A short but intriguing new piece from Ally Fogg. A major US study reports that in 2011, an estimated 1.7% of American men were ‘forced to penetrate’ in the preceding year, compared with an estimated 1.6% of women who were raped. Would we really expect the situation in the UK to be markedly different? Surely not.
We’re currently researching the area of sexual offences for our manifesto. I left the following comment on Ally’s blog, illustrating the shocking ‘gender gap’ in the UK with respect to sexual offences convictions:
“We’re currently researching this area for our election manifesto. Just had a FoI response from the Ministry of Justice, which speaks volumes about the gender bias of the justice system in this area, as in many others. To be fair, in the area of sexual assault, the problem is compounded by men’s reluctance to acknowledge they’ve been sexually assaulted, then their reluctance to report it, especially when the assailants are women. Reminding ourselves that slightly more men are ‘forced to penetrate’ than women are raped – in the US, anyway – let’s have a look at England & Wales stats for 2013:
RAPE CONVICTIONS
Men – 980 (924 sentenced to immediate custodial sentences)
Women – 5 (5 sentenced…)
ATTMEPTED RAPE CONVICTIONS
Men – 134 (122 sentenced…)
Women – 2 (2 sentenced…)
SEXUAL ASSAULT, INCLUDING INDECENT ASSAULT CONVICTIONS
Men – 2,352 (1,210 sentenced…)
Women – 28 (11 sentenced…)”
