ReplacementPelican
Member
BBC SourceA rape victim whose attack led to a judge saying drunk women were putting themselves in danger has defended the comments, saying the judge was "right".
Megan Clark, 19, was raped by a man she met in Burger King when she was drunk after a night out in Manchester.
The trial sparked controversy after the judge said the drunken behaviour of some women was putting them at risk.
Miss Clark told the Victoria Derbyshire programme the judge told women to "be careful", saying it was "good advice".
The teenager, who waived her right to anonymity to speak to the programme, said she took the judge's comments in "a positive way", adding that she did not believe she was "victim-blaming".
So, yeah. I mean, it's difficult to have a discussion about this and I have to hope this doesn't go too quickly to shit but I feel this is a discussion worth having. On the one hand, I have a knee-jerk to this which is to worry about victim blaming and shifting the responsibility to people who are otherwise completely right and well-meaning.
On the other hand, however, I sort of get it. We don't live in a perfect world and in that perfect world there'd be no need for a discussion like this but, at least in the UK, the amount of people who put themselves into vulnerable situations is really troubling. Anyone who has gone to University here can attest to the drunken 3am stumble that we've all made and ultimately this had made us - at one point or another - potential targets. The worry would be that if we're not frank about how to keep safe and how to be responsible - but not responsible for bad things happening, obviously - we run the risk of people being put in harm's way as they've not been told 'there's shitty people, you have to keep safe.' I would be inclined to think that people know this but any city center on a weekend makes me question that.
Ultimately I think the best idea is to go hard on the whole 'safety bus' idea that quite a few Universities use however I can't see councils actually having the funding for this which is a shame, its a good way to prevent these issues - and others - without asking people to compromise their lifestyles because they may be attacked by a criminal.
Also an issue I find is that the discussion about this can kind of muddy the discussion about rape as a whole because when discussing this we can start to conflate this with all rape whereas its only one instance which perpetrates a myth that all or most of victims are intoxicated and this is an issue because:
So even if its a discussion to have, should we? In a time where this is a troublingly common attitude do we take the risk of legitimizing stupidity? Where this amount of people already think that a victim is not 'so much' a victim because they're drunk?
As an aside, the man who raped the woman in this case was convicted on two counts.