There’s no doubt that David Cameron’s announcement on 
tightening up rape laws is long overdue. It went down a storm when he outlined them at yesterday’s Conservative Women’s Association annual conference.
As things stand, I can understand why some women think twice before reporting they have been raped. It’s a legal minefield for courts of law to debate over what constitutes consent, but the court trial can be worst than the physical violence inflicted on them. I’ve written about it before on this post.
I particularly welcome the fact that Conservatives want to educate young people about this, as well as providing improved financial security to rape centres, several of which have closed in recent years.
The greatest challenge will be the cultural change that David Cameron strives to achieve.
We need widespread cultural change, and addressing this moral failure represents a real challenge to British society: to families, schools, local communities and businesses. We have to be honest: the past decade or so has seen the growing sexualisation of our society, where sex is aimed at an ever younger audience and it’s cool to treat women like sex objects. As I’ve said before, we need those that work in the media and music industry to exercise their responsibility in how they present female role models.
It comes back to that word “respect”.
Rape victims should not have to suffer even further humiliation and degradation in their search for justice, like the tragic case which David Cameron outlined about a 16-year-old girl who committed suicide after her rape ordeal.
You can read his inspirational speech here.
Yes, I agree, education must be an important ingredient in this.
Just followed your link to Nadines’s blog – it’s a hoot – I’ve bookmarked it!
The amount of people actually prosecuted for sex crimes is so slow it is despicable. I am glad to see the Tories make moves on this. Hopefully it is not tokenistic.
I agree, too – education is so important here. I hope Cameron succeeds in getting something done about the way women are treated following a rape. It is, of course, one of the storylines in The Archers at the moment.
Will Cameron consider different ‘degrees’ of rape just as there is a distinction between manslaughter and murder?
Will he consider a suspect’s right to anonymity given the gravity of the offence and a permanent smear on their character if found not guilty?
Will he call for greater sentencing for women found guilty of crying rape!?!
Merely calling for more convictions is disturbing. It’s not a simple numbers game!
I didn’t spot anything in the speech indicating how prosecution and conviction rates would be improved if Dave was in charge. But what I did spot was a stream of misleading statistics, non sequitors and I blogged about it here. The situation is bad enough without exaggeration and spin. This is not or at least should not be in any sense a party political matter but I’m sorry to say that over and over again opposition politicians are manipulating statistics to score cheap points.
Education and changing of behaviours is vitally important. I would have had more respect for Cameron if he had acknowledged the improvements in our police performance over the last 20 years, acknowledged the steady improvement in conviction rates, albeit still at a modest level, and acknowledged the legal difficulties in any unwitnessed he said she said situation.
The incident I mention which took place somewhere in the UK – reported, investigated over many months, DNA samples collected, but apparently not leading to even a single formal interview of the accused – involved elected representatives and party activists.
One as the accused, one as the alleged victim, one as the accused’s friend, and others who witnessed the very unfortunate way people handled themselves in the aftermath.
I hope that investigation is re-opened. I don’t know why it stalled at the point it did.
Unity did a more considered and thorough job of tackling the poor use of statistics in Cameron’s speech than Channel 4 Factcheck did. Linked from my post above. As Mr Cameron did mention the dangers of statistics I don’t think that his troubles with them can be easily explained or excused.