The Home Office Rape
Statistics Are False

The article below will show you how the UK's Home Office purposely deceives the public over the rape figures; essentially, by distorting every piece of data and every definition in order to maximise the apparent number of rapes that have taken place.

(Please also note that I do, in fact, have a PhD in Psychology, and I do understand how this kind of research is done, and how it is supposed to be done.)

27/07/02

 How the Home Office Distorts the Evidence

According to the Home Office Report, some 5% of UK women have been raped at some time in their lives. The Home Office researchers arrived at this figure mostly on the basis of a pathetically inadequate questionnaire which asked such questions as, "Have you been forced to have sex with anyone?" And, on the basis of the answers, it drew its hopelessly invalid conclusions.

For example, it concluded that 0.4% of women had been raped in the 12 months prior to the research, and that 0.5% had been sexually assaulted (without penile penetration) during the same period.

(These are very small percentages. Indeed, they each represent some 30 women out of the 6,944 women who took part in the year 2000 survey.)

Well, of course, some of these 60 women might have been genuine victims, but let us look at why other women might have falsely affirmed through a questionnaire that they had been 'forced' to have sex during the period in question.

1. Some 5% of women have Borderline Personality Disorder or something close to it. Features of this include the habitual making of false accusations, the constant creation of mountains out of molehills, and the re-writing of the past, mostly in order to wreak vengeance upon those who happened to be close to them at the time - usually men. For those with BDP, seeing oneself as a victim of someone else's actions is almost a permanent state of being.

For women with BPD, boasting about the amount and intensity of 'abuse' that they have suffered is akin to young men bragging mendaciously about their imagined sexual conquests.

Now, if just ONE-TENTH of these women answered the questionnaire in a manner that suggested that they had engaged in intercourse at least once during the 12 month period because they were 'forced' to do so, then this would account for the WHOLE of the rape figure. 

And if just ONE-TENTH of these women reckoned that at least once during the same period they had ever been 'forced' to engage in non-penetrative sex then this would account for the WHOLE of the sex-assault figure.

Given that such women are constantly making false accusations against people, the chances are that the vast majority of all those identified as innocent victims of sexual assault by the Home Office were nothing of the sort.

And this fact, ALONE smashes the credibility of this ridiculous report completely and utterly.

It is nothing but hokum.

Furthermore, according to the The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists some 3% of women "have a severe form of PMS called premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), characterized by depression, anxiety, tension and persistent anger or irritability. (My underlining.)

 to be thrust against the wall by a drunken male and to be groped hither and thither in such venues is no great deal for many women

2. If you go virtually to any nightclub or student party these days you will likely discover therein women who regularly indulge in all sorts of sexual activities, even with complete strangers - and many of these women are also taking alcohol and drugs. And so, for example, to be thrust against the wall by a drunken male and to be groped hither and thither in such venues is no great deal for many women. And the fact that they might also oftentimes be man-handled by 'force' is all part and parcel of what they happily 'endure' on a weekly basis. Nevertheless, many such women would probably answer the Home Office's questionnaire about having been 'forced' to engage in a sexual manner in the affirmative - even if such an incident had only occurred once during the 12 month period in question.

Now, given that the alleged number of women to have been abused over the preceding 12 months (according to the Home Office) is less than 1% of the whole sample, even if a small number of these fun-loving, alcohol-loving nightclubbin women stated that they had been 'forced' on a questionnaire, they would have accounted for a significant fraction of the 1%.

Many women just love to see themselves as victims of abuse.

3. Many women just love to see themselves as victims of abuse. It is a badge of honour for them to claim or feel that they have been raped or assaulted - and survived! They can join an ever-growing mutual-adoration club which requires no evidence for membership. 

And it could also provide them with a job, somewhere within the ever-growing abuse industry. 

4. One only has to look at the TV programmes that women love to watch, the books that they like to read, the things that they love to talk about, and the most popular themes of their sexual fantasies to know just what many of them are hankering for. If just a small percentage of these women re-interpreted any sexual activity from the preceding 12 months as having been 'forced' upon them in any way - perhaps as a result of being influenced by an episode of Eastenders - then the low-percentage assault figures from the Home Office would have been significantly inflated.

Furthermore, and for example, the American psychologist Dr Nancy Faulkner has this to say about some of the women receiving therapy at her clinic.

"I have seen women in therapy who could no longer content themselves with a non-combative relationship. They complained that it is "boring" and that the sexual relationship is not exciting. These women have become so accustomed to the roller-coaster emotional highs and lows that they appear to thrive on the thrill-ride, while at the same time hating the assaults."

