I am naturally concerned about the controversy triggered by this morning’s Mail on Sunday. I have written a serious, carefully researched and evidence-based book* which explodes many myths about crime and which explains why it rose so dramatically through the 1960s to the 1990s and has fallen so substantially since then. The Mail on Sunday bought the serialisation rights and last week printed a broad synopsis which on the whole was well-received. This week, rather to my misgivings, they chose to focus on a single chapter which touches on the highly emotive issue of rape. The edited version was fair, though the inevitable editing meant that it was not as thoroughly-explained as the original. Even so, read fairly and carefully, it should not give grounds for offence. However the headline should. I certainly found it offensive and so I am not surprised that others have too.
The headline ran:
“It’s heresy I know. But not all women are victims. And not all rape is rape: It is a view that will outrage many, but Crimewatch creator NICK ROSS insists it is a debate we must not flinch from.”
The words are explosive. But only without the proper context.
For the record, lest it needs saying, and, as I make clear in the published extracts, anyone who suffers such a violating crime should be the centre of our concerns. As I write in the book, rape is one of the most defiling crimes and there is never excuse or justification for it. Far from attacking victims the chapter explores why so few victims report rape, why so few prosecutions take place, and whether criminal courts are the best way of dealing with the appalling suffering caused by sex attacks.
The Mail’s headline is based on research I cite which found that many rape victims themselves do not regard what happened to them as rape, even though in law it plainly was. In other words victims themselves plainly see gradations in rape: ‘It has become sacrilege to suggest that there can be any gradation: rape is rape. The real experts, the victims, know otherwise.’
In fact far from taking a chauvinistic view my chapter on sexual crime disparages the patronising views of women that still too often prevail. Instead of disdaining victims I praise the work done by victim advocates. Over the past two decades I have devoted a lot of my energies to supporting victims’ groups and was for many years an active member of the advisory board of Victim Support.
And far from blaming people, my book says we are too quick to blame, and that it tends to distract us from finding solutions to crime. While I acknowledge the self-evident truth that we – all of us – may through our actions make ourselves safer or more vulnerable to crime, that is not even remotely the same thing as justifying assault. It sickens and appalls me that so many people now assume from that headline – or from comments elsewhere in the paper – that I blame victims or belittle what they suffer. The opposite is true.
I sincerely believe the book raises powerful and important challenges to conventional thinking about crime – and those who have read the book have praised it. There may – and I’m sure will be – reasoned arguments against some of the things I say. But it is nothing like as simplistic, let alone objectionable, as the some people would have you believe. This is a false storm.
They say all publicity is good publicity. My reputation is far more important to me than selling a few more books.
- NOTE TO EDITORS see www.thecrimebook.com
(Note from Biteback. The newspaper serialisation was negotiated by Nick Ross’s agents, PFD. The book will be published on 4 June)