Can flirting result in rape?

IT is 11pm. A woman, aged in her mid-20s, has left the pub early and decided to walk home. She has had a few drinks, enough to feel a little tipsy, not enough that she's out of control.

She turns the corner and walks into a street, which is dark because a street lamp isn't working properly. The walk takes five minutes normally, but just as she is about to open her gate, a hand goes over her mouth.

She is dragged backwards to a nearby alleyway and raped by her attacker.

According to figures released yesterday, a quarter of people believe this woman would have been partially responsible for being raped because she had had a few drinks. In fact, more women (five per cent) than men (three per cent) said they thought she would be "totally" responsible if she had been raped while intoxicated. If she had spent time at the pub, chatting to men, flirting with them a little, more than a third of people would feel she had been partially or completely to blame for being attacked.

These shocking figures, taken from an ICM poll commissioned by Amnesty International, make disturbing reading.

But Dilys Davy, project manager of the Middlesbrough Women's Support Network which offers advice and counselling to victims of sexual abuse, says the figures do not surprise her. She sees similar attitudes - that drunk women in mini-skirts are 'asking for it' - from the general public at conferences she attends and even out socially.

"I've even stopped telling people what I do when I go out otherwise I end up in arguments with intelligent people who have these attitudes," she says.

"It (the attitude) comes from both men and women and you would assume that women would know better but they don't.

"Women who've been raped often blame themselves. They come through our doors with no sense of their own self. A lot of the help we give them is around us convincing them that they're not these awful people.

"When it comes to the courts, they have to be amazingly strong and have a huge amount of support to go through the process. When you hear figures like this you start to realise why women don't go to court and why there's such a huge attrition rate."

The Amnesty figures do raise the question of how women can endure trials knowing that a third of the people sitting on the jury may be thinking that they 'asked for it'. The conviction statistics for rape are already appallingly low. The number of recorded rapes in 2004/5 was 12,867 while the conviction rate for the same year was just 741.

And this has to be taken in context with the 2001 British Crime Survey which estimated that just 15 per cent of rapes actually came to the attention of the police.

"The other issue is that they take so long to come to court," says Ms Davy. "It can take up to 18 months sometimes and I think a lot of women decide not to continue during that period."

But those attitudes are not only reserved for women who wear provocative clothing or dare to have a drink and enjoy themselves. One high profile rape victim told a recent sexual violence conference that neighbours had pushed notes through her door, calling her a whore and accusing her of bringing down the neighbourhood.

Was she drunk at the time of the attack or was she wearing a mini-skirt? No, she was a middle-aged woman raped in broad daylight at knifepoint in a park as she walked her dog.

Says Ms Davy: "She said it had ruined her life, not just the rape, but people's attitudes to it, that she was this awful person that had allowed herself to be raped.

"It is so important when a woman does decide to come forward that the wrong things aren't said to her because every woman that you speak to already has an element of blame themselves."

These stereotypes are also still supported if you look at the way some rape and sexual abuse victims are treated in court. The law was changed in 2000 to prevent women's sexual pasts being used to argue that they must have consented to have sex. But there is evidence that victims' past sex lives are being raked over in court all too often.

In the past, Redcar MP Vera Baird, a barrister and prominent campaigner on rape issues, has said that a "depressingly large" number of judges still consider sexual history to be relevant. Yet in the Amnesty figures, one in five people said they would think the woman was partially to blame if she had had many sexual partners.

People's attitudes are also worrying when you consider 'date rape' cases, when the lines between consensual and non consensual sex are blurred for a jury. Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald QC says these are the most difficult cases for prosecutors to prove.

''Generally they turn upon one person's word against another, the sorts of stereotype in the Amnesty survey come into play and the prosecution have the burden of proving the case beyond reasonable doubt," he says.

''Sometimes with all of those factors in play, it can be difficult for prosecutors to exclude reasonable doubt, or so juries seem to feel.''

So, can the way people perceive rape victims ever by changed?

Ken Macdonald says it is a major challenge for the criminal justice system.

''I have been saying for some time that this is an issue which can't simply be solved by police or by prosecutors," he says. "These are jury trials. The jury is the community in the courtroom and it is reasonable to suppose the jury brings into the courtroom a lot of the attitudes we have been reading about over the last day or so.

''I think what it requires is for judges and lawyers to approach these cases in a very particular way so that the sorts of stereotype we have been hearing about are excluded as far as possible."

Dilys Davy says it is hard to change perceptions among the general public but that surveys like the Amnesty poll do help.

"It's about raising awareness, but how do you do that on a national scale and how do you get that to the general public?" she says. "Domestic violence has been used a lot lately in soaps such as Coronation Street and EastEnders and it gives people a bit of understanding. One way would be if it was in a soap then it would reach the general public and they would get an idea of how rape impacts on the woman for the rest of their lives."

Amnesty International's UK director Kate Allen says the Government should act to combat people's perceptions and the "dreadfully low" conviction rates in rape cases.

"It is shocking that so many people will lay the blame for being raped at the feet of women themselves and the Government must launch a new drive to combat this sexist 'blame culture'. These findings should act as a wake-up call to the Government."

But unless perceptions change, the wake-up call may be too late for the thousands of women who are brave enough to face the judicial system.

Says Ms Davy: "Even if it does get to court, you only have to look at the juries. Juries are made up of the general public, and if they have these attitudes towards women, what hope have you got?"