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Authors: Jennifer Brown Sandra. Walklate
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878). Brown and Horvath (2009: 333) argue that culturally embedded sexual scripts, which dominate the negotiation of sexual encounters, make it difficult for women to change their minds. Such scripts tend to cast men as the sexual pursuer and initiator of sex while women are the gatekeepers whose role is to grant permission for sex to take place. Reliance on such scripts can lead to some confusion because if women fail to signal no clearly, or men fail to understand, there is a perception by men that the confusion is the result of miscommunication. This represents blame shifting, whereby the woman becomes responsible for the apparent
communication problem.
Communicating is at the heart of Liam Bell, Amanda Finelli and Marion Wynne-Davies’s Chapter 2. Their starting point is the notion of the commonality of sexual violence, a point which resonates with Kelly’s continuum of violence concept. Their point of departure is Brownmiller’s notion of women ‘fighting back’ and the idea that rather than violence being an act of self-defence, women may actually initiate it, a point the Kelly continuum does not concede. Their gripping analysis deconstructs the victim–perpetrator relationship through the medium of the novel. Using Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve they challenge the concept of the self-defending woman by examining the violating woman. They also discuss the idea of responsibility for violence and the excuse given by a male character in the novel, Zero, that the notion of repressed sexual dissatisfaction gives rise to sexual violation. Interestingly David Canter, in his exposition of the rapes and murders committed by John Francis Duffy, notes that Duffy blamed his wife for his escalating levels of violence perpetrated on his victims. Canter writes: ‘John Duffy had found out that he was infertile and some of his most violent assaults took place after he discovered that his ex-wife had become pregnant by another man after she had left Duffy’ (Canter 1994: 51). In court, Duffy’s former wife explained that ‘he [Duffy] said he raped a girl and said it was my fault.’
Are things getting better?
All this sounds pessimistic and rather bleak. So has there been any progress? In Chapter 4 Sylvia Walby and her colleagues map the occurrence of sexual violence over time through a self-report victimisation survey (the British Crime Survey), police-recorded crime and academic research results. They discuss the problems of accurate measurement of the extent of sexual violence and the continued problem of attrition, in other words the pinch points at which cases drop out of the justice process. A major pinch point is the failure to report sexual violence to the police in the first instance and the high percentage of cases in which the police decide to take no further action.
Miranda Horvath and Mark Yexley’s Chapter 5 charts the development of police training in sexual offences investigations. They start with the ‘bad old days’. In the 1970s the attitude of police towards sexual offences was one of suspicion and disbelief of the victim. This was epitomised by a comment by Detective Sergeant Alan Firth of the West Midlands Police, who wrote in the Police Review of 28 November 1975 (page 1507):
Women and children complainants in sexual matters are notorious for embroidery or complete fabrication of complaints . . . It should be borne in mind that except in the case of a very young child, the offence of rape is extremely unlikely to have been committed against a woman who does not immediately show signs of extreme violence . . . If a woman walks into a police station and complains of rape with no such signs of violence, she must be closely interrogated. Allow her to make her statement to a policewoman and then drive a horse and cart through it . . . call her an outright liar. It is very difficult for a person to put on genuine indignation who has been called a liar to her face . . . Do not give her
communication problem.
Communicating is at the heart of Liam Bell, Amanda Finelli and Marion Wynne-Davies’s Chapter 2. Their starting point is the notion of the commonality of sexual violence, a point which resonates with Kelly’s continuum of violence concept. Their point of departure is Brownmiller’s notion of women ‘fighting back’ and the idea that rather than violence being an act of self-defence, women may actually initiate it, a point the Kelly continuum does not concede. Their gripping analysis deconstructs the victim–perpetrator relationship through the medium of the novel. Using Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve they challenge the concept of the self-defending woman by examining the violating woman. They also discuss the idea of responsibility for violence and the excuse given by a male character in the novel, Zero, that the notion of repressed sexual dissatisfaction gives rise to sexual violation. Interestingly David Canter, in his exposition of the rapes and murders committed by John Francis Duffy, notes that Duffy blamed his wife for his escalating levels of violence perpetrated on his victims. Canter writes: ‘John Duffy had found out that he was infertile and some of his most violent assaults took place after he discovered that his ex-wife had become pregnant by another man after she had left Duffy’ (Canter 1994: 51). In court, Duffy’s former wife explained that ‘he [Duffy] said he raped a girl and said it was my fault.’
Are things getting better?
All this sounds pessimistic and rather bleak. So has there been any progress? In Chapter 4 Sylvia Walby and her colleagues map the occurrence of sexual violence over time through a self-report victimisation survey (the British Crime Survey), police-recorded crime and academic research results. They discuss the problems of accurate measurement of the extent of sexual violence and the continued problem of attrition, in other words the pinch points at which cases drop out of the justice process. A major pinch point is the failure to report sexual violence to the police in the first instance and the high percentage of cases in which the police decide to take no further action.
Miranda Horvath and Mark Yexley’s Chapter 5 charts the development of police training in sexual offences investigations. They start with the ‘bad old days’. In the 1970s the attitude of police towards sexual offences was one of suspicion and disbelief of the victim. This was epitomised by a comment by Detective Sergeant Alan Firth of the West Midlands Police, who wrote in the Police Review of 28 November 1975 (page 1507):
Women and children complainants in sexual matters are notorious for embroidery or complete fabrication of complaints . . . It should be borne in mind that except in the case of a very young child, the offence of rape is extremely unlikely to have been committed against a woman who does not immediately show signs of extreme violence . . . If a woman walks into a police station and complains of rape with no such signs of violence, she must be closely interrogated. Allow her to make her statement to a policewoman and then drive a horse and cart through it . . . call her an outright liar. It is very difficult for a person to put on genuine indignation who has been called a liar to her face . . . Do not give her
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