December 7, 2023 - 11:20am
There’s never been a better moment to be a rapist. Almost 200 women report a rape to the police every day in England and Wales, yet fewer than four will see their attackers punished. Rape denial is commonplace, not just in relation to what victims say but whether it happened in the first place. Endless excuses are made for defendants: the victim had been drinking, didn’t say “no” loudly enough, or didn’t have visible injuries.
Disbelief permeates the criminal justice system, reflecting strikingly lenient public attitudes towards men accused of sexual offences. None of this is unique to the UK, but I don’t think any of us ever expected to see rape denial on the scale that’s been exposed following the horrific events in Israel on 7 October.
The use of extreme sexual violence by Hamas became public within days of the attacks. I wrote about it soon afterwards, but much more detailed accounts have emerged this week. Some of the evidence comes from volunteers who collected women’s bodies, discovering injuries that are almost too sickening to report.
It’s been provided not just by the Israeli authorities but also independent organisations such as The Sunday Times and the BBC. Journalists have been shown harrowing video testimony by a woman who witnessed a gang rape at the Nova music festival. She saw the victim being mutilated, having one of her breasts cut off before she was shot in the head by the final assailant while he was raping her.
It’s not even as though the terrorists hid what they were doing. They filmed the slaughter of men, women and children, leaving a trail of bloodied female corpses stripped of their underwear. International organisations including the UN have rightly been shamed for their failure to condemn these atrocities. Soon after the Hamas attack, a video of a woman in bloodstained sweatpants being forced into a truck was shared around social media, pointing to the horrors yet to emerge.
But reactions to the mass rape of Israeli women are not just hypocritical and heartless. They demonstrate the astounding lengths people will go to when they don’t want to believe some of the most graphic evidence of rape most of us have ever been presented with. Where is the survivor testimony, they ask. Why haven’t we seen video footage of actual rapes as they happened?
I shouldn’t have to point out that dead women can’t testify on their own behalf. Or that filmed evidence of women being raped may have been held back out of concern for the dignity of victims. Such demands for “proof” are sickening, but they also expose where the habit of rape denial ends up. The mass rapes in Israel are not a matter of “his word against hers”; there is abundant evidence in the form of women’s bodies, hideously abused by multiple attackers.
There are a couple of harsh truths here. One is about the readiness of women’s organisations to look away when victims don’t fit their ideology. But the biggest is the fact that no amount of evidence will ever satisfy the impossible demands placed on victims of rape.
Most sexual predators deny their crimes, but the Hamas terrorists recorded them so the world could see — and some people still don’t believe it. When rape denial extends even to perpetrators, how can women, anywhere in the world, get justice?
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She has been Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board since 2013. Her book Homegrown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists was published in 2019.
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SubscribeWhat can be said. I am horrified by the outspoken and proud denial of these barbaric crimes by many who are so blinkered by their visceral anti-zionism they refuse to acknowledge anything that shows Hamas in a bad light.
I am reminded of the Congolese doctor, Dr Mukwege, who founded a hospital for the treatment of women horrifically injured and suffering diseases as a result of r ape perpetrated by armed rebels. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in recognition of his work and further ‘rewarded’ by a tumult of death threats for his troubles.
But to see the same reactions amongst so-called educated westerners is sobering and depressing in equal parts. Sharia law demands 4 witnesses for a woman making such a charge to be believed. Will that be the case here in the near future? Looks like we are pretty much there.
Armed rebels? I have said for decades that, if the UN peace keepers are coming, lock up your wives and daughters….
I find it utterly despicable that such horrific and barbaric crimes have been covered up by the a conspiracy of silence in the MSM. I remember reading with horror about the atrocities committed in Sudan some years ago. The memory stayed with me. ‘The actions of the Janjaweed have been described as genocidal r ape, with not just women, but children also being r aped, as well as babies being bludgeoned to death and the sexual mutilation of victims being commonplace.’
Talking to friends and acquaintances I find an extraordinary level of ignorance is common.’ I believe people have been purposely kept in ignorance.
