Subject:        	Melanie Phillips on rape figures

I'm sure as concerned and enlightened citizens you will join me in 
condemnation of this appalling injustice. And to think that we 
taxpayers are giving SIX MILLION POUNDS A YEAR to these 
professional feminist victim-playing man-hating so-and-so's. 

Just think what an evolutionary psychologist could do with that 
money.



>>http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/Sunday-Times/stinwcopn01003
>>.html?999 Sunday Times February 20 2000 COMMENT Melanie Phillips
>>
>>   The false assumptions that  insult all men
>>
>>
>> Women are now so afraid of being raped or sexually
>> assaulted that they will not leave their homes, says Lady
>> Jay, the Cabinet Office minister. Home Office figures last
>> week informed us that the number of women who were
>> raped or sexually assaulted was likely to be up to 295,000
>> in 1996, rather than the official figure of 23,600.
>>
>> What tripe. This is no new study. It is just bits of
>> previously published reports and old crime figures
>> cobbled together with some wild extrapolations to
>> produce a figure alarming enough to justif y the £6m
>> being poured into women's aid bodies who have been
>> invited to bid for the cash.
>>
>> It is true that there is a "dark area" of crime that happens
>> but, for one reason or another, does not appear in the
>> statistics. So rates of domestic violence, like other crimes,
>> are likely to be higher than reported. What the Home
>> Office has done, though, is to produce a skewed account
>> that is not only alarmist but a group libel upon men
>> through statistical jiggery-pokery of a high order.
>>
>> It arrives at its inflated figures by reference to two "dark
>> areas" of crime. The first covers those rapes and
>> indecent assaults that are reported to the police but which
>> the police decide not to record as crimes. The second
>> covers the difference between the number of rapes or
>> sex assaults that are reported and the rate at which
>> people themselves claim to have suffered them.
>>
>> So the Home Office has calculated the "true" reporting
>> rate and then multiplied that again by reference to the
>> victims' own accounts.
>>
>> Yet this is deeply flawed. Citing a report that showed the
>> police decided in 1996 that 25% of reported rapes were
>> not crimes at all, the Home Office says it is "safe to
>> assume" that those dismissed complaints should be
>> added to the reported figures. This completely ignores
>> two crucial points. First, the report cited dealt only with
>> rape. So it is wrong to use it to calculate the figures not
>> only for rape but for other sexual assaults, too.
>>
>> Second, the report pointed out that the most common
>> reason why the police decided not to record these reports
>> as crimes was that they believed the women's complaints
>> were false or malicious. So it is certainly not "safe" to add
>> these dismissed reports to the rate of reported crime,
>> since it is likely that at least some, and probably most, of
>> these rape claims were lies. Yet the Home Office has
>> assumed they were all true.

Eric Brunner

Dept Epidemiology & Public Health
University College London
1-19 Torrington Place, WC1E 6BT

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