Putting all this simply: A large number of women just love the idea of being sexually 'abused'. Also see my piece Women Love Manga.

5. There are sufficient numbers of 'feminist' women, many of who are highly politicised and/or who work in the abuse industry, who gain much advantage from doing their best to inflate the sex-assault figures - for example, as part of their 'contribution to the feminist movement'. And, once again, if just a small percentage of these decided to answer the Home Office questionnaire in a manner that would indicate falsely some criminal abuse, then the figures for sex-assault would have been inflated significantly. 

Indeed, if just 1% of women are so inclined, then this would account for all those responses indicating assaults both with and without penetration.

All of them!

And in an area that is highly politicised, and also highly emotionalised, as is the area to do with sex-assault, the assumption that the respondents are all replying honestly and without prejudice to any questionnaire is extremely questionable to say the least.

Men have been portrayed as the devil himself for the past 30 years

6. Men have been portrayed as the devil himself for the past 30 years. During this time there can hardly have been a day that has gone by wherein most women and children have not been presented with highly-emotional portrayals of men being abusive in some way.

Would the Home Office accept the validity of a questionnaire about the behaviours of Jews or gypsies that had been handed out solely to a sample of Germans in the 1930s?

No, probably not.

And yet, after 30 years of blanket feminist-inspired propaganda demonising men emanating from both government and the media - with a daily coverage and an intensity that Hitler himself could never have even dreamed of - the Home Office presents what it considers to be a valid Report about the true behaviours of men based on the testimony only of women.

7. Women often have strong direct vested interests in making false allegations about their partners. False allegations can serve them well in relationship break-ups, child custody disputes, divorce proceedings and in soothing their consciences concerning why they themselves might have behaved badly in the past. The government has also provided women with many incentives to make false allegations. Once made (even if only 'silently' to themselves) false allegations are more than likely to be entered on to questionnaires as if they were true, even if only for the reason that not to do so would create what psychologists call 'cognitive dissonance'.

Putting this another way: If women were offered a straightforward £1,000,000 in compensation for being abused by their partners, not only would the number of false allegations soar (for obvious reasons) but the findings even from anonymous questionnaires would reflect this increase, even though, ostensibly, there would be no direct incentives for this to occur.

Or, if you like, liars often end up truly believing what they actually once knew to be the product exclusively of their very own lies.

8. The evidence arising in the area of domestic violence (which is, after all, simply another 'aggressive' form of 'relationship' conflict) shows very clearly that the majority of women who contact the police are not the weak and wilting types in need of some protection. On the contrary, they are, for the most part, the aggressive, manipulative and vengeful types who are seeking some form of revenge - or some extra leverage - against their partners - e.g. see Only Women Are Offered An Alternative To Domestic Violence.

There is no reason to believe that matters are any different when it comes to claims of rape or sex-assault.

some 50% of women admit to telling lies on a daily basis

9. And, of course, we know that some 50% of women admit to telling lies on a daily basis - which is one reason that public 'surveys' are so often worthless.

The Scruples and Lies survey was based on interviews with 5,000 women. It found that 94% confessed to telling fibs, with 48% lying on a daily basis. (BBC News)

... Figures showed one woman in two would not tell her man that the baby she was carrying was not his - if she wanted to stay with him.

... They also said four out of ten (42%) would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, in spite of the wishes of their partner.

Furthermore, the evidence that women are far more likely to lie about their sexual experiences than are men, is increasing all the time - e.g. see Women Fake Sex Numbers 

And so, all in all, when it comes to women filling in the Home Office's questionnaire - and with only about 1% giving the impression that they have been unduly forced into having sex during the past 12 months - the very notion that a true picture can be gleaned from the data about the true incidence of assault and rape is just ridiculous. 

The overwhelming probability is that the conclusions and the numbers will be wildly exaggerated and will dramatically over-estimate the number of true rapes and true assaults. And this will happen because, generally speaking, there is far too much emotional, psychological and political noise in the system.

As such, of the 60 women whose data suggested that they had been raped or assaulted, my guess is that a more accurate figure would be much closer to 5 - and it could easily even be a big fat zero.

In summary; there are so many reasons and so many circumstances arising within the course of normal life on the basis of which surely some 20% of women might falsely (or unintentionally) indicate 'rape' in a questionnaire, that the Home Office's alleged overall 1% figure for sex-assault is likely to be mostly made up of spurious nonsense.

