Keep Talking

Further recent conversations with friends have reminded me of many conversations over my life: a friend at 16 telling me of being raped by her father; a friend telling me of rape by a lover, too young to fight back or argue; a friend telling me of a night spent in a cell, arrested for assault because she dared to fight back against a man trying to rape her in her own home; a friend that cried while telling me of a year of repeated rape by a partner that left her unable to take another lover for many years. These are just a few of the stories this Bird has listened to.
'The government estimates that as many as 95% of rapes are never reported to the police at all. Of the rapes that were reported from 2007 to 2008, only 6.5% resulted in a conviction, compared with 34% of criminal cases in general.' (taken from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/13/rape-convictions-low)
Say the word 'rape' in any group of women, and a chaos of stories and emotions result. Not one of the stories this Bird has heard resulted in report, let alone conviction. These women do not tell their stories except to trusted friends and the occasional sympathetic stranger. They feel shame, that they did not fight back, or that they did something to deserve this; they feel guilt, at being victims when their feminist principles tell them they should be strong; they feel fear, of the people that do this, that may do this again, but maybe more they feel fear that they may have to re-live and repeat the event in their minds again and again if they do not struggle to suppress the memory.
Imagine we were talking about burglary. Imagine that 95% of burglary victims felt too dirty, scared and ashamed to report the crime. Imagine if victims of burglary were told that if they were going to flash their new car around they deserved to have it stolen. Imagine..................... stinks, doesn't it?