Rape, what dreadful memory's it brings to me.
A 13 year old girl raped by her step dad.
One a littl3e older and again it was dad.
We must not however forget Rape is not always one on one or some one known.
O sung wo you may be aware of the gang rapes, by WASP in the 1960,s.
And the Rape and murders, some still not solved such as Wanda Beach, a whole sea side list of Rapes.
Then the recent ones with extremely long sentences.
Can we justifie the part played by the way a woman presents her self cloths make up and such?
Even the company she is in .
IF we do we are selective, and hypocritical.
No Rape is ever justified.
Ever.
But being self aware and careful is far better than being sorry

Belly that last line said it really well.

R0bert

As in oils ain't oils, rape isn't rape.

There are more than a few types of rape. The dreadful cases in India, & Melbourne are one form, the one that Lexi mentions. [Hi kid, glad you're OK]. Similar is rape of a stranger/pick up, using drugs or alcohol by the rapist. For these the penalties are not high enough.

Date rape among friends or lovers, may be a different thing. When a lady happily accompanies a man, or men to a motel or a home, things can become messy.

She must have known what was planned. When did she say no? Before, during or after the event, or perhaps the next day, after sobering up. Here it can be asked, was it rape?

Then we have the woman scorned, shouting rape & after vengeance.

I can have no idea if women ever ask for "it", but some with dress & action do set themselves up for an unpleasant outcome.

I have no first hand, or even second hand knowledge of the subject, but must admit to wondering when I read of a lady spending the night with a number of footballers screaming rape the next morning.

There are many somewhat different events which are all labeled rape, so it is a bit hard to know what each person is actually talking about.

Isn’t it one of those things where the onus should not be on the victim to prove they were innocent but on the one charged with the crime?

Belly,
In a situation where a person is raped by an associate or intimate "provocation" probably isn't going to be as big an issue if the matter comes before a court, it never is unless there's a suggestion that the woman is not being honest.
However look what happened when it became apparent that Jill Meagher had met with foul play, all of a sudden hundreds of women were taking to facebook giving details of unreported assaults and near misses which had allegedly occurred in the Brunswick area in the last few years.
Clearly street assaults are a bigger issue than most people think, maybe as big a problem as intimate or domestic sexual assaults.
Scanning some of the posted stories one of the reasons given for not reporting the crime was that the victim felt stupid for being caught out or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It doesn't matter what women think about standards of dress or following safety advice, it matters more what dangerous men think and it's clear that there are men out and about who are provoked by the way women look and behave. There's not a lot that can be done about it except for both men and women to be sensible about the issue, if a woman you know won't accept a lift home or at least an escort to the Taxi rank then insist or follow her anyway, if she's too intoxicated to make proper decisions don't let her out of your sight.
The reality is that there are bad parts of town, that men of certain ethnic groups do have a far more predatory and chauvinistic attitude toward women than others and that in a lot of cases even if there are people around they're not going to help a woman in distress.

Gentlemen,

If you can't keep it zipped up -
for whatever reason - it is YOUR
fault! No matter what your defence lawyer says!

If a murderer commits murder is it the dead person's
fault - because they "invited it?"

Or

If a thief steals - is it the owner's fault?

Come on - get real.

If a Nation invades another Nation - is it the
fault of the invaded Nation?