*Trigger Warning* Sexual violence*
Someone told me the other day that if a person was a prostitute, they cannot be believed when they said they are raped. I simply dismissed the statement and said, "Prostitutes can still be raped." She hemmed and hawed saying, "Yeah, well," in a rather uncomfortable way. I felt like screaming. I think there's a tendency to blame the victim or even dismiss the victim under the circumstances. It may be that the only accepted form of rape is a woman being raped by a stranger when she's not walking down a dark alley (because hey, if she's walking down the dark alley, she may be "asking" for it by putting herself in a dangerous situation). We easily dismiss women (or men) who were drinking and could not consent to sex-- well, she shouldn't have drank that much or she should have known what was in her drink. I know of someone who was blamed for her rape. One girl was told by her roommate at the time, "You had to be a big girl and go out on your own." Really, going to a bar by herself meant that she was open to being raped? She was meeting friends and it was one of the friends that raped her. It's not like she met a stranger. She was comfortable with the person.
I also think it's easy to dismiss marital rape. Yes, a husband can rape a wife just as a wife can rape a husband. I bet such things goes under reported. In traditional Christian marriages, the woman is the servant (or to submit) to the husband. It may be my opinion, but this makes it sound like she is also obligated to have sex with him whether she wants it or not. It's also easy to dismiss marital rape because the couple may decide to stay together. This is a different idea from the mythology that only strangers rape people and they never see each other again.
Another issue I think plays into this is that generally, people don't want to believe that this happens. I was trying to convince my neighbor that even in church sex abuse scandals, people blame the victim or refuse to believe the person and stick by the priest. My neighbor had a difficult time understanding the concept.
On top of that, there are police. I'm not sure if police have any idea what they are doing when it comes to rape or sexual abuse. A person I knew who was raped at a young age by an older man and she was told that there was a difference between rape and regretting sex. They insinuated that she actually regretted sex and was not actually raped. It took years for her to talk about and more to even talk about how it felt like rape. Another person reported that the police didn't believe her since she was drugged and woke up three days later without her clothes. They said she could arrested for a false report. So, when it happened again, she was resistant to coming forward. What if they didn't believe her again? What if she was arrested for a false report?
I have no doubt that there are people who abuse the system. They blame people who were not to blame. A friend told me that his ex accused a man of rape and the guy was sent to jail because she didn't want to admit that she had sex with him. She knew that admitting that she had sex with him meant that my friend would not date her again. I wish that people like this friend's ex did not exist. They ruin things for others who had real experiences. In reality, people lie and there's no way to protect against these type of liars because that would mean that people might blame the victim more often than they do. We saw this in the Kobe Bryant case where the media was saying that this woman tried to say that Eminem raped her so she could get money. No matter if that's true, it is still possible that Kobe Bryant raped her.
When I encounter opinions like this, I really wonder about how many other people think the same way. I also worry that these people are also in the therapy field. What if someone did not realize that this was a bias and was seeing a patient/client with these problems? I hope they would not doubt them. I try very hard to make sure I'm educated about what's helpful for someone whose been through rape and sexual abuse because I don't want to be like that friend, roommate, or police officer that blames the victim.