As even further proof of this, it is interesting to note that about 35% of the alleged victims in this study did not see themselves as victims of any crime at all!

"No. We have not been sexually assaulted," is, effectively, what they said.

But the Home Office did not worry about this. It counted their experiences as crimes anyway.

 The UK has been positively deluged for some thirty years with propaganda designed to make women see themselves as victims

Of course, it is possible that some women do not actually recognise that a crime against them has happened, when it has, but in matters of sexual assault, the UK is not a country that has buried such matters under the carpet and hidden the ins and outs of sexual assault from public scrutiny. The UK has been positively deluged for some thirty years with propaganda designed to make women see themselves as victims in just about every area where they operate - employment, education, pay, domestic violence and so on - and especially in areas to do with 'abuse'. And so the notion that tens of thousands of women are just too naive to recognise when they have been criminally assaulted has no legitimate basis whatsoever.

Indeed, the very opposite is far more likely to be true. It is far more likely that UK women will see actions as being criminal or abusive when they are not, because women are constantly being targeted and urged to see matters in such a way. 

And, in fact, this is exactly what just about all the evidence shows. For example, when women today make allegations of rape, 95% of the time they fail to convince people of their case.

Oh yes, the Home Office can define whatever happened 'operationally' as a rape, presumably, on the basis of some incredibly simplistic predetermined notions (e.g. a YES to questions 1, 4, 9 and 13) and by using 'legal' terms it can also define that whatever happened was a rape, but neither of these could ever be counted upon to reflect the reality of what such a 'rape' might actually be.

And this would seem somewhat crucial when dealing with matters of serious crime - particularly when the government looks set to corrupt the justice system still further on the basis of what these supposedly enormous number of rapes actually are.

Did someone take £10 out of your wallet without your knowledge in the past 12 months? 

Yes. My wife.

Then that is a crime!

And your wife is a thief! 

Such 'non-crimes' are simply added by the Home Office into the pot of numbers in order to support its agenda of increasing the amount of relationship disharmony throughout the country.

 It is part of a concerted attempt to make crimes out of non-crimes

This, in effect, is what the Home Office Report boils down to. It is part of a concerted attempt to make crimes out of non-crimes and to demonise men.

The Home Office actually wants women to see themselves as victims of rape. It wants to demonise the heterosexual male population. This is why, for example, its headline rape figures include those situations where the women did not think that any rape had occurred, and why, for example again, there is no consideration in the report concerning the fact that a very high percentage of women who report rape are known to lie and exaggerate about such things.

And here, I should add that the 'headline' rape figures are also nothing more than a downright deception. They are not 'rape' figures at all. They are the number of allegations that have been made. And these are some 20 times greater than the number of convictions for rape.

Furthermore, rape is the only crime for which the government officials at the Home Office base the conviction rate on the number of allegations that have been made, rather than upon the number of cases that go to court.

The upshot is that the official 'conviction rate' for rape - publicised to the world - lies somewhere around 5%. If, however, rape was treated as are all the other crimes, the conviction rate would be around 50%.

So why does the Home Office wish to give the impression to the public that the conviction rate is so low?

And the answer to this question is blatantly obvious.

By claiming that 95% of alleged 'rapists' go free, the government and government officials can continually justify to the public further corruptions of the justice system in order to gain more convictions.

And why would they do these things?

To get more votes from women, and to maintain jobs, pensions and empires.

Why else?

In the report there is also made the completely unwarranted assumption that the associated research and methodology are tainted with the possibility that many women who have been raped will, for some reason or other, have failed to provide the correct evidence - on the questionnaire - for their particular rapes to have been counted as 'rapes' by the researchers. As such, it is argued that the survey's results will actually underestimate the true extent of rape.

For example, given that the survey was ostensibly about 'crime', it is argued that many rape victims might not have considered past rapes by their partners to be 'crimes', and so they will not have associated their particular 'rapes' with a 'crime survey'. As such, these women will not have made responses to the questionnaire that would allow the researchers to count their experiences as crimes.

Well, the idea that 'rapes' by partners might not readily be viewed by some women as crimes seems a reasonable one, but, surely, if anything is to be deduced from the fact that women might have excluded their incidents from a crime survey, specifically on the grounds that it was a crime survey, then it is that these women do not think that a crime against them has been committed!

Indeed, knowing that this was a 'crime' survey, it is quite possible that a huge percentage of women simply refused to cooperate with the view that their sexual 'tussles' should be counted as crimes.

