Jane Doe January by Emily Winslow

In no way could this disturbing book be called an enjoyable read.  That said, it is as gripping as any thriller and as compelling.  The author was raped in 1992.  More than twenty years later and living in a different country it seems as though her rapist has been caught.  In 1992 in Pittsburgh Emily Winslow was a drama student when she was attacked in her apartment and raped.  This was no date gone wrong but an appalling attack by a stranger.

This well written, disturbing and intensely personal memoir tells the story of that attack and its aftermath and how the author faced and dealt with the perpetrator’s arrest and trial over twenty years later.  By that time she was married with two children and living in Cambridge, England so the arrest and trial meant many trips across the Atlantic.

Ultimately this is the memoir of a survivor and it will provide hope for those who have been attacked in similar circumstances.  It shows graphically how the author’s thoughts and feelings oscillated from day to day through all the human emotions as she was forced to relive the rape time and time again.  I recommend this book to anyone who has been attacked and is struggling with the aftermath and to anyone who wants to know how a victim feels and how she rebuilds a life for herself.

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Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present by Joanna Bourke

This is a fascinating study of a crime which has always created controversy throughout history.  Statistically the majority of victims are female and the majority of perpetrators are male even when the victims are male but the book does not ignore female rapists and nor does it ignore rape within prisons or the military.  The book concentrates on rapists rather than their victims and the ways in which society has tried to treat them and/or punish them with varying degrees of success. It also demonstrates how rapists have sought to justify and explain their actions.

The book examines the attitudes to rape victims and perpetrators both within the legal professions and the judiciary and from society and the media.  The consistent attitude throughout the period covered by the book has been to blame and disbelieve the victim, whether male or female, and to treat the aggressor as though he simply used a bit more force than necessary but was actually just behaving in a way all men behave.  I was trying to think of any other crime where the victim is automatically held responsible to a certain extent for the crime whatever the circumstances and I could not think of one.

I was surprised that until relatively recently judges in rape trials could warn juries that it could be dangerous to rely on the uncorroborated testimony of the victim in the UK.  Again rape is the only crime where the victim is unlikely to be believed.  If someone walks down a dark alley and is mugged no one tells them they are partly responsible for what happened to them because they walked down that dark alley, so why are rape victims blamed?

I was especially interested in what the book has to say about false rape allegations.  It appears that false rape allegations are no more common than false allegations of any other crime though of course prosecutions in false rape cases make headline news. Any false allegation of any crime is likely to have a devastating effect on the person falsely accused but the fact that a case never makes it to court does not mean the allegation was false in the first place.

This book can be read by anyone who is studying in any field such as criminology, psychology or sociology and by the general reader.  It has copious notes on the text and a comprehensive bibliography as well as an index.  I recommend it to anyone who is interested in this hugely controversial subject.

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Rape is Rape by Jody Raphael

Rape has to be one of the crimes which produces an emotional response in anyone – it is an emotive subject.  Because of this it is too easy for any book written about the subject to descend into a vitriolic rant rather than report facts and figures.  The author of this book avoids this trap and the women she interviewed all describe their experiences in low key terms which make a huge impression on the reader because of their restrained language.

 

The book covers not just rape of women and girls but also looks at the way abuse of boys and men is treated by the authorities.  All too often victims are not believed and if the assault happens in connection with an institution such as a church, university or school the powers that be have every incentive to protect the reputation of their own organisation.

 

In the UK there is the ongoing example of the Jimmy Savile case and those who have been exposed in the resulting police investigations.  There is a disinclination to believe victims who accuse celebrities because certain people just don’t commit those sort of crimes.  This was the defence used in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.

 

I accept that some people may lie about sexual assault just as they may lie about other crimes for a variety of reasons but it is all too easy to assume that all victims lie.  Rape and sexual assaults are the only crimes as far as I am aware in which society and the courts tend towards blaming the victim.  No one blames people whose houses are broken into but too many blame rape victims or say they invited the attack by their behaviour.

