http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/07/26/anti-rape-campaigns-hey-women-stop-getting-so-drunk/

ContactUs contactus@westmercia.pnn.police.uk	3:30 PM (8 hours ago)
to me

Dear Emma,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us and express your concerns regarding our recent Safe Night Out campaign.

West Mercia Police takes allegations of rape and sexual assault very seriously and we categorically do not believe victims are to blame.

The campaign (which was developed by another police force but in consultation with a number of victim support organisations) has now ended but the feedback we have received will be used to help evaluate it and to develop future campaigns.
Thank you again for contacting us and for your frankness.

West Mercia Police apologise over rape campaign poster

An anti-rape charity said the posters put the blame on the victim

West Mercia police has apologised for a poster campaign which an anti-rape charity called "inappropriate."

Worcestershire Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Centre claimed the Safe Night Out campaign blamed victims who had been drinking for sexual assault.

Jocelyn Anderson, from the centre, said: "It's not alcohol that causes rape, although it's a vulnerability factor, it's rapists that cause rape."

The poster appeared in pubs in the force area in July.

Det Supt Ivan Powell said: "If the campaign has caused distress, that was not our aim and I will apologise for that.

"This was not about blaming victims but putting information out to help.

"I understand there have been some concerns about the nature of the poster but I would stress what we are trying to do here is putting information out showing potential victims how to avoid becoming vulnerable."

Ms Anderson said: "The problem was the poster put the blame on to alcohol and women who are raped, suggesting if they didn't drink they could avoid rape.

"I think it's great the police have realised that the poster was giving off an inappropriate message and admitted on this occasion they got it wrong."

West Mercia Police covers Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.

Hi

I write to you because I am appalled by your latest anti rape campaign and would like to see you remove it and start again with proper consultation with people who truly understand the issues surrounding rape. As someone who has been raped after having had a little too much to drink, being dressed sexily and spending my evening flirting with someone, as I did and have every right to do I am 100% fed up with this sort of campaign. Blaming someone for a malicious attack - suggesting that she could in anyway protect herself from a revolting sub species is pathetic and simply encourages silence and suicide.

I am performing a piece about my experience at the Fringe this year and will be using your campaign to highlight how victim blaming continues and is made yet worse as it comes directly from those people that are supposed to be there to protect us. No wonder we don't report it to a group of people who are extremely likely to infer that we were someway responsible for what has happened to us and who are apparently trained to make us 'break' and admit we were lying. We already feel this, shame and guilt for what we were unable to protect ourselves from and your lack of support and understanding towards us and our rights to behave in anyway we wish are simply archaic and utterly unhelpful.

We should stop funding police led campaigns and give the money to proper support organisations who realise the damage rape causes and know the only way to reduce rape is to further punish the perpetrators and improve our policing and prosecuting.

I look forward to hearing what you decide to do about this.

Regards

Emma

contactus@westmercia.pnn.police.uk	4:14 PM (2 minutes ago)
to me

Thank you for e-mailing West Mercia Police. We will respond to your message within 24hrs and where necessary provide a more detailed response as soon as we can. If your e-mail indicates dissatisfaction with our service provision then we will reply to you within 24hrs of the matter being reported.

Crazy Condom Factory

Deserving?

http://www.change.org/petitions/scottish-government-stop-cutting-the-50-of-funding-to-rape-and-abuse-charities

Interview with a serial rapist...

Thanks to a dear dear friend the translation is pretty much complete - phew!

Me: Why did you rape?

Him: That's a really hard question.  It's a question I don't really ask myself.  I've got my explanation, but....

Me: No, but I think you've got to give your explanation.

Him: Well, I think all sorts of stuff comes into it.  The first thing is, given that it was something that was harassing me psychologically, that's to say, it was keeping me awake every night; well, I'd fall asleep and wake up at 2am, like, it was my conscience that woke me up;  I found myself thinking of these women, and then it would become painful for me,  it was incessant, in my head, and then I couldn't get back to sleep.  You try to think about it, but there's no answer.  I can talk about it a bit now, but then, I just couldn't, you see?  As there's no answer, you can't get your head around it.   You get no reply, so you have to stop, but you can't stop, you can't stop wondering.  Because it's always there, always there, always there, all the time.  And the mechanism is such that, I would say to myself, you've got to go ahead and do it, to get it out of your head.  In the end it was that, it was always that.  It was to free my mind;  it was pathetic/I was completely wrong in that,  (complètement caduc),  it did free me in that I passed on to a different context, that is, guilt;  it made me unhappy, so I was in some other sphere;  you tell yourself that you are bad through and through,  but it's true that I raped in order to free my mind, I mean, I had the impression that it would. 

