'CASTRATE THEM' is a common reply of those questioned about what to do with rapists. MORI poll interviewers found this frequently volunteered in their recent poll for the Sunday Times.
population wanted rapists executed or sent to prison for at least seven years.
against women be solved in this way?
Over the past few days the national press has led the attack on the police and judiciary, giving unprecedented publicity to which would have gone virtually unmentioned a few weeks earlier.
BEne outery has sent heads rolling in high places with the resianation of Nicholas Fairbairn, the Scottish Solicitor General, over the Glasgow affair They also found that 85 percent of the But will rape or other forms of violence appete police are dees Trapped knuckles after the televising of the episode of Police dealing with a rape complaint.
But after the dust has settled when the spotlight has moved on, it's time to weigh up exactwomen will manage to gain from all the public outrage.
This isn't the first time that rape has become such a major issue.
Nearly seven years ago, a Law Lord's ruling gave rise to a similar storm public 1975 they declared that 'an •HONESE reasonable belief that the woman was consenting to sexual intercourse was a proper defence to a charge of rape.
The controversy led to Labour MP Jack Ashley's Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act which modified the effect of this ruling.
In 1977, only two years later, a Guardsman who was released so that should damaged and rape became a suject of public debate once more.
Then, as now, the solution was scen to lie in stifer penalties. Jack Ashley called for minimum sentence of five Today, despite all the anger at the way the courts have dealt with rape cases, in the past, it is still possible for a a Vocontri cused 'contributary negligence' by a judge and for a brutal attack to written off because not lo the rapists to court.
Perhaps the most significant 'statistics"
the MORI poil is that 33 percent of those questioned believe that women are themselves at least partly to blame i raped.
Rape continues to be prescue areat le women's lives which narrowly limits their independence of action and of spirit.
Public debate is once more centred around what to do with the rapists who are actually convicted. Because many of rape are never reported and the police pursues few complaints as far as the courts were the conviction rate is low this is a very small proportion. Yet few people seem concerned how the rape threat can be removed.
Choice This won't happen by lining up with the *hang em and toe em brigade who are among the most reactionary elements our society Joining the campaign for higher prison SCHLOICES capital ture ie castration would on hand strengthen the repressive rights of the state and on the other cut across all the most humanitarian inrecent years regarding the treatment of those who are outside the "law"
Length of sentences has never been proven to be a deterrent.
Indeed, the for castration indicated belief in the myth that rape is sexual desire that's got out of control. It's nothing of the sort.
Rape is a form of assault on a person who is designated as victim, without choice, without As long as women at perceived in this way, rap will continue For example, some o the strongest advocates o the most extreme penaltie are often men who seem t want rapists punished, ne so much for the damag they inflict on women, a for the injury they do t other men by soiling the "property"
male code honou (which mear defending your 0W woman but seeing all oth females those who are nobody nobody Das never been r gam never been fina knocked on the head.
Those who argue f harsh punishment at ti same time say that wom ceptable patterns deserve d