The law favors rapists. I realized a long time ago, just by women that I have known, that the statistics on rape are accurate and also low. I also realized that most men don’t understand that because they are not men who a woman would open up to about that. As for men who are worried about catching false charges, I would say that statistically you are more likely to get raped by another man than catch a fake charge. And because everything favors the rapist, he will probably get away with it.
My Step father started grooming my sister when she was ten. Her chore thay day was to clean the kitchen. He told her to use a bucket and rag, not the mop, so he could “watch her ass” while she cleaned. His ten year old, biological, daughter.
He told her if she ever told anyone, it would break up the whole family, and everyone would think she was a whore.
My sister lived a double life from that early age of ten, until she was 15.
He would tell her, "you have to [Do this sexual thing] or Im not buying groceries for the family and it will be your fault. He did this for christmas presents, after school activities, any time he could withold finacially from “the family” he would make her do stuff.
No one knew.
meanwhile, he was serverely beating the shit outta all of us if any of us got out of line. My brother and I werent allowed to hang out with friends, ever. We went to school, and we went home. If we werent working on the farm, we were trapped on our rooms. In the last few years, I wouldnt even be allowed out of my room for weeks at a time, not even to use the bathroom. He’d take the house phone with him whenever he left, so we could never call anyone. My brother stood up to him once, and he chocked out my 12 year old brother against a wall, his feet dangled. I saw it happen.
We found out after, he was often choking out my sister in her sleep, and shed wake to him trying to kill her. Shed wake, and hed stop, and just mutter, “Sorry” and walk away. When my dear sister found out I was cutting… she did the right thing, and told the adult. He came to me and said, “next time you feel like doing this, make sure you do it the right way”.
I had asked my sister a few times, if “anything was going on”. She always said no. Until one fall day, she broke the fuck down and told me everything. We cried together for hours. I was 16, she 15. I told the school the next day. Thankfully he admitted everything. When the state came in, im sure they found mt poop bucket. They saw his room was a bed, in a pile of beer cans. They saw the falling down house. We were never allowed back there to get our things. “The family” let my dog run away and didnt tell me for a month. We did lose everything, our pets and possesions alike.
In court he said he thought she was his wife, and also mentioned he had been raped as a youth by an uncle.
When sentencing came, the max was 25 years. They asked us kids for our imput. His sister, my aunt, took us in after he was arrested. She was the one to relay our answer. We all said the maximum. She told the contact, we all said the minimum. He was sentenced for ten years. He served 8. For a very long time, over a decade after, I regretting not, well killing him that morning before school. This aunt also made fun of me for telling on my step father. The woman despised me for “what I did”.
This man absolutely ruined three lives. He didnt murder us no, but he murdered our hearts, our courage, our self worth. None of us are right. My brother and sister are still very fucked up people and its been about 25 years since thay day.
8 years, let out for “good behavior”. Owns a house again now, none of his kids own anything. We all have CPTSD. I will be im therapy for the rest of my life probably. My siblings and I dont talk anymore. the other two refuse therapy, and their maladaptive coping is… apparent. My sister cant even live in this state. She fears so much, she will run into him. My brother, still talks to that side of the family, and has stalked women he was interested in, like, actully stalked. Its so messed up.
This man took my sister from me, and only got 8 years. Least he got that- I know too many who got off scott free. I have multiple non reported rapes myself. Mostly from the same person. My grandfather raped all his three daughters, died without it ever coming to light.
I would avoid saying that the law favours rapists in general (though it might where you live) because it makes it sound as if it’s a problem that can be fixed if we bring in the right legislation. The problem as I see it is that the people who administer the law favour rapists, and that’s a much more intractable problem.
Fair, although “the law” usually encompasses the written law, the cops, prosecutors, judges, etc. Fixing the problem will involve adjusting laws, fixing the cop problem, and adjusting the public zeitgeist. Legislation will help. Making an assumption for protection of the victim will go a long ways and doesn’t take away from innocent until proven guilty.
The law favours doing nothing, by intent, by design, and by necessity. It is better to let the guilty go free than to imprison the innocent. But there is also systemic bias that warps this important principle into something that hobbles any hope of justice.
I think that we are wrong to look to the state and the law. They occupy a place in our psychology as the arbiter of order that they do not deserve and which serves to control us. When we are raped, the solution to our personal problems isn’t to make sure someone else gets punished. Our needs are for repair, safety, and healing, not some asshole’s rehabilitation, which is not our fucking responsibility. The courts and prisons cannot give us what we need in that situation. There is a need for something that doesn’t exist, that doesn’t yet even have a name.
