Rape, Rape

Rape is generally considered a serious sex crime, as well as a civil assault.

Rape is also recognized as an element of the crime of genocide when committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a targeted group.

Some jurisdictions define "rape" to cover only acts involving penile penetration of the vagina, treating all other types of non-consensual sexual activity as sexual assault. Other jurisdictions define all non-consensual sexual activity to be rape. But the terminology varies, with some places using other terms. For example, Michigan, United States uses the term "criminal sexual conduct". http://www.msu.edu/~sdclub/resources/criminal%20code.doc In some jurisdictions, rape is defined in terms of sexual penetration of the victim, which may include penetration with objects, rather than body parts.

Also, in recent years women have also been convicted of rape or sexual assault by procuring a man to rape another woman, and by being an accomplice to a rape.

As a direct result of rape, Lucretia committed suicide. Many artists and writers were inspired by the story, including Shakespeare, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Drer, Artemisia Gentileschi, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Heywood and others.Picture: The Rape of Lucretia by Titian In ancient history, rape was viewed less as a type of assault on the female, than a serious property crime against the man to whom she belonged, typically the father or husband. The loss of virginity was an especially serious matter. The damage due to loss of virginity was reflected in her reduced prospects in finding a husband and in her bride price. This was especially true in the case of betrothed virgins, as the loss of chastity was perceived as severely depreciating her value to a prospective husband. In such cases, the law would void the betrothal and demand financial compensation from the rapist, payable to the woman's household, whose "goods" were "damaged". Hammurabi's Code #156 & Under biblical law, the rapist might be compelled to marry the unmarried woman instead of receiving the civil penalty if her father agreed. This was especially prevalent in laws where the crime of rape did not include, as a necessary element, the violation of the woman's body, thus dividing the crime in the current meaning of rape and a means for a man and woman to force their families to permit marriage. (See .) The word rape itself originates from the Latin verb rapere : to seize or take by force. The word originally had no sexual connotation and is still used generically in English. The history of rape, and the alterations of its meaning, is quite complex.

The victim was required to prove a continued state of physical resistance, and consent was conclusively presumed when a man had intercourse with his wife. "One of the most oft-quoted passages in our jurisprudence" on the subject of rape is by Lord Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale from the 17th century, "rape...is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent." Lord Hale is also the origin of the remark, "In a rape case it is the victim, not the defendant, who is on trial." However, as noted by Sir William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England , by 1769 the common law had recognized that even a prostitute could suffer rape if she had not consented to the act.

As a group, male rape victims reported a lack of services and support, and legal systems are often ill equipped to deal with this type of crime.

Duress may be actual or threatened force or violence against the victim or somebody else close to the victim. Even blackmail may constitute duress. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in its landmark 1998 judgment used a definition of rape which did not use the word consent. It defined rape as: "a physical invasion of a sexual nature committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive ." Fourth Annual Report of ICTR to the General Assembly (1999) March 23, 2007 Valid consent is also lacking if the victim lacks an actual capacity to give consent, as in the case of a victim with a mental impairment or developmental disability.

According to Unicef rape is common in countries affected by wars and natural disasters, drawing a link between the occurrence of sexual violence with the significant uprooting of a society and the crumbling of social norms. Unicef states that in Kenya reported cases of sexual violence doubled within days of post-election conflicts. According to Unicef rape was prevalent in conflict zones in Sudan, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Specifically, it was recognised that Muslim women in Foca (southeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina) were subjected to systematic and widespread gang rape, torture and enslavement by Bosnian Serb soldiers, policemen and members of paramilitary groups after the takeover of the city in April 1992.

Cundiff (2004) argued that the unavailability of another outlet for male sexual desires, such as prostitution, may contribute to the prevalence of rape. Cundiff, Kirby R. (2004).

She concluded that "prostitution affects not only how men think about women, it also influences their actual behaviour toward women, including sexual aggression against non-prostituting women." [13] Establishing whether there is any connection between rape and legalized prostitution is very difficult, as different countries around the world have different definitions of what can legally be charged as rape, also higher rape rates do not necessarily mean that more sexual abuse occurs, they might indicate that the victims from that country are more likely to report such assaults.

According to that report one of every 200 women in the UK was raped in 2006. The report also showed that only 800 persons were convicted in rape crimes that same year.

Dick Haws, "The Elusive Numbers on False Rape," Columbian Journalism Review (November/December 1997). [14] U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (1999) estimated that 91% of rape victims are female and 9% are male, with 99% of the offenders being male.

Kanin, nor upon physical or testimonial evidence. The number of false rape allegations in the studied period was 45; this was 41% of the 109 total complaints filed in this period.

