DR CIARA KELLY
IRELAND’S RAPE SCANDAL
I‘Rape victims think long and hard before reporting it’
T was announced last week that in the three weeks since college has started, three first-year students in Cork have presented themselves to the Cork rape crisis centre — having been raped. One a week. None of them have reported the incidents to the Garda. Also last week, the Galway rape crisis centre announced that it had seen 50 women raped or sexually assaulted in the past six months. Two a week.
I invite you to consider how we would be discussing this if these crimes were not rapes, but murders. If there had been three murders of first-year female students in the first three weeks of college in Cork, or 50 women murdered in Galway in the past six months, I suspect there would be an enormous public outcry.
I invite you also to consider how we would view our justice system if most murders went unreported — because the victims’ families either didn’t believe they would get any kind of justice if they went to the Garda, or they believed that the process of going to the Garda was so onerous, so difficult, that they were better off just leaving it. Just crawling away to deal with their suffering and loss in a private way.
Rape and murder are the two most serious crimes on our statute books but we view them very differently. Murder we take seriously. Rape we barely acknowledge as a problem.
I can think of no other serious crime where the victim thinks long and hard before even reporting it. If someone beat you up or stole your car or kidnapped your child — would you ever stop and think, “hmm maybe I’d be better off not mentioning this to anyone?”
Rape is the only crime I can think of where the victim’s personal history is pulled asunder as part of defending the alleged perpetrator. You would never hear it said in court: “Yes, Mr Figgis, I know you say that he punched you and robbed your wallet — but isn’t it the case that you lent people money in the past? Aren’t you someone who has previously given money away to various ‘good’ causes? How do we know you didn’t consent to giving this poor fellow of previously good character all your money on the night in question — we only have your word for it and you a known money-giver!”
Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan has urged victims to come forward and report rape. But we know that our prosecution and conviction rate is one of the lowest in the western world. So there is good reason why rape victims are fearful and reluctant.
We also know what the single biggest risk factor for you being raped by someone — and it isn’t you being drunk, wearing a short skirt, or being down a dark alley — is the belief that they will get away with it. Yes. The single biggest risk factor for being raped is nothing to do with the victim at all. It, like most other crimes, is the rapist believing they won’t get caught and there will be no price to pay for their crime.
And when you view that in the context of how very low our conviction rates are, it is likely that we have a correspondingly very high level of sexual assault here.
I do believe there is a need to warn young women about the dangers that exist out there — while being clear that if something befalls them it is because of the rapist, not because of them. But more importantly, we need to talk to those committing the crime. Yes, we need to talk about consent — but more than that, we need to talk about consequences. The life-altering consequences for the victim they are harming by their actions. And the life-altering consequences for them should they be prosecuted.
And then we need to change the justice system here so that prosecution becomes an actual reality.
I think the low conviction rates, the victim-shaming and the ‘notall-men’ rhetoric are all part of our historical indifference to, and our minimising of the plight of, vulnerable women here in Ireland. Since the foundation of the State, we have been happy to turn a blind eye to injustice against women. We have started to change that culture. But making our courts a safe space for victims to come forward is the next step. And it needs to happen now.