And if, indeed, this was the case, then it follows that the whole survey is tainted by the fact that there must have been a great deal of game playing and 'strategy' going on while the women were completing the questionnaire. In other words, this research was virtually worthless.

Indeed, the Home Office can have no idea at all how many women actually failed to see their 'assaults' as crimes on the basis of this research; and who therefore failed to mention them in such a 'crime' survey.

NO IDEA AT ALL!

In fact, there could have been thousands of them!

Indeed, it is quite possible that a monumental 99% of the women in the survey had been 'raped' according to the way in which the Home Office appeared to be defining it in its 'crime' survey. And it is quite possible that most of these women simply refused to pander to this definition because it was a 'crime' survey and because they did not see themselves as being victims of a crime.

the Home Office tries to spin the various complications only in one direction

But the Home Office tries to spin the various complications only in one direction - a direction that suggests that there were more rapes than their questionnaire actually revealed.

This spin becomes much easier to see when the Home Office finally extrapolates the survey findings to the real world. Here, the Report estimates that about 61,000 UK women were 'raped' in the year 2,000 alone. However, only some 8,000 actually ended up reporting these incidents to the police.

Here is what the Report says about the 53,000 alleged victims who did not report the matter to the police.

"Rape victims may not wish to identify themselves as such since they may perceive that this has associations of stigmatised and degraded status. It may also be difficult for women raped by somebody they know, perhaps even somebody they liked or loved, to label this person a rapist."

"The highly personal and traumatic nature of sexual victimisation means that apart from often not reporting their experiences to the police, victims will also be reluctant to share their experiences with anybody."

the most likely reason that these alleged 53,000 victims did not go the police is because, quite simply, they do not exist

This is pure spin. There is no real evidence for this. On the contrary, the most likely reason that these alleged 53,000 victims did not go the police is because, quite simply, they do not exist - or, if you prefer, they did not see themselves as being victims of anything.

53,000 of them.

To cloud the issues even further, 45% of alleged rapes were said in the Report to have occurred in situations where the alleged rapist was actually the partner of the victim. But this large percentage alone suggests very strongly that the research which gave rise to it is highly suspect. After all, how does a simple questionnaire attempt to sort out the complex interactions and ups and downs of people who are intimately involved with each other? - particularly when it seeks the views of only one of the partners.

And how is it that these alleged rapists actually had 'partners'?

Were these relationships going exceedingly well and then, suddenly, one day, the male partners just turned into rapists?

No, of course not. The chances are that the relationships that these women had with their rapist partners were full of ups and downs, with lots of turmoil and much in the way of heavy emotional hurt and aggravation, but the Home Office questionnaire tapped 'evidence' only from the women.

And this research is supposed to be valid?

The whole notion is ridiculous.

Furthermore, whenever one studies closely those cases that are highlighted to the public - often the 'best' of cases chosen by the women's groups themselves - most of them seem to be utterly spurious, with most of the alleged female victims demonstrating a clear history of self-harm, self-delusion and downright fabrication, and/or one of sexual 'negligence' and later regret.

Furthermore, one of the main private complaints of police officers who specialise in these areas is that it is usually very difficult to get alleged victims to press charges, despite being put under considerable pressure to do so.

And so, again, it seems that despite the enormous amount of effort being put in by the police and the Home Office to encourage victims of sexual assaults to contact the authorities over them, the vast majority of them simply refuse to do so. 

But the Report seems concerned only to promote the view that tens of thousands of men annually are simply getting away with serious rape and assault, and that tens of thousands of women are just too intimidated to report them.

Every if, every but, and every piece of uncertainty is stitched together in such a way as to demonise the maximum number of men.

And this 'twisting' of the evidence has no valid basis whatsoever.

It is deceitful propaganda through and through.

As further evidence of the invalidity of this particular piece of research by the Home Office is the finding that the number of women who claim to have been sexually assaulted without being raped in the preceding year (0.5% of the survey) is just about the same as the number of women who allegedly were raped during this same period (0.4%).

 it is just not credible that the number of actual rapes is so close to the number of sexual assaults without rape.

But it is just not credible that the number of actual rapes is so close to the number of sexual assaults without rape. Life is just not like this. More extreme things happen far less frequently than less extreme things in real life. And, further, given that sexual assaults without rape will encompass a very wide range of behaviours, including such trivialities as being forcibly groped in the nightclub by a drunken lout, a piece of research that shows rape to be just as prevalent as other kinds of sexual assault is clearly just not credible.

There must have been something very wrong indeed with this research for it to give rise to such preposterous figures.