Nothing had changed in Sudan. And still no one cares.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/tasha-kheiriddin-africans-are-being-slaughtered-but-with-no-jews-to-blame-the-left-shrugs
Thanks for that. Boko Haram never went away, and the Fulani still terrorise Christians in Nigeria. Terror stalks many areas of Africa and the real victims tend to be the most powerless without means of escape. It really does beg the question as to why the U.K. and Europe facilitate illegal undocumented migrants entering without any means of real scrutiny. Let’s face it the vast majority of them are not women or vulnerable elderly, but men who somehow can lay their hands on thousands to pay for their crossing. There seems to be absolutely no consideration given to matters of security.
Our ruling class is weak, naive, self- loathing, ignorant and cloaks itself in moral and intellectual superiority. By the mid 1980s all those who had served in combat units such as Commandos/Special Forces who had suffered and witnessed the brutality of the Japanese, SS or fighting in Balkans and Greece and understood to what depths humanity can descend, had retired.
When one reads the accounts of those in the SOE and SAS, in occupied countries, especially the Balkans and Greece what horrified these very tough men and some women, was the cruelty and treachery of some people. A family friend who had been in the SOE , served in the Balkans witnessed mass slaughter and been tortured by the SS never discussed his experience and even some he never mentioned to his wife. Certain actions were only revealed after his death.
Another family friend grew up in Baltic nation , witnessed the entry of the KGB in 1939 and his family survived the slaughter. He survived the War in Eastern Europe, then a refugee camp for two years afterwards. He witnessed every act of humanity to man that it is possible to witness. He said one had to put one’s memories in a box and bury it, never return or they will destroy you.
In aNazi death camp a women SS guard made a lamp shade from the skin of a dead inmate.
The Royal Marine Commandos say they ” Deter, defend and defeat those who use violence against Britain “.
The Western World has a ruling class who in incapable to facing up those who use violence of the most extreme barbarity, who willing sacrifice their own kith and kin as a tactic and defeat them.
Where are the protests to support Sudan? Not a single demo. Silence from world media. No mass parades. No student protests. But let Jews lift a finger to stop their extermination in Israel and the world erupts in rage. It’s called Anti-Semitism, the oldest racist hate. How shameful.
people are in ignorance in general about rape – whether in war, or in ordinary social life.
It is an effectively decriminalised crime in the UK.
Many of the men and quite a few of the women on this forum regurgitate rape myths at the drop of a hat.
The left has shown their true colors for the world to see, yet some are not convinced of their evil. I include the leaders of the universities, who have shouted from the rooftops on other comparatively trivial issues but now are silent on this!
This is staggering to watch in real time. I have utmost contempt for these people and their illogical virtue signalling. I watched a Konstantin Krisin YouTube yesterday where he was interviewing mainly British pro Palestine protestors… they could not answer the most basic questions. Embarrassing.
Most people cannot answer the most basic questions about this scenario in the ME anymore than they can about what is going on in Ukraine, when it actually started, and why.
It’s true. The Wall Street Journal did an article on this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-which-river-to-which-sea-anti-israel-protests-college-student-ignorance-a682463b
It’s behind a pay wall I’m afraid, but you should get the gist.
I subscribe to WSJ. A majority of protesters could not identify which river or which sea.
Because admitting them would create cognitive dissonance which even so-called Progressives, well accustomed to believing multiple contradictory things simultaneously, would find too psychologically distressing. So they double-down on denialism.
Having already concluded that the world can be comprehensively explained by a hierarchy of victimhood which categorises Jews as white oppressors and Palestinians as non-white oppressed, its easier for these people to obfuscate the evidence of broken, naked female bodies displayed as trophies, than it is to admit that the kidnapped Jewish woman with the blood stained crotch might just be more of a victim than the Hamas gunman.
A friend of mine was extolling the Palestinian “resistance”. I, who have seen much of the Hamas Go-Pro and security footage of October 7th, began to describe some of the atrocities. This friend put her hands over her ears and shouted “Don’t want to hear! Don’t want to hear!” It was at that point that I realised that within the brain of “resistance” supporters was a black hole, into which any information that can’t be processed is sucked, to disappear forever.
Hope she’s now an ex friend.
Interesting friends, eh?
They remind me of the Germans who denied the existence of concentration camps.
At least some of them have the excuse of not being exposed to the atrocities back then with no social media, computers or smart devices. Only government published newspapers.
