The Rise and Rise of Sexual Violence’

HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS/REFLEXIONS HISTORIQUES ‘The Rise and Rise of Sexual Violence’ by Joanna Bourke Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and author of Rape: A History from the 1860s to the Present Violent practices, technologies, and symbols increasingly permeate our everyday lives. This is the fact that Pinker seeks to debunk. He attempts to do so in five ways: by selectively choosing his data; minimising certain harms; adopting an evolutionary psychology approach; ignoring new forms of aggression; and failing to acknowledge the political underpinnings of his own research. In this article, I will explore these shortcomings in relation to sexual violence. The study of sexual violence is inherently difficult. We don’t know how many people are victims, not how many are perpetrators. Every statistical database has flaws. Pinker had chosen to rely on the US Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). This is highly problematic since the sample used by the NCVS excludes some groups of people who are most at risk of sexual assault, including ‘persons living in military barracks and institutional settings such as correctional or hospital facilities, and persons who are homeless’, as well as ‘persons living in group Quarters, such as dormitories, rooming houses, and religious group dwellings’.1 The exclusion of prisoners is particularly telling since Pinker reports positively on increased incarceration rates in the US, stating that one of the reasons for the decline of rape is that more ‘first-time rapists’ have been put ‘behind bars’.2 Indeed, the level of incarceration in the US is exceptional, with one in every 37 adults under some form of ‘correctional supervision’.3 Incarceration is not ‘race-blind’: African Americans are imprisoned more than five times the rate of whites.4 Given that sexually-violent men are unlikely to give up their practices, as levels of incarceration have increased dramatically, so too have levels of sexual assault in prisons. The NCVS does not record such increases in prison-based sexual violence: some violated bodies are not valued as highly as others. Pinker could have supplemented his use of NCVS data with other sources, which present a very different picture. Even if we ignore the fact that Pinker’s statistics for sexual violence are drawn from British and American sources (while the World Health Organization 1 Bureau of Justice Statistics, ‘Data Collection: National Crime Victimization Study (NCVS)’ (2015), at https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245#Methodology, viewed 1 November 2017. 2 Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature. A History of Violence and Humanity (London: Penguin Books, 2011), 486. 3 NAACP, ‘Criminal Justice Fact Sheet’, at http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/, seen 1 December 2017. 4 Ibid. finds that 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical or sexual violence),5nevertheless, reported rapes are increasing dramatically. Between 1985 and 2007, rapes reported to the British police increased from 1,842 to 13,133. According to data released by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary on behalf of its rape-monitoring group, in 2015-16, police recorded 23,851 reports of adults being raped.6 In France, there was a fourfold increase in the same period (from 2,823 to 10,128).7 Pinker’s response to the increase in reported rape might very well be that the statistics actually prove his point: people are becoming more disapproving of sexual violence and less fearful of reporting assault. There is little evidence for this. Barriers to reporting sexual violence are still formidable. One survey of 1,007 women in eleven UK 5 World Health Organization, Global and Regional Estimates of Violence Against Women: Prevalence and Health Effects of and Non-Partner Sexual Violence (Geneva: WH, 2013), PAGE. 6 Vikram Dodd and Helena Bengtsson, ‘Reported Rapes Double in England and Wales in Four Years’, The Guardian (13 October 2016), at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/13/reported-rapes-in-england-and-wales- double-in-five-years, viewed on 1 December 2017. 7 Nicole Fayard and Yvette Rocheron, ‘’Moi Quand on dit Qu'une femme ment, eh bien, elle ment’: The Administration of Rape in Twenty-First Century France and England and Wales’, French Politics, Culture and Society, 29.1 (Spring 2011), 74. cities found that a startling 91 per cent of women failed to report their abuse,8 while the Rape Crisis Federation of England and Wales found that only twelve per cent of the 50,000 women who contacted their services in 1998 reported the crime of rape to the police.9 Even the NCVS found that, between 1992 and 2000, 63 per cent of completed rapes, 65 per cent of attempted rapes, and 74 per cent of completed and attempted sexual assaults against females were not reported to the police.10 The British Crime Survey found even lower levels of reportage: less than 20 per cent of rape victims told the police.11 Non-reportage is particularly high among minority women, the poor and disenfranchised, prostitutes, and 8 K. Painter, Wife Rape, Marriage and Law: Survey Report, Key-Findings and Recommendation (Manchester: University of Manchester, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, 1991). 