Further, throwing out the whole notion that defendants should be seen to be innocent until proven guilty, the authors do not even bother to emphasise that reports of assault to the police are not proof of any crimes.

Here is what the authors say ...

In 1999 the police recorded 7,707 incidents of rape.

Well, NO THEY DID NOT!

They recorded 7,707 allegations of rape.

And this point is not trivial, because it provides further evidence to help describe the mindset of those who wrote the Report. This mindset simply presumes that every allegation of rape is the true recording of an actual rape.

And it is alarming, to say the least, to discover that a Report of such considerable national and international importance should contain sweeping statements that are decidedly FALSE.

Here is another example of this.

As Table E.1 shows, although the number of recorded rapes has increased more than four-fold since 1985, the proportion of recorded rapes resulting in a defendant being convicted is lower than it has ever been.

Notice the phrase, 'recorded rapes'.

Well, they are not recorded rapes. They are recorded allegations of rape. As such, the fact that the proportion of convictions is going down does not mean that more rapes are going unpunished - which is what the Report clearly implies. What is just as likely - if not more likely - is that the number of false allegations is going up!

But the authors of the Report do not mention this possibility.

Imagine, for the moment, that you were a pathologist peering down a microscope at a piece of tissue

Imagine, for the moment, that you were a pathologist peering down a microscope at a piece of tissue, and you wanted to determine how many cells were cancerous.

125 cells are brought to your attention as possibly being cancerous.

The first 25 cells you reject straight away, because they are very clearly not cancer cells. They are 'no-crimed'. The remaining 100 cells you investigate very closely with all your colleagues, as best as you can, but you can determine that only about 7 of them are cancerous.

Would you then write a Report claiming that you had, in fact, discovered 100 (or 125) cancer cells?

Well, if you did do this, then you would be being highly manipulative and thoroughly dishonest.

They are being manipulative and dishonest.

But this, in effect, is what the Home Office researchers are doing with the assault data. They are being manipulative and dishonest. They are claiming that they have found 100 rapes when, in fact, they have found 7.

Let me put all this another way because it is very important to get this across.

Despite the three-decade long, nationwide, wholesale encouragement of women 'to come forward', some 30% of the survey's respondents did not see their 'rapes' as crimes - as judged by the questionnaire - but the Home Office, nevertheless, counts them as crimes. 

Some 80% of women (about 53,000, apparently) did not report their 'rapes' as crimes by going to the police - but the Home Office also counts these as crimes.

And when the Report refers to the 7,707 women who did make a report to the police in 1999, it refers to these as incidents of rape, even though only some 7% of them gave rise to convictions.

And so this highly-influential Report turns out to be far more of a conjuring trick than a serious investigation into the world of sex-assault.

Also, so simplistic and crude was this particular piece of research into complex behaviours that it could well be the case that the numbers of rapes and sexual assaults (as defined by the Home Office) are well in excess of even their very own figures!

Yes, in excess!

Perhaps, for example, it is simply not the case that just 5% of all UK women have been sexually assaulted without penile penetration during their lives. The true figure might be nearer to 90%!!!

For example, here is one of the questions ...

Since age 16, has someone, either a stranger or someone you know, ever attempted to force you to have sexual intercourse or make you do sexual things against your will?

Well, most young men seem to spend most of their free time trying to 'force' women to do sexual things against their will. And this is no doubt a ritual that has gone on for many thousands of years, in one way or another.

But the Home Office seems completely unaware of this.

Did it not surprise the Home Office researchers to discover that only 5% of UK women have ever - in their whole lives - had to deal with an attempt at some kind of 'force' to do non-penetrative 'sexual things' against their will?

Well, it surprised me.

And the fact that the Home Office figures were so low when it came to this particular issue suggests to me that very many women who answered the Home Office questionnaire were simply not willing to play the Home Office's game and call such things 'crimes'.

Indeed, in my view, there is only one worthwhile lesson to be learned from this Report, and this is that the Home Office is trying to disseminate a piece of malicious propaganda. 

What is so sickening about this Report is not so much the figures themselves - which are worthless - but the blatant attempt to maximise the amount of male-hatred that can be squeezed out of them.

There is no attempt whatsoever to look at the numerous important real life factors that might colour what they mean.