It certainly should never be used to assert a scientific foundation for the frequency of false allegations. He further states Dr. Kanin simply reiterates the opinions of the police officers who concluded that the cases in question were false allegations. Lasik cites page 13 of Investigating Sexual Assaults from the iNternational Association of Chiefs of Police which says polygraph tests for sexual assault victims are contradicted in the investigation process and that their use is based on the misperception that a significant percentage of sexual assault reports are false,. Lasik goes on that It is noteworthy that the police department from which Kanin derived his data used or threatened to use the polygraph in every case The fact that it was the standard procedure of this department provides a window on the biases of the officers who conducted the rape investigations, biases that were then echoed in Kanins unchallenged reporting of their findings. A 2006 paper by N.S. Rumney in the Cambridge Law Journal provided an exhaustive account of studies of false reporting in the USA, New Zealand and the UK. Rumney, N.S., "False Allegations of Rape", Cambridge Law Journal , 65, March, 2006, pp.128-158 (journals.cambridge.org/production/action/cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=430300) A tabulated list of studies on false reporting published between 1968 and 2005 placed the percentage of false reports between a minimum on 1.5% (Theilade and Thomsen, 1986) and a maximum of 90% (Stewart, 1981). Rumney notes that early researchers tended to accept uncritically Freudian theories which purported to explain the prevalence of false allegations, while in more recent literature there has been "a lack of critical analysis of those who claim a low false reporting rate and the uncritical adoption of unreliable research findings" (p.157). Rumney concludes that "as a consequence of such deficiencies within legal scholarship, factual claims have been repeatedly made that have only limited empirical support. This suggests widespread analytical failure on the part of legal scholarship and requires an acknowledgment of the weakness of assumptions that have been constructed on unreliable research evidence." According to a 2005 U.S. Defense Department Inspector General report, approximately 73% of women and 72% of men at the military service academies believe that false accusations of sexual assault are a problem.

In 47% of rapes, both the victim and the perpetrator had been drinking. In 17%, only the perpetrator had been. 7% of the time, only the victim had been drinking. Rapes where neither the victim nor the perpetrator had been drinking were 29% of all rapes.

Over two thirds of all rapes occur in someone's home. 30.9% occur in the perpetrators' homes, 26.6% in the victims' homes and 10.1% in homes shared by the victim and perpetrator. 7.2% occur at parties, 7.2% in vehicles, 3.6% outdoors and 2.2% in bars.

However, almost no research has been done on female-female rape, though women can be charged with rape.

They may feel jumpy or be on edge. After being raped it is common for the victim to experience Acute Stress Disorder, including symptoms similar to those of posttraumatic stress disorder, such as intense, sometimes unpredictable, emotions, and they may find it hard to deal with their memories of the event.

In the context of rape, this concept refers to the Just World Theory and popular attitudes that certain victim behaviours (such as flirting, or wearing sexually-provocative clothing) may encourage rape. Pauwels, B. (2002). "Blaming the victim of rape: The culpable control model perspective." Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 63(5-B).

In most Western countries, the defense of provocation is not accepted as a mitigation for rape.

In some countries, victim-blaming is more common, and women who have been raped are sometimes deemed to have behaved improperly. Often, these are countries where there is a significant social divide between the freedoms and status afforded to men and women.

Finally, rape victims are blamed more when they are raped by an acquaintance or a date rather than by a stranger (e.g., Bell, Kuriloff, & Lottes, 1994; Bridges, 1991; Bridges & McGr ail, 1989; Check & Malamuth, 1983; Kanekar, Shaherwalla, Franco, Kunju, & Pinto, 1991; L'Armand & Pepitone, 1982; Tetreault & Barnett, 1987), which seems to evoke the stereotype that victims really want to have sex because they know their attacker and perhaps even went out on a date with him. The underlying message of this research seems to be that when certain stereotypical elements of rape are in place, rape victims are prone to being blamed.

Buddie & Arthur G. Miller (2001) Beyond Rape Myths: A more complex view of perceptions of rape victims Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, August 2001. Accessed 10 December 2007.

Thornhill, R., & Palmer, C.T., A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (MIT Press, 2001).

Thornhill, R., & Thornhill, N.W., "Human rape: an evolutionary analysis," Ethology and Sociobiology (1983).

She states that sociobiological models suggest that it may be genetically-ingrained for certain men and women to allow themselves to be more vulnerable to rape, and that this may be a biological feature of members of the species.

If the victim is a federal official, an ambassador, consul or other foreign official under the protection of the United States, or if the crime took place on federal property or involved crossing state borders, or in a manner that substantially affects interstate commerce or national security, then the Federal Government also has jurisdiction. If a crime is not committed within any state, then Federal jurisdiction is exclusive: examples include the District of Columbia, naval or U.S.-flagged merchant vessels in international waters, or a U.S. military base. In cases where the rape involves both state and federal jurisdiction, the offender can be tried and punished separately for each crime without raising issues of double jeopardy.

The term rape is not used in federal law. Rape is grouped with all forms of non consensual sexual acts under chapter 109a of the United States Code.

Source: Wikipedia > Rape