“It’s not that we didn’t know… We didn’t want to know”
Just to put you straight on one point: that kidnapped woman with a “bloodstained crotch” had not been raped – she had soiled herself in terror. Not an unusual reaction in the circumstances.
Blood is not soiling yourself. Basic biology 101. If you don’t know the difference please educate yourself m, it might just save your life at some stage.
Excellent point. Here in the United States we had three Presidents of what many people think are the best universities and they struggled to say whether calls for genocide of Jews violates their school’s code of conduct. You may have heard about micro-aggressions which can land a student or event tenured faculty in a whole lot of trouble.
Don’t be surprised if the same young women who protested against the selection of Brett Cavanaugh as a Supreme Court Justic based on the testimony of a woman who thinks something might have happened when they were in high school, now wear keffiyehs in support of Hamas.
Welcome to the looking glass world of intersectionality where certain levels of perceived victimhood trump all others. Right now Hamas Palestine even trumps gender (try being in trans in the Palestinian Territories.
yes, unfortunately and ‘so called’ is right in this context
“There’s never been a better moment to be a rapist.”
Best of times:
There’s also never been a better time to accuse someone of rape. #MeToo #BelieveAllWomen #RetroactivelyRedefiningRape
The difference: Hamas actually bragged about it and left documentary evidence, and yet their fan club STILL denies it.
I’m starting to wonder whether it’s tacit approval rather than disbelief.
If you fear peace as Hamas must with the prospects of the Abraham accords bringing more Arab countries into an acceptance of Israel’s right to exist then your best prospect is to remind your enemy that you are intent on Jewish genocide by the most barbaric and rapacious treatment of the most vulnerable of the civilians.
The more provocative and disgusting the behaviour brings the greatest prospect of a reaction that looses international woke sympathy and persuades Israeli citizens that they can only be safe from such depravity by the most severe repression and that the risks of any peace that weakens their existing borders cannot be contemplated. Multiple well publicised rapes fit the bill to a tee.
That so many in the West still believe it is Israel that is intent on genocide rather than Hamas shows the corruption that intersectional ideology has wrought on the western psyche.
Ms Smith conflates 2 issues here. Hamas are let off the hook because they, in the guise of ‘Palestinians’, have been classed as ‘victims’, and ideologically nothing must sully or dilute their immaculate ‘victimhood’. It’s the same for the Rotherham etc gangs. Agency, responsibility, contributory factors, cannot be assigned to ‘official victims’; their victimhood would be lessened, and, more importantly, the evil of their ‘oppressors’ would not be absolute. The other issue is that of evidence and consent, both very grey areas, and both, in the case of allegations of rape, very difficult to establish satisfactorily.
I wonder if she is though. Not anything about lessoning the horror of a rape, but, here in the US at least, there have been a few high profile “rapes”, that the left jumped behind, mostly as they gave a chance to root against their favorite bad guys, fraternities or sports players. But, and the reason I put quote marks around rape, they turned out to be fakes. Made up stories too good to be true. If you are curious, check the histories of Duke Lacrosse, University of Virginia, etc.
When the story lines up with the lefts refrain, they go whole hog on the case, but when it violates the culture of victimhood, they are no where to be seen. Conservatives? Sure, and don’t wait for the facts. Liberals, a la Bill Clinton? Women should be down on their knees thanking him (to paraphrase a WaPo journalist). Or Woopie Goldberg saying that Roman Polanski didn’t commit Rape-Rape, just drugged and molested a 13yo girl.
My point being that no matter who’s side you are on, Believe All Women has never been about ending rape. And no matter how much the left talks about it, they haven’t done a single thing to actually work toward ending it.
I see, point taken. What about the hundreds of thousands of women who have gone to court because of her accusation of rape and have been humiliated? Are you a virgin? No? Well, how many men have you slept with (you s**t)? What were you wearing (you s**t)? Did you flirt with him (you s**t? Did you willingly go to his home (you s**t)? And so on.
Your downvote speaks volumes about the hypocrisy on this piece. If the rapists weren’t Jihadi Muslims but white journalists or politicans doing to it to to female feminist journalists or politicians, this lot would think they had it coming ..or that they made it up.
erm, film of the actual events isn’t evidence? I think you’re part of the problem Joan Smith is describing.
