Week 2: Domestic violence

The issue of domestic violence brings together some of the key issues about victimology that we have looked at so far, as well as connecting with some of the issues we'll be looking at this term.

First point: you can't talk about victims without talking about the 'dark figure'. If you want to know how many people have been victims of which crimes, nobody would suggest relying on police recorded crime figures: there are all sorts of reasons (good as well as bad) why crimes can be committed and not end up in police statistics. But that means that you have to get your information from somewhere else - and all the possible alternative sources have their own issues. What the Crime Survey for England and Wales records isn't how many crimes of type X were committed, but how many people answered Yes when they were asked if they'd been a victim of crime X. This doesn't matter very much if crime X is car theft, for example, but it matters a lot in the case of domestic violence: the statement "I have been a victim of domestic violence" can mean very different things depending on who is saying it, and the victims who suffer the most may not be the ones most likely to say Yes when asked.

Second, both victimisation and victimhood are related to power. A feminist explanation of domestic violence is that it happens when a sexist man feels his patriarchal dominance being challenged, and uses force to put his partner back in her place. The 'family violence' model of domestic violence is not driven by power in this way; instead, it relates domestic violence to the powerlessness of poor and socially excluded groups. Other researchers combine the two, arguing that men who feel powerless react violently, taking it out on their partners. The question of how to gain recognition as a victim is also closely related to power in society, as we saw when we were looking at the Ideal Victim.

Third, crimes against women are (still) treated differently. Comic artist Alan Moore's comments on the fictional representations of rape and murder are relevant here:

From what I understand, last year there were 60,000 rapes in the UK ... I would have to say that I do not recall the sixty thousand homicides that occurred in the UK last year, possibly because – well, they didn’t, did they? Except, of course, in the pages of fiction, where I would imagine that there were considerably more violent deaths than the above-mentioned figure. It would appear that in the real world, which the great majority of people are compelled to live in, there are relatively few murders in relation to the staggering number of rapes and other crimes of sexual or gender-related violence, this being almost a complete reversal of the way that the world is represented in its movies, television shows, literature or comic-book material.

Similarly, survey figures from the 1990s suggest that 400,000 women were chronic - repeated, day after day - victims of domestic violence, and that 240,000 had been 'very frightened' by the last incident. These are staggeringly high figures. A large part of the story of contemporary victimology is the story of overlooked female victims.

Two final points, looking ahead to the remainder of the unit. Point four: victims and criminal justice don't mix (at least, not straightforwardly). The criminal justice process struggles to find a role for victims; all too often victims are sidelined, or else exploited to justify harsh sentencing. Calling the police, and setting the criminal justice machinery in motion, may not be the best way to resolve a domestic violence situation; it's certainly not likely to empower the victim, even if it makes her safer in the short term.

And point five: restorative justice has a lot to offer. Domestic violence, one of the areas where conventional criminal justice has failed badly, is an area where restorative justice has the potential to succeed. Restorative justice puts the victim centre stage and makes it possible to tailor a justice process which meets the needs of that individual victim - and that individual offender.

Term 2, week 1: Rape and rape myths

"a female slave has ... an admitted right, and is considered under a moral obligation, to refuse to her master the last familiarity. Not so the wife: however brutal a tyrant she may unfortunately be chained to - though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to loathe him - he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations."
- John Stuart Mill (1869), The Subjection of Women

"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
- Germaine Greer (1970), the Female Eunuch

Rape is a difficult topic to write about. On one hand, many people would agree with Mill that it is "the lowest degradation of a human being" - worse than violent assault or even torture. (Anyone who starts a fight (or plays rugby) is consenting to being assaulted; masochists consent to being tortured. By definition, it's not possible to consent to being raped.) On the other hand, feminists have identified rape as being part of a spectrum of male violence against women and girls - the extreme end, but it still has something in common with other parts of the spectrum, from soft porn and blonde jokes to abuse and domestic violence. Rape is at once extreme and typical - a crime which is universally denounced, but one which carries a message (men's hatred and fear of women) that is absolutely normal and everyday.

How does a male-dominated society deal with this contradiction? Essentially (feminists would argue), by denying the reality of rape. We looked at some key rape myths in the lecture. Firstly, rape is informally defined along "ideal victim"/"ideal offender" lines. A woman who is raped by a stranger in a dark alley is a real rape victim; a woman raped in her own home by her boyfriend should kick him out and be more careful in future. Secondly, rape is informally defined - and, until quite recently, was legally defined - as something that doesn't happen within a marriage: it was only in 1994 that the law was changed so that a married man could be found guilty of raping his wife. Thirdly, a lot of weight is given to the man's state of mind; the myth here is that a man can only commit rape if he thinks he's committing rape. Again, this is an area where the law has changed relatively recently: until the Sexual Offences Act 2003, a man accused of rape could claim that he "honestly believed" the victim had consented, and this would be a defence against the charge. (The defendant now has to show that he had a reasonable belief in consent, which is a lot more demanding.) Lastly, when a rape case comes to court, there is what you could call a professional myth: the myth that rape can be treated in just the same as any other crime, and that justice will be done in the same way. The reality is that women reporting rape, who have had to get through a massive obstacle course in order to get to court, now face the same obstacles all over again in the form of the first three myths - which live on in the minds of the jury (and can be exploited by defence lawyers), even if they aren't supported any more by the letter of the law.

The feminist analysis is powerful; you don't have to agree with every detail of it (for example, describing everyday forms of sexism as male violence) to think that it can tell us a lot about how rape is dealt with in our society. But, as it often does, the feminist analysis here leaves us with a question: what is to be done? How can the under-reporting, under-prosecution and under-conviction of rape charges be addressed?