9 Cited in H. M. Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, A Report on the Joint Inspection into the Investigation and Prosecution of Cases Involving Allegations of Rape (London: H. M. Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, April 2002), 1. 10 Callie Marie Rennison, Rape and Sexual Assault: Reporting to Police and Medical Attention, 1992-2000 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002), 2. 11 Andy Myhill and Jonathan Allen, Rape and Sexual Assault of Women: The Extent and Nature of the Problem. Findings from the British Crime Survey (London: Home Office Research, Development, and Statistics Directorate, March 2002), vii. Also see MOPAC, Sexual Violence. The London Sexual Violence Needs Assessment 2016 for MOPAC and NHS England (London) (London: MBARC, November 2016), 26, at www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/sexual_violence_needs_assessment_report_2016.p df. women who are perceived as being unattractive. It is also a problem for married women who have been victimized by their partners: lack of money and access to alternative housing, in addition to emotional dependency and concerns over retaining access to children, meant that victims often feel unable to pursue prosecution. The second trap that Pinker falls into is the minimisation of certain harms. He does this, in part, by failing to understand history. He states that ‘one has to look long and hard through history and across cultures to find an acknowledgement of the harm of rape from the viewpoint of the victim’.12 This is not the case. Rape was a heinous act precisely because it was known to inflict serious harm to victims. Medical jurisprudence textbooks were full of descriptions of the harm caused by rape, claiming (in the words of Alfred Swaine Taylor in his influential Medical Jurisprudence of 1861), that victims could ‘sustain all the injury, morally and physically, which the perpetration of the crime can possibly bring down upon her’.13 The language used to articulate that harm was different in earlier periods, however. Prior to the 1860s, victims of any form of violence would not have used the word ‘trauma’ to refer to their emotional or psychological responses. That concept was invented by John 12 Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 476. Emphasis in the original. 13 Alfred Swaine Taylor, Medical Jurisprudence, 12th edition (London: np, 1861), 687-98. Eric Erichsen, professor of surgery at University College Hospital in London, in 1866.14 However, victims had other languages to communicate their pain. When the after-effects of rape were discussed, attention was paid to physical and moral realms. Women would ‘mysteriously waste away, sicken, grow pale, thin, waxen, and finally Quit the earth, and send their forms to early graves, – like blasted fruit falling before half ripened’ (as one author explained the aftermath of ‘forced love’ or marital rape in 1869).15 Victims regularly referred to ‘insensibility’ to convey their distress. Rape victims were described as ‘in a state of fever’ (1822);16 ‘very ill, after lying in a fainting state some time’ (1866);17 they were in a ‘state of prostration’ (1877).18 These are very different ways to acknowledge the ‘harm of rape from the point of view of the victim’, but powerful ones indeed for their times. There is another way Pinker minimises harms. He contributes to rape myths by recycling long-standing prejudices about the prevalence of false accusations. The belief that 14 John Eric Erichsen, On Railway and Other Injuries of the Nervous System (London: Walton and Maberly, 1866), 9. Also see John Eric Erichsen, On Concussion of the Spine, Nervous Shock, and Other Obscure Injuries of the Nervous System in Their Clinical and Medico-Legal Aspects (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1875), 195. 15 De St. Leon, Love and Its Hidden History, 4th ed. Boston: William White and Co., 1869), 102. 16 ‘Scotland. Perth Circuit Court’, The Times (21 September 1822), 3. 17 ‘Crown Court’, The Times (8 March 1866), 11. 18 ‘Outrage’, The Times (7 September 1877), 8. For a broader discussion see my Rape: A History from the 1860s to the Present (London: Virago, 2007). ‘women lie’ about sexual assault is deeply embedded in our society, particularly within police forces and criminal justice systems. For example, one 2008 survey of 891 police

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