Where does Gordon state that there isn’t evidence for the Hamas atrocities? The point is that certain groups are excused their crimes despite considerable evidence, which is distinct from the problems of establishing guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Gordon witters on about rape being exceptionally hard to prove. It isn’t. It is that juries routinely victim blame women whose sexual histories are used against them while it wasn’t legal for some time to actually include facts about the accused’ sexual past – even if that included rape convictions. Rape trials for the most part, are a farce.
He is a rape denier. Like a Holocaust denier but more contemporary
I asked you where Gordon denied that evidence of Hamas atrocities existed and you have replied by branding him as a rape denier and equivalent to a holocaust denier. I’ll leave it at that.
beyond reasonable doubt is useless for rape trials.
It has to go.
For the obvious reason that you can be raped even if a person doesn’t understand that they raped you.
For example paedophiles often convince themselves that a child consented.
Children are not able to give consent under law. May I ask then what the bar for a conviction should be? Why should the barrier be lowered for this crime but not others?
During my childhood in the 1960’s there were numerous TV documentaries broadcast showing WW2 footage including the horrors of the concentration camps. I remember one in particular that showed German citizens shocked and crying when following defeat they were forced by the Allies to witness the camp horrors. The purpose was to remove any denial or simple lack of awareness of what went on with the hope of it never being repeated. Perhaps if unedited October 7th footage was widely broadcast it would wake up our current deniers to the truth.
> Disbelief permeates the criminal justice system
That’s because of something called “innocent until proven guilty.” The bedrock of any real justice system. The idea of some feminists, that an accuser should be believed by default are perverted. And it’s absolutely ridiculous to draw parallels from that to what’s been done to the Israeli.
Not just ridiculous, it’s the worst kind of opportunism.
Well said!
Agreed. It’s appalling, actually.
The she said he said thing is over and useless. Closed trials with a judge and panel of sexual offending experts.
Morley is another rape denier because as with the ‘progressive’ left, he covers his ears when it comes to ‘team men’ and screams ‘normal men don’t’ when all the evidence now points to the contrary.
don’t shoot the messenger.
remember rape trials when men or children are the accusers produce the same dire results.
and he feels the same about offenses against children because of his male narcissism.
See his posts on Bindel’s Cleveland piece.
The fact that he is even posting on here is gross hypocrisy
Although I entirely agree with the main point about Hamas and the response of organisations that should know better – truly sickening and shocking – this bit needs addressing:
The disbelief relating to rape in the criminal justice system is a reflection of the rule of law. A person is assumed to be innocent of rape until due process – a trial and just conviction – has been carried out. There might be slim chance of conviction, but ultimately that is down to the “he said, she said” nature of much of the available evidence. It’s not even relevant to talk about lenience towards men accused. The noun is only applicable to those who are justly punished.
Apparently there are a number of other common factors at work. One is that the accusers testimony contains lies or errors. Another is the shifting definition of what constitutes rape. Some older jurors (male and female) do not recognise the scenario they are being presented with as rape. They may believe, for example, that the accusers behaviour constituted implied consent.
that is because they are ignorant and do not belong on a rape trial jury.
Shifting definitions indeed.
Yet there are alarming numbers of girls aged 12 -15 who become pregnant. Any fathers of those pregnancies who are aged 16 or over are guilty of statutory rape. But they are rarely prosecuted.
One factor is that the police routinely discourage girls and their parents from seeking prosecution, on the grounds that the process is so harrowing for victims. Likewise, many adult women withdraw from attempts to prosecute their rapists because the process is so traumatic, even when there is sufficient evidence to convict.
It’s not just “he said, she said”.
There are professors of criminology who study this. It is established that too few convictions are made.
Women may not seek prosecution, or be dissuaded from prosecuting, but the underlying cause of this is the very poor chance of obtaining a conviction in such cases. There are very rarely any independent witnesses, as the offence usually only takes place in private. There is often no corroborating evidence. Drink and drugs are often involved. It is often reported some time after the alleged offence. This means that it often ultimately comes down to one person’s unsubstantiated word against that of another.
