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92 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2010
As usual we are confronted by unanswerable questions. Most rape is not accompanied by physical injury or carried out by men unknown to the victim, nor is it followed by flashbacks or is it ever identified as a crime. In the case of a woman who chooses to report the event, we have no idea how much of her distress is caused by the work-up itself, by the compilation of the forensic evidence, by her having to tell her story over and over and in public and then to defend it both in the committal stage and later in the courtroom. The most catastrophic shock must surely come when, as far too often happens, the jury does not convict. Nothing in the literature of PTSD after rape deals with these experiences. For all the intellectual effort and energy that has gone into getting the law of rape to make sense, conviction rates are falling. Meanwhile the true extent of non-consensual sex remains unimaginable. (p.62)