Why we scream

[Trigger warning]

“Innocent until proven guilty” rings hollow when a rape victim never gets the opportunity to even make their case. Why do we keep pretending evil crimes eventually get punished by our governments?

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It’s May 2021. I look through my case file and all the mistakes I can find in letters from the Public Prosecution Office. There are many. They’ve apologised for exactly 1 of those mistakes and recognised I was indeed sexually abused. No intention to prosecute however (/s it’s just rape you know, pretty normal these days ).

If I want to have my day in court, I’ll have to start another procedure that might take years.

Ughr. It’s taken 4 years already just to get to this point.

I start counting mistakes. Some are simple such as wrong dates; my government will again hind behind ‘clerical errors’ if I were to point them out. Others are less ‘simple’. Wrong translations of words cannot be justified if you claim to be a ‘first world government’ - let alone making witness testimonies ‘disappear’.

But of all the mistakes, the most telling one probably is that there’s no mention of the fact that I was a hospitalised psychiatric patient when I was raped in December 2016. How come a psychiatric patient was raped outside a hospital, while she was committed, and that there’s no mention of this hospital in official records about the crime? Especially because this fact means tougher criminal laws could be applied? The media did investigate and fact-checked I was a hospitalised psychiatric patient (drugged on doctor’s administered medication), but you won’t find this in the ‘investigation’ the police and Prosecution Office did. In fact, the nationality of the perpetrator can’t even be found in the case file. The police interrogated him but could not verify where he was from. Or rather: after the man took a plane to my country, they didn’t demand him to show his passport.

This is the reality of rape investigations. They are pretty much bullshit.

Don’t believe me? I have some statistics.

While there were 52,210 rapes recorded by police in England and Wales in 2020, only 843 resulted in a charge or a summons – a rate of 1.6%. That statistic surely can’t be attributed to ‘proper police investigations’ and twisted into ‘98,4% of accused rapists were innocent!’, unless you’re a sociopath.

When we look at my own country, the statistics aren’t much better. Sex without consent has not even been criminalised in The Netherlands yet (although we’re working towards getting to that point.. Finally). Victims have to ‘prove’ violence and/or threat was used during ‘penetration’. If you can prove the rapist knew you didn’t want sex, congratulations, you’ve proved nothing: that’s not called rape here. In my country, you’re pretty much expected to be beaten half to death and to fight when you get raped. Oh, you were threatened at knife point and ‘allowed’ the person to rape you in order to survive? Do you have the knife with their DNA and were they ‘caught’ by a witness? If not, tough luck. All you will prove with a rape-kit is that someone ‘had sex with you’. Unless they actually cut you too, enjoy the legal system; it will fail you. You might have a shot if a stranger raped you, but if it’s an (ex) partner or someone you know, not so much.

Few rape cases make it to court in The Netherlands. If you are a ‘lucky’ victim (I can’t believe I’m writing this), your rapist will get 6 months in prison. You see, since 2017, the courts have not once imposed the maximum prison sentence of 12 years for rape here. The highest sentence imposed was 6 years, the lowest 21 days (!). On average, a convicted rapist in this country - famous for being the biggest child porn distributor in the world - spends 1 year and 5 months in prison. So much for justice huh? You might as well spare yourself years of traumatising police investigations and court dates and go on a trip around the world for 1 year and 5 months. At least you will see some parts of this beautiful earth (I pray you don’t get raped while traveling though).

Survivors have started shouting publicly - and rightly so - about rape culture and the injustice of so many abusers walking free. When survivors scream, they are often met with the same response: ‘innocent until proven guilty!!!!!!’ - a term referencing Human Rights and criminal court. But how can you shout ‘innocent until proven guilty’ I wonder, when most rape cases don’t even make it to court? In criminal court, a government files a case against someone for committing a crime, but a lot of people seem to forget that governments have not been formed to prosecute every single crime. Governments have been formed to collect money from citizens to provide a structure in society that somewhat makes sure chaos doesn’t take over. Occasionally crimes get prosecuted to keep that structure in place. Prosecuting crimes costs money however. Money doesn’t grow on trees. When there’s not even enough money to have the police investigate crimes so they can be prosecuted, why do we expect them to be prosecuted at all?

The answer to that we might be able to find in the just-world hypothesis (or fallacy): the cognitive bias that someone’s actions will cause morally fair and fitting consequences. It’s the assumption that bad people get punished and noble people get rewarded. A lot of people desperately cling to the idea that governments care and the police protects us and bad people get ‘what’s coming for them’ because if they wouldn’t they’d have to open their eyes and see the world for what it is and frankly many people are just not interested in that. Ignorance is a castle of bliss built on the bones of the tortured people of the world.

When we live in a society where the majority of accused rapists never even have to show their faces in court, believing ‘justice will happen if the crime was committed’ is, again, bullshit. It surprises me so many people still shout ‘innocent until proven guilty’ when confronted with rape cases. It’s like there’s some kind of collective psychosis going on when the trigger word ‘rape’ appears somewhere; a denial of reality on top of the denial of even a hint of justice.

Survivors deserve better, but many people have decided as a whole Human Rights don’t apply to rape victims. But my God - does it apply to the ‘accused’ apparently?

Is finding out the truth not what we strive for anymore?

Is a 1.6% prosecution rate on average in rape cases the best we can do?

The world should get ready for a Black Mirror doom scenario if nothing changes: a moment in time when rape victims might revolt and collectively start murdering their rapists.

First they will start filming to get confessions.

Next they will find out that filming doesn’t change a damn thing.

The final stage is where they will start shooting their abusers.

That’s the worst case scenario.

But look on the bright side. If a lot of men (and some women) will get murdered for being rapists, governments might finally invest in proper police investigations and the prosecution of rapists just to stop the mass killing of rapists.

There’s a silver lining in everything huh?

Let’s just hope the ‘Rapist Reckoning’ never happens and instead we start caring about justice and give survivors a voice; before it’s too late.

Guardian front page, Monday 24 May 2021: Just 1.6% of rape cases lead to a charge, figures reveal pic.twitter.com/vEOL6LMIUy

— The Guardian (@guardian) May 23, 2021