After, when I'd done it, it's obvious that... er ... often the satisfaction lay in the preparation; so it made me .... er.... well  ... I was in a position of dominance;  I dominated everything:  time, ways into houses, all the preparation,  it's true that I always asked myself:  “why are you doing this?  OK, sure, it's making you feel good, but why are you doing it?”  And, effectively, it was to assault a woman.  Now, to go as far as rape, frankly I don't have a clue;  as I grew up, once I'd made love with women, when I went out with women and got to know them, I think that the aim was that.  The aim was to go and make love to a woman.  I say, to make love, but I mean rape, actually.  But, er, what was I about to say?  (Long pause.)  It was complicated, that's for sure.  

Was it about power, control, sex?...

Me: So, you were saying why you did it; you mentioned dominance;  was it to dominate, or for power, (or just for the sex)?

Him: It was to take what was not given to me, I think.  To take that love, too, that wasn't given to me.  There was that too.

Me: But it was never for the sex?

Him: No, the rape was because, ultimately, since I was a little kid, I had that desire, to touch a woman's breasts, and each time, I would masturbate.  So that formed part of the mechanism.  Each time that I thought about it, that it took over my mind at night, either I went out and... I didn't do it systematically, but the end result was masturbation – ejaculation.  And the pressure dropped.  So I could move on.  Ultimately, the whole point was that.  Luckily, for a lot of women, it stopped there;  I got to the foot of their bed, and I just masturbated;  with others, no.  There were so so so many times.  But the point was to masturbate, to ejaculate, to evacuate.  That's what it boiled down to.  Like for all men.

Me: You have done an enormous amount of harm to the women you have raped and assaulted what do you feel with regards to that?

Him: What I feel is that it's a waste, I feel... it's complicated; it's complicated too.  I'm unhappy, of course it makes me unhappy.  But then, I don't want to dwell on it.  I just can't.  I can't take pity on them

Because if I do, I can't go forward.  I can't ...yes, I've got to try to ... I know perfectly well what I've done, what I've committed, I hope they find a way out, I hope that they fight it and beat it.  But I can't go on and on thinking about it.  Otherwise I can't continue.  I wouldn't go forward, otherwise.    So, whether that pleases people or not, then well, either they accept, and accept to release us prisoners, or they cut off our heads, which doesn't bother me;  they can cut my head off and that's the end of it.  But if they don't cut it off, then we have to believe that we can start afresh, because if it's to harass us... We're still human beings, you know.  We can start over with the.... I feel hatred against myself, me I've enormous amounts of hatred against myself inside, that's for sure.

Me: What are your relationships with women like now?

Him: The same as I had before.  I always have a very good relationship with women. 

Me: But is it exactly the same, or is it...

Him: It the same, except... it's the same

Me: Except that, what, you're more honest?

Him: I'm more honest because I say where I've been, and I tell them what I've done.  So my relationship with women, when it's false, is very difficult.  As for me, my approach is still the same, but after it's really hard.  Obviously, it's really hard.  To tell things as they are, (d'annoncer la couleur), 

Me: So you can no longer hide?

Him: It's happened, at times, that...(long pause – he says he has forgotten what he wanted to say)

So you have deeper relationships now, then?

No, I've …TBC

Me: You said back there that you were trying to find a certain type of woman? 

Him: That's part of it.  Women from a socially privileged background.  Deep down, it was that?

Me: Why? 

Him: Well, I interpreted it like that.  I've spoken about it to my psychologist.  Discussing this with psychotherapists, the real reason is that my mum always spoke about money, work, success, rather than speaking about love.  We had to work all the time.  Since I was a little kid, since the age of seven, at home I worked;  the minute I got home from school, I had to work:  I had to feed the animals, or go and fetch such and such, in short, there was a bit of revenge in my behaviour, I was transposing something onto these women who had that class status;  I don't think about it, but that's it:  they have class but they don't look after their kids – it's completely wrong, I know that now;  it's deep-rooted;  I didn't realize it at the time;  but it was there, I felt it, that's for sure.  

Whao

Audre Lorde - Sister Outsider

We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us...it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.