jokes, the links below are interesting:

A Scientific Case Against Rape Jokes

The Enjoyment of Sexist Humor, Rape Attitudes, and Relationship Aggression in College Students

A Visit to the Rape Room: Who Sees Humour in Sexual Assault?

Originally posted on It Happens Here Durham.