Charges Are Pressed Against a Defendant You have lived through the crime and made it through the initial investigation. They’ve caught the man who harmed you, and he’s been charged with armed burglary, robbery, and rape. Now he’ll be tried. Now you expect justice. You receive a subpoena for a preliminary hearing. No one tells […]
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The Systems Shortcomings from a Victims Point of View The Crime You are a 50-year-old woman living alone. You are asleep one night when suddenly you awaken to find a man standing over you with a knife at your throat. As you start to scream, he beats you and cuts you. He then rapes you.
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HOW THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM HANDLES RAPE VICTIMS Before public consciousness was raised by the anti- rape movement, complainants who courageously reported sex crimes frequently found themselves socially stigmatized. An old-fashioned notion of “Good girls don’t get raped” prevailed, so those who did get raped must have done something to deserve their fate. Even if
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WHO FACES THE GRAVEST DANGERS? DIFFERENTIAL RISKS OF BEING SEXUALLY ASSAULTED AND RAPED Even though the NCVS figures are underesti- mates, the differential risks derived from yearly surveys are worth analyzing. The findings confirm the stereotype that virtually all of the assailants of females were males, as were nearly all of the assai- lants of
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ESTIMATES OF THE INCIDENCE, PREVALENCE, AND SERIOUSNESS OF RAPE Nearly 80,000 girls and women across the country notified the police that they had been forcibly raped, or an attempt was made to do so, during 2013 (about 50 females for every 100,000 inhabitants), according to the UCR (FBI, 2014). Almost 175,000 persons (of whom a
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The Controversy Surrounding Widely Held Rape Myths From a victim-defending standpoint, certain victim-blaming arguments about acquaintance rapes are deemed to be “rape myths.” These widely held and frequently voiced points of view tend to dismiss the seriousness of the violation of the woman’s dignity and personal integrity, or even imply that nothing illegal took place
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Victim-Defending Perspectives “Our daughters, our sisters, our wives, our mothers, our grandmothers have every single right to expect to be free from violence and sexual abuse. No matter what she’s wearing, no matter whether she’s in a bar, in a dormitory, in the back seat of a car, on a street, drunk or sober—no man
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Victim-Blaming Viewpoints Late one night, a 22-year-old mother of two enters a bar filled with men. She has a few drinks and flirts with some of the patrons. Suddenly, she finds herself held down on a pool table. Six young men force themselves on her as onlookers cheer and she screams and curses. The six
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THE CONTROVERSY SURROUNDING QUESTIONS OF SHARED RESPONSIBILITY Despite whatever progress has been made in the way rape cases are viewed in general and how they are handled by the legal system on a daily basis, a number of unresolved controversies still erupt when actual cases make the news and lead to com- plaints and arrests.
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THE CONSEQUENCES OF BEING SEXUALLY ASSAULTED Victimologists have studied the plight of rape vic- tims intensively for several decades. Researchers aim to assess the nature of the suffering and to dis- cover ways to speed the recovery process (see McCahill, Williams, and Fischman, 1979; Girelli et al., 1986; Burt and Katz, 1987; Allison and
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