key links
"Did you know ... many rape crisis groups are under funded and rely on volunteers"
I am a student looking for information on rape/sexual abuse
Rape Crisis England and Wales aim to provide a range of facilities and resources to allow the continuance and development of Rape Crisis Centres throughout England and Wales. Unfortunately we are not able to answer vast numbers of enquires due to limited office staff. However we hope to provide all information that is required on the website.
If you are student doing a project on Rape, there is a great deal of information we provide on our site. Try looking at the section ‘What is Rape’ for general information about Rape and different kinds of rape. The section on Law, will provide a good overview of the legal factors associated with rape, and the sorts of procedures a women reporting a case of rape will be expected to go through.
For a wider selection of information on related topic, recent publications, and policy issues, check out the ‘articles’, and out statistics page provides up to date statistics and a link to the Home Office, who publish the official statistics.
There are also several other websites, which have information for students researching within this area.
- SERICC @ http://www.thurrock-community.org.uk/sericc/students.htm
- Fawcett Society @ www.fawcettsociety.org.uk
-Truth campaign www.truthaboutrape.co.uk
You may also be interested in looking at our key links section, which will take to you our counterpart websites in Scotland, Ireland and Europe.
And of course check out our Frequently Asked Questions list for any further questions you might have.
"Did you know ... if you have written something valuable about rape crisis we would like to showcase it"
Insightful Students
This section showcases work that has been undertaken by students
Attitudes Towards Rape: Do People Still Believe In Myths?
Undertaken as part of a BSc in Social Policy at Bristol University by Rebecca Bruce
This research project looked at the attitudes of people in modern society toward rape and the extent to which people still believe rape myths. 85 questionnaires were completed by 40 females and 45 males, from a variety of ages and with a variety of qualifications.
All of the myths stated had more respondents disagree with them than agree, although the figures were very close in some cases. Many of the statements had few respondents stating that they “strongly agree” or “strongly disagree”, implying that many people simply do not know enough about this topic to have clear and strong opinions of it. The areas in which most information and future campaigning are needed are in connection with:-
1. Whether women are responsible for being raped
? 59.5% of respondents disagreed with the fact that “women are never responsible for being raped.
2. The relationship of the victim to the perpetrator
? 38.6% of respondents believed that “rape mostly occurs between strangers” and 15.1% of respondents did not know that it is “against the law to rape your wife”.
3. The conviction that many women falsely accuse men of rape
? 38.6% “Many women “cry rape” due to changing their minds afterwards” - 49.3% of respondents believed this myth.
4. The belief that few women get raped in their lifetime
? - 46.5% of respondents believed the myth that “very few women get raped”.
There was an emerging pattern that those aged 20-29 and 50-59 were more likely to believe rape myths than respondents from the other age categories and so it is towards these two age groups that feminists should focus their future campaigns.
Gender had little affect on the results, concluding that feminists have managed to persuade both many women and, more importantly, many men, that rape myths are not true.
The results for whether the length of time that a person spends in education affects their beliefs in rape myths are inconclusive. Some of the results showed that by staying in education for longer, one is more likely not to believe rape myths but other results showed that many people, no matter what their highest obtained qualification, disagree with rape myths anyway.
The knowledge section revealed that few people were confident that their knowledge about rape was very good
? Only 40.1% of respondents thought their knowledge of rape was “good” and only 2.4% thought it was “very good“.
This is a situation which can be improved with the spreading of more knowledge.
The most common source of people’s knowledge about rape was through reading newspapers (94%) and this was closely followed by the television (82%) and so it is these sources that future campaigners against rape should put their information in, in order for the most amount of people to see it.
The results of this project generally show that the feminists from the second wave feminist movement that have campaigned against rape and rape myths for so many years, have definitely had a positive effect on society and reduced the amount of people that believe in rape myths but that there are still large amounts of people that believe rape myths and there are particular myths that are still very prevalent in society.