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The `Ideal' Victim v Successful Rape Complainants: Not What You Might Expect

The `Ideal' Victim v Successful Rape Complainants: Not What You Might Expect This article proposes that feminist legal critics need to be able to explain how some rape cases succeed in securing convictions. The means by which rape cases are routinely disqualified in the criminal justice system have received widespread attention. It is well established in feminist legal critique that female complainants are discredited if they fail to conform to an archaic stereotype of the genuine or ‘real’ rape victim. This victim is not only morally and sexually virtuous she is also cautious, unprovocative, and consistent. Defence tactics for discrediting rape testimony involve exposing the complainant's alleged failure to comply with the sexual and behavioural standards of the normative victim.This understanding of how rape complain(an)ts are disqualified is not predictive, however, of the complainants whose cases succeed in securing convictions. This article reviews some successful Australian rape cases and considers the ways in which they disturb feminist understandings of how rape complaints are discredited in the criminal justice system. It proposes that recent research analysing the discourse of rape trials provides a way of explaining the apparent discrepancies between the ‘ideal’ rape victim and successful complainants. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Feminist Legal Studies Springer Journals

The `Ideal' Victim v Successful Rape Complainants: Not What You Might Expect

Larcombe, Wendy
Feminist Legal Studies , Volume 10 (2) – May 1, 2002
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References (35)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer Law International 2002
ISSN
0966-3622
eISSN
1572-8455
DOI
10.1023/a:1016060424945
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article proposes that feminist legal critics need to be able to explain how some rape cases succeed in securing convictions. The means by which rape cases are routinely disqualified in the criminal justice system have received widespread attention. It is well established in feminist legal critique that female complainants are discredited if they fail to conform to an archaic stereotype of the genuine or ‘real’ rape victim. This victim is not only morally and sexually virtuous she is also cautious, unprovocative, and consistent. Defence tactics for discrediting rape testimony involve exposing the complainant's alleged failure to comply with the sexual and behavioural standards of the normative victim.This understanding of how rape complain(an)ts are disqualified is not predictive, however, of the complainants whose cases succeed in securing convictions. This article reviews some successful Australian rape cases and considers the ways in which they disturb feminist understandings of how rape complaints are discredited in the criminal justice system. It proposes that recent research analysing the discourse of rape trials provides a way of explaining the apparent discrepancies between the ‘ideal’ rape victim and successful complainants.

Journal

Feminist Legal Studies – Springer Journals

Published: May 1, 2002

Keywords: complainant; discourse analysis; rape; rape defences; rape victim; resistance; sexualisation; trial process

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