When I was about 5 my then 3 year old sister was sexually abused by our adoptive mother’s husband at the time. I don’t really have a good memory, but I understand that I was drugged and maybe also messed with too. They took my sis to the hospital and confirmed the abuse took place.
The dude got a slap on the wrist, honestly. A few years jail (I think?) and a divorce - leaving behind a single mother on a teacher’s salary with 2 kids that he doesn’t even owe child support for. They both made the decision to adopt and he just got right out of any responsibility for that.
For us as kids, it meant lots of talking to professionals who barely got anything out of us. I mean, we were afraid. All we had was each other in the whole world and it seemed like we couldn’t even trust our own parents, so what do we do? Instead we grew up with little faith in family and no faith in a “God” who turned their back or a country who didn’t give a damn.
You did nothing wrong. You’re not alone. You don’t have to suffer in silence. Tell your story. You never know who might really need to hear it.
As a man, I can confirm this. It took me being raped (and a few years of bottling it up to even consciously come to the realisation that I was indeed raped) to do away with nearly two decades of indirect conditioning by “lad culture” and mass media et al to see why it goes unreported most of the time.
(mind you I was raped by a woman, AND the same woman falsely accused me of rape, harassment, and a number of other awful things)
Yup, my watershed moment was when I found out my rapist had died. He was an older man who I had always brushed off as a bad teenage experiment. I didn’t even realize how much fear and anger I had for him, until I heard through the grapevine that he had died. Suddenly, I was staring at my Facebook feed, seeing some mutuals posting about his death, and had tears welling up in my eyes. Not tears of sadness, but of shame and anger.
It was simultaneously emancipating and also enraging. I suddenly knew he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else, and he wouldn’t be able to hurt me again… Until then, I hadn’t even realized I was worried about that. I had been carrying an immense amount of shame as a result of the “he has probably done this to others, and will probably do it again in the future” train of thought. Everyone says victims should report so their rapists can’t hurt others, right? And since he was an openly gay older guy, I statistically would have had a higher chance of being believed, right? But reporting would require telling others about what had happened, and I couldn’t even imagine doing that.
But I also knew that since he was dead, he would never see justice for what he did to me (and likely others before and after). He was very wealthy, very well-connected in my local area, and he died comfortably in his own bed. None of which he deserved. Knowing he would be feted his wake was absolutely enraging, because he only deserved a cardboard box underneath the local prison.
It was also what eventually led to me realizing why I had historically been so homophobic. I was born and raised in a conservative area, so homophobia is just par for the course here. But I eventually realized that I had been projecting my fear and anger of him whenever I saw a gay couple in public. And that what he did to me wasn’t their fault. I had also been externalizing a lot of my own shame. Nowadays I’m a staunch ally, but it would have been extremely easy for me to simply dig my heels in and refuse to do any soul-searching. I was definitely the older lady in this comic for longer than I would like to admit. And I have an immense amount of respect for the victims who do come forward, because I know what kind of determination that would take.
You are not alone in this brother. I was laughed out of my local police department when I attempted to file a report. I went back later when a woman officer was present and she took me seriously. Of course the court system was another story.
There are so many of us, Velma. I feel like the number of unreported rapes of men is far higher than that of women. You, as a woman, have a much higher chance of being believed than I do as a man. Which is a fucked up statistic to quote. “Being believed”. But it remains true.
Edit: meaning theres probably way more rapes of women but proportionally, the report rate is probably way lower for men. Because we feel like no one will believe us.
Part of dismantling our rape culture is elevating men’s voices and stories as well. I want my son to know he’ll be supported and believed if anything happens to him. I want victims to have the support they need regardless of gender, age, and status.
It’s so fucked up the amount of prison rape jokes aimed at men, jokes about young boys getting lucky to have a woman teacher rape them, all of it. It harms boys and men as well as girls and women and everyone in between when we treat victims as if they asked to be raped or didn’t do enough to prevent it.
I’m in your corner. You have my unwavering support 💕
You seem to forget that small little detail of “innocent until proven guilty” which is thisbtiny corner stone of our society and probably the reason why you too are a free person
THAT detail is ehy rape is so hard to convict people on because ypy need yo prove that a sexual interaction was not consensual and thus rape
In few cases that is obvious and easy to prove, in most its impossible to prove, and thus the perpetrator goes free.
