Legal Justice for Rape Victims: Discussion Questions

Hi everyone,

Just a reminder that we have a Just Read meeting tonight at 7pm in Kaldi's Cafe. The topic is Legal Justice for Rape Victims, and hopefully you've all had an opportunity to look at the articles. If not, they are posted here on the blog (secret hint: scroll down). Since the discussion questions were a little lengthy this week, we decided to email them out so you would have a chance to look over them.

Also, we are still looking for people to sign up for a week to run the discussion. This is a great way to raise awareness on an issue you care about! Alternatively, it can be a great excuse to do a bit of digging and learn more about a topic you've been curious about. Please email me or Amy if you're interested.

See you tomorrow!


Legal Justice for Rape Victim discussion questions:

In what ways are rape survivors re-victimized by the legal system? How can we reduced this victimization?

Is the victims' duty to their own recovery paramount (especially given the frustrations the articles illuminated that often arise in dealings with the legal system), or does responsibility to society (i.e. to do the utmost to prosecute a rape) override that duty?

The incidence of victims being charged medical expenses, the under-funding and under-development of community-level rape prosecution organs, the under-processing of rape kits, and the chronic dubiousness law enforcement officials treat victims with all coallese into a perception of rape cases not as being not unlike civil suits for limited wrongs, and prosecution by the state as a favor or service rendered. Yet the threat of re-occurrence, a feminist reading of the rape act, forcing witnesses to testify, and indeed some historical/cultural perspectives (Lucretia vs. King of Rome) read rape as a crime against society as a whole. How do we reconcile our responsabiliy to a victim's recovery with an urge to promote an understanding of rape as a public outrage that cannot be trivialized, or indeed, remain private?


With juries, there is an unwillingness to convict in rape cases if they think the punishment does not match the crime. This means that victims who do not experience a socially accepted 'real rape' are less likely to get legal justice. There are various ways to approach this problem, including creating gradations of rape (which could devalue a victim's experience and further the real rape myth) or working on a grassroots level to change minds (a much longer process). What might be an effective compromise? (Again, this is in some ways a question of society vs victims rights.)


What can be done to change public opinion about 'real rape?' In a real way, how can we go about promoting awareness of the reality of rape, to deconstruct the myth of 'Real Rape?'