 

This book makes interesting and shocking reading for anyone who thinks that people in positions of power are above reproach and that all women lie about sex.  Two things stick in my mind after reading this book.  The first is that a US senator could actually say in public that if a woman is raped she will not become pregnant because her body will naturally block the pregnancy because of the circumstances so there is no need for abortion to be allowed on the grounds of rape.  The fact that the woman is pregnant proves she wasn’t raped. The second is that the reaction of blaming and often punishing the victim is very similar to the stoning of women for having extra-marital sex in some predominantly Muslim countries.

 

I found the book disturbing and compelling reading.  The author quotes many academic studies and there are notes on all the chapters and a recommended reading list as well as an index.  While the book concentrates primarily on America it is still of relevance to readers in the UK and other countries.

 

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The Stranger Inside by Shannon Moroney

What would you do if you had been married for just one month and you were told while you were away from home at a work conference that your new husband had kidnapped and sexually assaulted two women?  It is easy to see this as a black/white situation and many will react by saying they would sever all ties and file for divorce, change their name, move on and put it all behind them.  But life is rarely that simple.  Shannon  Moroney found herself in this unenviable position when her husband Jason gave himself up to the police for the crime.  In this book she tells her story and it is one of anger, grief and pity as well as one of hope, faith, forgiveness and redemption.  It moved me to tears on many occasions.

‘The Stranger Inside’ tells how she found herself in the middle of a maelstrom.  Many of her friends supported her in any way they could, both practically and emotionally.  Others gave her intrusive and unsolicited advice about cutting all ties with Jason and building  new life for herself immediately, shutting the door on her past and her mistakes.  Yet more abused her and considered her as guilty as Jason himself.  Shannon knew when she married Jason that he was on parole having committed murder when he was a teenager.  She had known this almost from the moment she met him.  He had given her many chances to end their relationship if she did not feel she could cope with the situation.

But Jason was one of Canada’s parole systems successes and he had been living his own life with less and less supervision outside prison for several years.  He had made many friends and the professionals involved with his case believed that the murder was an isolated incident, that Jason expressed remorse for it and that his life had moved on.  Shannon was confident that Jason had his life back on track and they planned a future together.  She herself had a job as a school counsellor which she loved and everything seemed to be going well for them when they married having lived together for a time.

Then came the day when Jason held two women at gun point.  To do him justice he called the police himself and made a full confession, saying he would plead guilty so that his victims would not have to relive their ordeals in court.  His account of the crimes agreed in almost every detail with the statements of his victims.  He did not seek to use anything in his childhood, though it was not a happy one and he was abused, to excuse or explain his crimes and nor does Shannon in her book make any excuses for him.

I found this a moving and harrowing book to read.  It is simply written in a relatively low key style and has the ring of truth about it.  I could sympathise with the author and admire her courage in building a new life for herself.  It is all too easy to judge the family and friends of a criminal and to make them scapegoats.  You see it all the time with high profile cases ‘She must have known what he was like.’  But do we ever really know our nearest and dearest and the worst of which they are capable?  I would say that we can never truly see inside the mind of another person.

Should Shannon have walked away from Jason?  Many accused of her of not being aware of the severity of his crimes but she was told the details by the police as soon as they realised that she was neither an accessory nor an accomplice.  She does not try to minimise or explain away the crimes and is constantly asking questions about the victims.  But she herself is also a victim of Jason’s actions in so many ways.

Many women reading about this book will have the instant reaction of revulsion – how could she visit someone in jail who had raped other women?  It is against all the tenets of the sisterhood.  But I would urge them to look further than this understandable and knee jerk reaction.  Shannon has had to rebuild her life, work through her own grief and disillusionment and her loss of faith in her own judgement.  She needs our support and our sympathy every bit as much as the victims of the crimes for which her husband went to jail.

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