It is demonstrably a one-sided prejudicial piece of propaganda

It is demonstrably a one-sided prejudicial piece of propaganda that seeks throughout to propagate the view that there are, annually, tens of thousands of UK women who are being badly victimised despite the fact that the weight of evidence currently clearly suggests, firstly, that the vast majority of women who are 'sexually victimised' - 'sexually victimised' according to the Home Office, that is - do not consider that their incidents are even worth reporting, and, secondly, that of those women who do report such incidents, the vast majority of them, on close inspection, appear to be false!

This is what the Home Office data really show.

'women', on the whole, are a pleasant bunch.

Finally, one of the main reasons that feminists and women's groups have successfully bamboozled the public for so long when it comes to allegations of domestic violence and sex-assault, is that when most people think about 'women', they mostly recognise that 'women', on the whole, are a pleasant bunch.

What they do not realise, however, is that there are many women who are virtually impossible to deal with and to cope with, women who can almost literally drive their intimates insane, women who are emotionally quite unstable and/or hypersensitive, and women who are highly prone to aggression, manipulation and deceit.

If only 5% of women have such problems (which is, in fact, the case, and which equates to about 1,000,000 UK women) then these women are highly likely to account for MOST of the allegations concerning domestic violence and sex-assault.

Now, whether or not this is, in fact, true - and I believe that it is - one might have expected the Home Office researchers at least to have discussed this highly likely possibility given the enormous consequences and costs that are likely to arise from its Report.

But this has not been done because too many Home Office staff are completely dominated, deluded and controlled by pernicious feminist propaganda and ideology, and the academics who wrote the Report are simply not up to the job - in my view. 

The truth of the matter is this.

Neither the Home Office nor the police have the foggiest notion how many real rapes occur every year in the UK.

Neither the Home Office nor the police have the foggiest notion how many real rapes occur every year in the UK. There might be 1000. There might be 1,000,000. And the figure mostly depends on how rape is actually defined.

But the overwhelming evidence suggests very clearly that the vast majority of rape allegations that are actually made to the police are very decidedly FALSE; e.g. see my piece entitled The Truth About The Rape Statistics.

Also see my piece Ignoring Relationships In Rape to see how Home Office researchers use data from highly dysfunctional women in order to evaluate the difference between Stranger Rape and Relationship Rape.

24/07/03 

UK Police recorded a 27 per cent increase in rapes - with the number exceeding 10,000 for the first time, a trend the Home Office said could be a result of encouraging women to come forward to complain. Daily Telegraph

And this was in the Times ...

RAPES of women rose by more than a quarter to more than 10,000 annually for the first time in the history of police-recorded crime, according to figures published today. 

However, the 10,000 figure does not represent rapes at all.

This figure is for allegations of rape made to the police.

Readers should ask themselves why the Home Office is purposely disseminating downright lies to the media and to the public with regard to these rape figures (and, indeed, with regard to many other issues relating to 'relationship' assaults). 

Furthermore, apart from disseminating downright lies, these authorities have purposely fudged the definitions of relationship crimes, falsified the figures, seriously corrupted the justice system, inflamed women to report abuse when none has occurred, and have carried out what can only be described as a campaign of male hatred that has now lasted for over three decades.

Also see ...

+ Have You Been Raped Recently? A short piece of mine which shows you just how easy it is to fudge the rape figures.

+ UK It is this agenda of marriage-busting, man-hating feminism which has now got the Home Office well and truly in its clutches. Ever since New Labour came to power, it has been spouting a torrent of distorted information about domestic violence. Melanie Phillips

+ UK It seems unlikely that blurring the distinction between rape and an unpleasant sexual encounter can make prosecuting rape cases easier. Rather, as the 'one in 20' headlines indicate, its main consequence is to define more and more aspects of sexual contact as rape - even when the woman concerned does not see it as such. Josie Appleton

27/07/02

UK Nearly one in 20 women in England and Wales - an estimated 754,000 victims - have been raped since they were 16, according to Home Office research.

UK The Home Office revealed yesterday that 167 women are raped in England and Wales every day and that one in 20 of the adult female population is a rape victim.

UK - Writing Letters = "Intimate Violence" The British Crime Survey's summary in its chapter on intimate violence flags up the fact that ‘stalking’ was the most common form of intimate violence experienced in the past year. This may seem like a cause for alarm. Yet dig deeper into the report and it confirms that most stalking convictions were for letter-writing or telephone calls (67 per cent) ... Tessa Mayes - providing yet another example of the blatant attempts by the Home Office to deceive the public about domestic violence.

The two official Home Office reports on rape can be found in *.pdf files as follows. The first document is the main Report that describes the research fully, and presents the technical details. The second Report outlines the findings and discusses them.