Washington: There were 88,097 rapes in
the United States in 2009 alone, according to FBI statistics, but the crime remains one of the least reported and prosecuted, witnesses have told US lawmakers.
"It`s widely recognised that rape is one of the most
underreported offences in the United States with empirical
studies estimating that merely 15-20 percent of cases are
reported to the police," Michelle Dempsey, a professor at
Villanova University School of Law told senators yesterday.
Roughly one in six women in the United States will
experience sexual aggression during their lifetime and half of
the victims were younger than 18 at the time of the assault,
an investigation presented to a subcommittee of the Senate
Judiciary Committee said.
Only five per cent of rapists are convicted and only
three per cent are imprisoned, Eleanor Smeal, president of the
Feminist Majority Foundation, told the committee.
"Fifteen out of 16 rapists in America will walk free,"
said Scott Berkowitz, president of the Rape, Abuse and Incest
National Network. That comes despite the FBI`s classification
of rape as second only in seriousness to murder.
Experts said a range of factors make rape difficult to
prosecute, including the way it is defined, victims` fear,
their desire to avoid humiliating witness testimony, and
unsympathetic or incompetent policing.
The 1927 Uniform Crime Report (UCR) classifies rape as
"the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her
will." But it does not include statutory rape, incest,
forcible sodomy, assault with an object and other forms
of equally traumatic sexual violence.
"The upshot of this narrow definition is that many
rapes are excluded from the UCR statistics," the Feminist
Majority Foundation said. The figures also count victims but
not the number of rapists.
Underreporting also makes it difficult to tell how
many assaults are taking place, experts said.
"Victims do not report because they fear that their
report will not be taken seriously, they will not be believed
or they will be seen as responsible for their own assault,"
said Carol Tracey, director of the Women`s Law Project in
Philadelphia.
That was what happened to Sara Reedy, 25, who was
attacked by a serial rapist in the drugstore where she worked
when she was just 19.
When she reported the crime, she was accused of
stealing and making up the assault. She spent five days in
jail and was released on USD 5,000 bail, but was only able to
pursue her attacker when he admitted he had raped her during
an interrogation after being arrested for a separate crime.
Bureau Report
