Rape is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused.
You probably know at least one of them well. You run into them in your everyday life. They may seem normal to you, but what they could be hiding is one of the scariest experiences any person could ever have. Rape is one of the most horrendous crimes that a person could commit on another, and it is even worse for the victim, because in 21st century America, rape victims are constantly questioned and undermined during trials. Victims of other crimes never have to answer questions like "Where were you? What were you wearing? How much did you have to drink?" (Ruby, Stop Tolerating 37). In fact, it is bad enough that almost 90% of all rapes are never reported, and as a result, 98% of the victims will never see their attackers apprehended, convicted, or incarcerated (37). Rape is a problem that America needs to stop tolerating and accepting, and start to fight. To do this, we need to remove the focus from the victim and require law enforcement officials to assume that the victim is telling the truth, instead of questioning them through the entire process.
Part of the problem is a clear definition of what constitutes rape. Currently in the United States, rape is defined as the non-consensual penetration of a vagina or anus by a .
.
penis, hand, or other object (Anderson 110). This definition is good, but in a different country such as England, the definition is penetration by a penis only. This definition.
means that females are incapable of committing this act, when the truth is that there do exist cases of women raping men. However, it is an extreme rarity that these cases are ever reported, because of the embarrassment that is included in this action, and the sheer disbelief of others. This helps explain why the number of reported rapes is low for the female population, because this embarrassment is similar to what the women who report rape are subjected to.