This week it was revealed that police are failing to record 20 per cent of all crimes - including a significant number of rapes and serious sexual offences (one case highlighted involved the rape of a 13-year-old autistic boy, which was written off as ‘sexual experimentation’). Depressing, right?
But for Emily, 27, the report by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary Tom Winsor, isn't just grim - it's a stark reminder of why she's never told anyone about her rape.
She was just 18 when she was attacked on a family holiday nine years ago, and she’s never reported it to the police, or told anyone what happened. ‘There’s the fear of not being believed – first by friends, secondly by the police, the worry of unpleasant physical examinations and questioning, the unarguable fact that conviction rates are depressingly low, and – in many cases – the nagging doubt that somehow you are to blame,’ she tells The Debrief.
Emily was a teenager in her first serious relationship when she befriended the barman at the resort she was staying in with her parents. ‘I was barely an adult – a month or so after my 18th birthday - and I was still going out with my first boyfriend. The barman told me I was beautiful, and one night, when I stayed late at the bar for a cocktail, we shared a kiss in the moonlight. It was romantic and just a bit naughty – I was in a relationship with a boyfriend of over two years, and the barman was in his mid-twenties. Plus he was strictly forbidden to enter into relations with tourists,' she remembers.
‘That’s what he muttered as he let himself into my room to persuade me to have sex with him. I refused – heart hammering – I’d only ever slept with one boy before, and only after a six-month wait. I blamed the lack of a condom, and he left. But the next night he was back – triumphant – he’d got hold of one. Now there was no excuse. I felt rushed, pressured – after all, this was what I had agreed to, wasn’t it? Uncertain, I lay down and he undressed me – while I, shocked, quietly asked him to stop. It was over quickly.’
Emily was faced with a stark choice - tell everyone what had happened, or repress it completely. She chose the latter. ‘It was too awful to contemplate the fact that I had been pressured and raped while on holiday with my family. It was too cruel to imagine their guilt; the end of the trip; the involvement of police. It was too unfair that my second encounter with a man should be non-consensual. I worried that the police might try to convince me I had consented, and I didn’t feel strong enough to argue. The thought of putting my family through a court case where my morals and behaviour would be ripped apart was unbearable.’
Instead, Emily kept up the façade that she was enjoying a wonderful holiday romance - ‘I did such a good job that I convinced everyone, including myself. How would other people believe I was raped, if I wasn’t sure myself?’
It’s exactly this grey area that makes it so hard for some women (and men) to report their sexual assaults. Rape doesn’t just mean a stranger with a knife attacking you in a dark alleyway, yet we still seem to make a distinction between these ‘good’ rapes and ‘bad’ rapes, where women are attacked by a partner, or someone they had previously slept with, or when they are too drunk to consent.
Figures released by the Office of National Statistics last year revealed that although 90 per cent of rape victims said they knew the identity of their attacker, just 15 per cent went to the police, telling researchers it was ‘too embarrassing,’ ‘too trivial’ or a ‘private/family matter.’ And in 2012, a police officer from the Metropolitan Police’s specialist sex crimes unit admitted to failing to investigate the alleged rapes and sexual assaults for 12 women and faking police reports, failing to pass on forensic evidence and not interviewing suspects.
In court the onus is still on the victim to prove that they’re telling the truth, and just one rape of 30 in the UK will result in conviction. And then, if these latest figures are anything to go by, your case might not even get that far in the first place - so why report it at all? 'You feel like you're just another bit of paperwork floating around a police office, and if the case doesn’t look strong, there’s a danger you’ll be forgotten,' Emily recalls. 'When you've been raped, what you need is for someone to agree that it wasn’t your fault, and it was a crime. That’s what the police need to be doing, rather than brushing difficult cases under the carpet. So what if it means longer hours at work for them, or more paperwork - if it helps a frightened person feel like they’ve done the right thing?'
Equally, she's aware that her case was less than straightforward. She knew the man who raped her, kissed him, and let him come back to her room. Who would believe it was rape? ‘In a weak moment - and I'm aware of how sick this is - I actually felt fleetingly envious of women who were raped by complete strangers in alleys, for at least possessing the knowledge that it wasn't their fault. Of course, I now realise that self-blame is a natural part of making sense of rape - I'm sure if I had been attacked in an alley I'd have been left questioning the clothes I'd worn, or the route I took. This is part of the power of the rapist - they not only possess your body and emotions, but even your power to think rationally.'
Almost a decade on, Emily still hasn’t reported her rape - or told her family what happened. And Winsor’s report is yet another reason for her not to speak up. ‘I’m still not ready. I worry about the guilt my family would feel, coupled with the sad fact that it’s simply too late and too unlikely to achieve any justice. Rape convictions often hinge on going straight to the police, which may be in part why so few end with a prison sentence – it’s almost impossible to get your head around what you’ve experienced at that point, when your first reaction is to curl into a ball and hide.
‘For me it's an issue of protection - protecting my family from hurt, and myself from having to re-live it. But rape is inherently about power and I am left wondering if, by staying silent, I am letting him take control once again.’
Picture: Li Hui
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.