Now I get it, it sucks that the bad guy gets away with it, but the other option is that we start jailing innocent people. The entire idea of the justice system is not to put the guilty in jail but to keep the innocent out of jail. I am not about to give up on that.
Could be phrased better. I don’t know why you’re “correcting” them. It’s a lot of assumptions when you could assume they agree with you on this. It doesn’t really conflict.
We believe in innocent until proven guilty. That favors rapists.
The “innocent until proven guilty” threshold favours rapists in rape scenarios that look like consensual sex. It works pretty well for violent rapes, any rape that includes drugs, coerced inebriation, or assault on an unconscious person, any rape with corroborating witnesses at any key step, and any rape where there is a clear proof of refusal.
The problem is that this is only a fraction of rapes because many rapists avoid physical violence preferring “the implication” of violence instead. They also prey on victims who have low self esteem or a weak sense of what’s okay because they grew up in rape culture. These scenarios are very hard to meet the threshold of “beyond a reasonable doubt” because other than the victim testimony, which is often unclear and confused, there isn’t other proof. And if you start with a victim with low experience and low self esteem and you isolate them get them drunk and rape them the victims testimony is guaranteed to be unclear and confused. That’s why this scenario is so common in the first place.
But the most important aspect by far, and one we can actually point to easily with proof, is that the police, prosecutors, and judges are often extremely pro-rape culture delegitimizing victims and coddling rapists. The number of cases that ended with a slap on the wrists because “we don’t want to ruin this promising young man’s life over 5 minutes of [inserts your favorite delegitimizing euphemism here]” is just staggering". This is why the system favours rapists in a way changing laws or standards won’t solve.
If we don’t want to live in a country of old rapists and pedophiles, we’re going to have to become more comfortable running the lives of young rapists and pedophiles.
As for men who are worried about catching false charges
I absolutely fucking hate that argument, because men use it to prevent changes that would make prosecution of actual rapists easier. I understand the fear, but how often does it happen, that false charges get pressed onto man and how often does it happen that rapists do not get prosecuted for their crime? We all know someone who has been targeted by rape/sexual assault, but hardly anyone knows a rapist and even less a person that has been falsely accused of it.
![Realization [PizzaCake]](https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/58eacea0-b255-4a2d-b579-35265a7cffee.png){kind=link}
The law favors rapists. I realized a long time ago, just by women that I have known, that the statistics on rape are accurate and also low. I also realized that most men don’t understand that because they are not men who a woman would open up to about that. As for men who are worried about catching false charges, I would say that statistically you are more likely to get raped by another man than catch a fake charge. And because everything favors the rapist, he will probably get away with it.
My Step father started grooming my sister when she was ten. Her chore thay day was to clean the kitchen. He told her to use a bucket and rag, not the mop, so he could “watch her ass” while she cleaned. His ten year old, biological, daughter.
He told her if she ever told anyone, it would break up the whole family, and everyone would think she was a whore.
My sister lived a double life from that early age of ten, until she was 15. He would tell her, "you have to [Do this sexual thing] or Im not buying groceries for the family and it will be your fault. He did this for christmas presents, after school activities, any time he could withold finacially from “the family” he would make her do stuff.
No one knew.
meanwhile, he was serverely beating the shit outta all of us if any of us got out of line. My brother and I werent allowed to hang out with friends, ever. We went to school, and we went home. If we werent working on the farm, we were trapped on our rooms. In the last few years, I wouldnt even be allowed out of my room for weeks at a time, not even to use the bathroom. He’d take the house phone with him whenever he left, so we could never call anyone. My brother stood up to him once, and he chocked out my 12 year old brother against a wall, his feet dangled. I saw it happen.
We found out after, he was often choking out my sister in her sleep, and shed wake to him trying to kill her. Shed wake, and hed stop, and just mutter, “Sorry” and walk away. When my dear sister found out I was cutting… she did the right thing, and told the adult. He came to me and said, “next time you feel like doing this, make sure you do it the right way”.
I had asked my sister a few times, if “anything was going on”. She always said no. Until one fall day, she broke the fuck down and told me everything. We cried together for hours. I was 16, she 15. I told the school the next day. Thankfully he admitted everything. When the state came in, im sure they found mt poop bucket. They saw his room was a bed, in a pile of beer cans. They saw the falling down house. We were never allowed back there to get our things. “The family” let my dog run away and didnt tell me for a month. We did lose everything, our pets and possesions alike.
In court he said he thought she was his wife, and also mentioned he had been raped as a youth by an uncle.
