How Not to Treat Rape

We have often sensed an attitude to rape (especially by our police forces) that is downright shocking. One gets the feeling that the police in our country treat rape as a minor crime that ought not to get reported. That is perhaps the reason why victims of rape often prefer not to report the crime to the police. People should be impelled to take strong steps to change the attitude of the police force to such a heinous crime. There should be strong appeals to the Supreme Court to intervene and take a hand in the matter in the way it has done in respect of the updating of the National Register of Citizens. However, people should protest strongly against the attitude of British universities to rape. According to a recent report, British universities are brushing students’ reports of rape under the carpet in order to save their reputation, according to claims made by a leading feminist campaigner. Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism campaign, has said that victims were reporting an “epidemic” of rape among British institutions, but tutors, supervisors and even those in charge of pastoral care were telling them “not to make a fuss”. Laura Bates claimed that victims were “told not to go to the police” in order not to “tarnish the reputation of the university”. It is indeed unfortunate that British universities should imagine that their reputations can be protected by merely preventing the victims of rape from seeking justice to heinous crimes committed against them. If anything, British universities should go all out against such crimes, since it is not the university that commits such crimes, but someone who happens to be a student of the university.