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The Forum > Article Comments > Newsworthy rape > Comments

Newsworthy rape : Comments

By Helen Pringle, published 8/2/2007

As Geoff Clark recently noted, the Australian media shows little interest in 'typical' cases of sexual assault.

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aqvarivs, I'm not sure if you are talking about the proportion of false claims or the impact on those so accussed. Both are important issues, I've chosen to start another thread to discuss the impacts of false accusations on the victim.

Is Mise, I suspect that the police (or other organisations) have some personal safety advice available. For the sake of discussion I'll toss in my 2c worth.

Treat it like any other personal safety issue, try and avoid the need to fight your way out of a bad situation. All of us should be free from threat's to our personal safety but that's not the way the world is unfortunately.

As an adult male who is over 6ft I still need to make choices about my personal safety.

I've been directly threatened in public places a couple of times where I was seriously scared, once by someone with a knife and another time by a guy with a racial chip on his shoulder and some friends nearby.

If I'm attacked the attacker may be bigger still, a better fighter (not real hard), armed with a weapon or part of a group. There are places and times where someone walking alone is at greater than normal risk of being attacked - I try and avoid those places and times.

There are choices in clothing and accessories which might place me at risk in some places (who wants to get killed because somebody liked your shoes). I don't flash around things with theft appeal if I suspect that doing so places me at greater risk.

I don't choose to hang out with people because of their tough image, if they disrespect the basic rights of others then mine are at risk as well.

I don't torment others for recreation or otherwise unnecessarily provoke them.

Most of those can fairly easily be translated into strategies to minimise the risk of rape. No guarantee's but then who of us has any real guarantee's about personal safety.

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Monday, 12 February 2007 10:37:43 PM
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Aqvarius - you were right first time: the second para. of the article cited the number of reported sexual assaults. Not rapes.
Posted by Romany, Tuesday, 13 February 2007 12:22:17 AM
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R0bert,
My apologies for my error in post part2 for the numbers I quoted. They should have been "-more than 47,300 incidents of sexual assault had been perpetrated on about 30,000 women from across Australia in the previous 12 months."
My point is that no matter the numbers. How high or how low. If the actual numbers and methodology used to collect those numbers and by whom they are collected/supplied is/are suspect. Then using them to highlight the severity of the situation and promote what I can only define as hyper reporting of accusations can not be consistent with any call for justice and the rule of law. Especially if that "justice" or "use of law" is decidedly one sided and meant to be punitive before the evidence has been before the courts for a decision. I have no interest in seeing the social/sexual divide promoted by such feminist/women become a defensible right for women. I have enough trouble at work trying to heal and bring families back together as it is now. Crowbaring that divide further does not seem productive to male-female socialization.

Romany,
Thanks for the heads up. In my defence I would like to say that I am no longer sure of the difference in representation of rape vs. sexual assault. The courts seem to have migrated any difference in the original understanding to a now all inclusive. And the media uses one over the other to promote the most "shock and awe" not to identify circumstance.
Posted by aqvarivs, Tuesday, 13 February 2007 12:10:34 PM
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Aqvarius - If you type "sexual assault of males" into google 85 pages will come up. I specifically ask you to qualify it in this way so as not to leave a door open for bias. You'll find the definitions of rape and sexual assault spelt out very clearly on hundreds of different sites.

You'll also find reference to literally thousands of books, papers and linked sites which are not feminist sites but which deal with this topic.

On the first page alone you will find hundreds of references to where statistics concerning rape and sexual assault are gathered: gynies, G.P.'s, Departments of Justice, FBI, anonymous surveys, men's groups,Criminology Departments, psychiatrists, psychologists, police departments, Universities, crisis centres, help lines, Scotland Yard, Lawyers, child protection units, et.al. One of very useful and pertinent site is the Australian aic.gov.au site.

{p.s. What does the phrase "heads up" mean? I'm not taking the p*ss, - it really is a term I haven't heard before and so I'm curious.}
Posted by Romany, Tuesday, 13 February 2007 9:45:45 PM
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The term 'rape' went out of legal use in Australia some time ago, replaced by such terms as 'sexual assault' and 'aggravated sexual assault'.

Therefore you will not find statistics on 'rape' anymore. The old legal definition of 'rape' was genital to genital contact, penetration was not required, and this obviously left many forms of severe sexual assault not defined as 'rape'.

Another term you won't see much any more is buggery: yes, it was a legal term, however offences of buggery committed before the laws were changed are still changed as such.

In terms of newsworthiness, I am of that age that I can remember every act of armed robbery being reported on the TV, radio and in the newspaper. Nowadays these offenses are so common that they only rate a mention is someone is killed.

Unfortunately sexual assault is just so common in this society that it is no longer newsworthy, it comes under the category of 'dog bites man' rather than 'man bites dog'.

Which is why the Clarke case is important. It has brought into the public view a crime that most people don't bother thinking about these days. It is, due to its cause celebre a 'man bites dog' story, that is, the victim, after decades, fights back. We need cases such as this, and the case of the homosexual older man being accused of killing his young victim, currently being played out in the NSW Coroners Court, (let alone the Brimble matter) to prick our collective consciences.
Posted by Hamlet, Tuesday, 13 February 2007 9:56:20 PM
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Romany,

Thanks for the heads up equates to, thanks for showing me what I may have missed. In some hard ball sports the cry "HEADS UP" is a warning that the ball is off it's intended course. Like in golf, when they cry "FORE".

I would like to second Hamlet's post. In as much as by my personal and professional experience I have to say that there is no comprehensive data collection for honest rape/sexual assault stats. While one can find much on the internet and access Govt. sites, and Feminist sites, and Masculinist web sites, and even some private or legal web sites; there is much variation in the numbers and a very large concern about how those numbers were collected and or skewed to advance a particular agenda.
When you work as I do, having to battle social/sexual agendas and political maneuvering, becomes frustrating and in the end only leads to stifle or throw up road blocks to any good work in repairing individual suffering, and the suffering that complete families must endure. The great loss is the redirection of monies and energy that would benefit those in need. Taking sides and playing the blame game is never going to contribute to resolving sexual assault issues. It exacerbates them, but that is an other truth best left to a further discussion and thread.
Posted by aqvarivs, Wednesday, 14 February 2007 1:59:26 PM
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