When sentencing came, the max was 25 years. They asked us kids for our imput. His sister, my aunt, took us in after he was arrested. She was the one to relay our answer. We all said the maximum. She told the contact, we all said the minimum. He was sentenced for ten years. He served 8. For a very long time, over a decade after, I regretting not, well killing him that morning before school. This aunt also made fun of me for telling on my step father. The woman despised me for “what I did”.
This man absolutely ruined three lives. He didnt murder us no, but he murdered our hearts, our courage, our self worth. None of us are right. My brother and sister are still very fucked up people and its been about 25 years since thay day.
8 years, let out for “good behavior”. Owns a house again now, none of his kids own anything. We all have CPTSD. I will be im therapy for the rest of my life probably. My siblings and I dont talk anymore. the other two refuse therapy, and their maladaptive coping is… apparent. My sister cant even live in this state. She fears so much, she will run into him. My brother, still talks to that side of the family, and has stalked women he was interested in, like, actully stalked. Its so messed up.
This man took my sister from me, and only got 8 years. Least he got that- I know too many who got off scott free. I have multiple non reported rapes myself. Mostly from the same person. My grandfather raped all his three daughters, died without it ever coming to light.
I would avoid saying that the law favours rapists in general (though it might where you live) because it makes it sound as if it’s a problem that can be fixed if we bring in the right legislation. The problem as I see it is that the people who administer the law favour rapists, and that’s a much more intractable problem.
Fair, although “the law” usually encompasses the written law, the cops, prosecutors, judges, etc. Fixing the problem will involve adjusting laws, fixing the cop problem, and adjusting the public zeitgeist. Legislation will help. Making an assumption for protection of the victim will go a long ways and doesn’t take away from innocent until proven guilty.
The law favours doing nothing, by intent, by design, and by necessity. It is better to let the guilty go free than to imprison the innocent. But there is also systemic bias that warps this important principle into something that hobbles any hope of justice.
I think that we are wrong to look to the state and the law. They occupy a place in our psychology as the arbiter of order that they do not deserve and which serves to control us. When we are raped, the solution to our personal problems isn’t to make sure someone else gets punished. Our needs are for repair, safety, and healing, not some asshole’s rehabilitation, which is not our fucking responsibility. The courts and prisons cannot give us what we need in that situation. There is a need for something that doesn’t exist, that doesn’t yet even have a name.
When I was about 5 my then 3 year old sister was sexually abused by our adoptive mother’s husband at the time. I don’t really have a good memory, but I understand that I was drugged and maybe also messed with too. They took my sis to the hospital and confirmed the abuse took place.
The dude got a slap on the wrist, honestly. A few years jail (I think?) and a divorce - leaving behind a single mother on a teacher’s salary with 2 kids that he doesn’t even owe child support for. They both made the decision to adopt and he just got right out of any responsibility for that.
For us as kids, it meant lots of talking to professionals who barely got anything out of us. I mean, we were afraid. All we had was each other in the whole world and it seemed like we couldn’t even trust our own parents, so what do we do? Instead we grew up with little faith in family and no faith in a “God” who turned their back or a country who didn’t give a damn.
You did nothing wrong. You’re not alone. You don’t have to suffer in silence. Tell your story. You never know who might really need to hear it.
As a man, I can confirm this. It took me being raped (and a few years of bottling it up to even consciously come to the realisation that I was indeed raped) to do away with nearly two decades of indirect conditioning by “lad culture” and mass media et al to see why it goes unreported most of the time.
(mind you I was raped by a woman, AND the same woman falsely accused me of rape, harassment, and a number of other awful things)
Yup, my watershed moment was when I found out my rapist had died. He was an older man who I had always brushed off as a bad teenage experiment. I didn’t even realize how much fear and anger I had for him, until I heard through the grapevine that he had died. Suddenly, I was staring at my Facebook feed, seeing some mutuals posting about his death, and had tears welling up in my eyes. Not tears of sadness, but of shame and anger.
It was simultaneously emancipating and also enraging. I suddenly knew he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else, and he wouldn’t be able to hurt me again… Until then, I hadn’t even realized I was worried about that. I had been carrying an immense amount of shame as a result of the “he has probably done this to others, and will probably do it again in the future” train of thought. Everyone says victims should report so their rapists can’t hurt others, right? And since he was an openly gay older guy, I statistically would have had a higher chance of being believed, right? But reporting would require telling others about what had happened, and I couldn’t even imagine doing that.
