This programme is said to be a unique investigation into the crime of rape, certainly from a UK perspective, but does it live up to the hype?

There are three problems with rape: men commit it; women lie about it; and anyone - certainly any male - who attempts to discuss it rationally, will be branded a mysoginist. Or worse. There are said to be no less than 46 centres in the UK devoted to referrals for sexual assault. St. Mary's, which is featured here, was the first. The cameras follow two women throughout. Although only their first names are given, they will be readily identifiable by family, friends and neighbours, etc. Last year no fewer than 1,209 people came or were sent to St Mary's after claiming they had been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted. The two most important words in that sentence are claimed and people. Not every allegation of rape or sexual assault is bona fide, in spite of what the campus rape industry would have us believe, and there are also male victims, primarily as one would suspect, the very young. St. Mary's is very sensibly run by an all-woman team - no, that is not blatant sexism, but common sense. The last thing any rape victim wants or needs is a male doctor prodding about inside her. The youngest victim they've seen here was three weeks old, it is said, a crime that is barely conceivable, but sadly not unknown. A fair number of scenes in this documentary are staged for the camera; they might be called reconstructions, but this sort of thing is annoying for any even mildly skeptical viewer. Is it really necessary to show a woman turning up for an appointment with the camera positioned behind her? The first featured case, Juliet, was the victim of predatory opportunism on New Year's Eve. The impression gleaned from this documentary is that while she was in a club, the rapist slipped a date rape drug into her drink then followed her outside and had his way with her. The fact that she had no memory of the vaginal rape but only of being orally raped, suggests that. What really happened though is barely believable. She was not drugged but drank herself paralytic, something that is always inadvisable - for men as well as women - if nothing else it is an invitation to be robbed. She was not followed outside, rather she was dragged into an alleyway by an opportunist who raped her. Then, incredibly, another predator found her and forced her to fellate him. Only the first of these sickos was caught; Mustafa Yussuf was given a 7 year sentence at Manchester Crown Court. Although this was undoubtedly the correct verdict, one wonders if it was necessary for Juliet to testify from behind a screen. This sort of nonsense is extremely prejudicial to any defendant. Yussuf claimed to have been drunk himself and to have consumed a bottle of brandy; CCTV told a different tale. The second woman followed by the cameras here had far less credibility. By her own admission, Kelie had been prostituting herself to feed her drug habit, and was raped by a client/friend, a man with whom she'd had sex before willingly and had known for some considerable time. Is it really prejudice or simply common sense for the police to treat an allegation of rape by a harlot less seriously than that of a decent if foolish young woman who drinks herself senseless? In this case, the woman was believed, and Shahid Raza was given a sentence of eight years and six months. Would you really like to have sat on the jury that had to decide that one? Although this documentary was made to a high professional standard, it is also clearly a propaganda document. It is claimed here that only 3% of rape allegations are false; 3% of what percent? It goes further though, and at the beginning a message is flashed on the screen to the effect that a rape is committed in Britain every six minutes. Do the math, 240 rapes every single day?

Alexander Baron

It's a shame the BBC had to contaminate an otherwise thoughtful programme about a serious issue with these kind of manufactured statistics.

 

 

For a more realistic view check out the researches of Eugene Kanin and Christina Hoff Sommers. Just to be totally politically correct, a case of homosexual rape is thrown in, although we are not given any details. This programme is currently on iplayer for those who can receive it. Rape is a serious crime and should always be treated as such, as it is here, but gratuitous exaggeration of the scale of the offence helps no one and nothing, least of all justice.

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