It’s always the case that “too few convictions are made”, in every type of offence where the guilty walk free. But rape is virtually unique in this, as the only way to redress this would be to set the bar of proof lower for this crime than for others – which is I think unacceptable. But by all means, we should increase those factors (police practices, education, building women’s confidence in the process, etc.) which will secure more just convictions.
lowering of the bar of proof…hilarious.
in gang rapes, there are not only several independent witnesses but film evidence – again drugs or drink are often used to discredit accusers.
Remember there is a thing called Rohypnol. Remember Bill cosby – i had a long internet ruckus with a bunch of people who denied a progressive black man could have done it. By the way all of these people admitted they themselves had been sexually assaulted – one was a man who had been sexually assaulted at the age of nine by a dentist. All his therapist taught him was how to victim blame his working class family for making him a suitable ‘target’ – as if a dentist who rapes wouldn’t do it to anyone.
Why? Because the hard left are anti-white and anti-semitic racists, despite being largely white themselves. They have a twisted ideology of oppressor and victimhood that makes them racists of the worst sort.
In this case it’s the politics, the quasi-religion of moral reprobates pretending as they drink their mocha lattes and think they alone own empathy… This is not about some dude hiding an actual rape in the gray of a an unrequited encounter. This is the new age anointed showing themselves for what they are…
unrequited encounter. Unbelievable.
Wokes believe “me too, unless you’re a Jew”.
The problem with rape is that it is the only crime that relates to an activity that is often or usually consented to. Only scammers consent to burglaries and only suicides or extreme masochists consent to being severely beaten or murdered.
Just a fun fact for you – Dr Jessica Taylor has conducted a lot of research on victim blaming and rape myths. In one survey, she found that 70 per cent of male and female respondents did not believe that sex with a sleeping partner was assault.
Lowering the bar?
Up until the mid 1990s, a husband could not be accused of raping his wife because it wasn’t considered legally possible. eg the notion that the marriage ceremony entitles you to the body.
This, along with the idea, that a boyfriend or sexual partner, cannot assault you is one of the ideas the older generation don’t understand.
Stop banging on about proof, reasonable doubt and starting backing full and comprehensive education around consent for all genders and ages.
Hamas of course are misogynists and homophobes – the irony is that so many on this site share these attitudes.
There are plenty older people who do understand but they are not allowed on juries or are unable to attend due to caring responsibilities or ill health. Older womenn who started the feminist movement get it. Parents of women raped get it. Partners of women raped or sexually assaulted get it. Older people are not a homogenous group. Such generalisations are not helpful. And as an now older woman, I have been fighting for the rights of women, girls , boys and men who have been sexually abused and/or raped for over 45 years.
You poor, dear Righties on here. How confusing this must be for you. We on the real Left never bought into #MeToo or #BelieveAllWomen, and we have certainly never placed any automatic confidence in the BBC, so you do not get to throw any of that at us. You, on the other hand, have now decided to sign up to all of that. You have chosen your petard, and be assured that you will be hoist on it.
Eight and a half weeks later, as even the Biden Administration and right-wing Labour MPs, never mind the sort of grand old Tory Arabists who are once again Foreign Office Ministers, are starting to express reservations, you come out with this, conveniently with dead witnesses and destroyed forensic evidence by definition. Tonight, the Israelis are claiming that hostages were raped but were drugged so that they could have no memory of it. Meanwhile, when a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was raped in an Israeli prison, where he too was a hostage, then the IDF raided the charity that had revealed that assault, and shut it down as a terrorist organisation.
The BBC’s main source is May Golan, who told a rally that “I’m proud to be a racist”, who led anti-black riots in Tel Aviv, who accused that city’s Sudanese refugees of spreading AIDS by working as waiters, who joined Likud because she had failed to be elected on the ticket of a party that was classified as a terrorist organisation in the United States but which is now in coalition with Likud (its late founder was banned from Britain by Margaret Thatcher), who not unconnectedly secured exemption from military service on the grounds that she was religious but then decided that she was not, whose appointment as Consul General in New York was denounced by its normally fiercely pro-Israeli Jewish leaders, and whose elevation to Minister for Women’s Empowerment was met with shocked disbelief even by people who were very well used to the machinations of Benjamin Netanyahu.