But I also knew that since he was dead, he would never see justice for what he did to me (and likely others before and after). He was very wealthy, very well-connected in my local area, and he died comfortably in his own bed. None of which he deserved. Knowing he would be feted his wake was absolutely enraging, because he only deserved a cardboard box underneath the local prison.
It was also what eventually led to me realizing why I had historically been so homophobic. I was born and raised in a conservative area, so homophobia is just par for the course here. But I eventually realized that I had been projecting my fear and anger of him whenever I saw a gay couple in public. And that what he did to me wasn’t their fault. I had also been externalizing a lot of my own shame. Nowadays I’m a staunch ally, but it would have been extremely easy for me to simply dig my heels in and refuse to do any soul-searching. I was definitely the older lady in this comic for longer than I would like to admit. And I have an immense amount of respect for the victims who do come forward, because I know what kind of determination that would take.
You are not alone in this brother. I was laughed out of my local police department when I attempted to file a report. I went back later when a woman officer was present and she took me seriously. Of course the court system was another story.
Thank you for sharing your story, I’m heartsick that you had to endure it. I can’t imagine the extra amount of scrutiny in this case for you.
There are so many of us, Velma. I feel like the number of unreported rapes of men is far higher than that of women. You, as a woman, have a much higher chance of being believed than I do as a man. Which is a fucked up statistic to quote. “Being believed”. But it remains true.
Edit: meaning theres probably way more rapes of women but proportionally, the report rate is probably way lower for men. Because we feel like no one will believe us.
Part of dismantling our rape culture is elevating men’s voices and stories as well. I want my son to know he’ll be supported and believed if anything happens to him. I want victims to have the support they need regardless of gender, age, and status.
It’s so fucked up the amount of prison rape jokes aimed at men, jokes about young boys getting lucky to have a woman teacher rape them, all of it. It harms boys and men as well as girls and women and everyone in between when we treat victims as if they asked to be raped or didn’t do enough to prevent it.
I’m in your corner. You have my unwavering support 💕
You seem to forget that small little detail of “innocent until proven guilty” which is thisbtiny corner stone of our society and probably the reason why you too are a free person
THAT detail is ehy rape is so hard to convict people on because ypy need yo prove that a sexual interaction was not consensual and thus rape
In few cases that is obvious and easy to prove, in most its impossible to prove, and thus the perpetrator goes free.
Now I get it, it sucks that the bad guy gets away with it, but the other option is that we start jailing innocent people. The entire idea of the justice system is not to put the guilty in jail but to keep the innocent out of jail. I am not about to give up on that.
Could be phrased better. I don’t know why you’re “correcting” them. It’s a lot of assumptions when you could assume they agree with you on this. It doesn’t really conflict.
We believe in innocent until proven guilty. That favors rapists.
The “innocent until proven guilty” threshold favours rapists in rape scenarios that look like consensual sex. It works pretty well for violent rapes, any rape that includes drugs, coerced inebriation, or assault on an unconscious person, any rape with corroborating witnesses at any key step, and any rape where there is a clear proof of refusal.
The problem is that this is only a fraction of rapes because many rapists avoid physical violence preferring “the implication” of violence instead. They also prey on victims who have low self esteem or a weak sense of what’s okay because they grew up in rape culture. These scenarios are very hard to meet the threshold of “beyond a reasonable doubt” because other than the victim testimony, which is often unclear and confused, there isn’t other proof. And if you start with a victim with low experience and low self esteem and you isolate them get them drunk and rape them the victims testimony is guaranteed to be unclear and confused. That’s why this scenario is so common in the first place.
But the most important aspect by far, and one we can actually point to easily with proof, is that the police, prosecutors, and judges are often extremely pro-rape culture delegitimizing victims and coddling rapists. The number of cases that ended with a slap on the wrists because “we don’t want to ruin this promising young man’s life over 5 minutes of [inserts your favorite delegitimizing euphemism here]” is just staggering". This is why the system favours rapists in a way changing laws or standards won’t solve.
If we don’t want to live in a country of old rapists and pedophiles, we’re going to have to become more comfortable running the lives of young rapists and pedophiles.
I absolutely fucking hate that argument, because men use it to prevent changes that would make prosecution of actual rapists easier. I understand the fear, but how often does it happen, that false charges get pressed onto man and how often does it happen that rapists do not get prosecuted for their crime? We all know someone who has been targeted by rape/sexual assault, but hardly anyone knows a rapist and even less a person that has been falsely accused of it.