Victim Blaming and Shaming or Necessary Law?

Trigger Warning.

This is all sorts of fucked up.  Britain’s new government is cracking down on rape victims and acting quickly to protect rapists.

The British Prime Minister is supporting limited anonymity for rape defendants, says the BBC News.

In its coalition deal, the government backed keeping the identity of defendants in rape cases in England and Wales secret until after conviction.

But Mr Cameron told MPs he favoured a "limited extension" to the law to cover the period between arrest and charges.

The acting Labor leader Harriet Herman is of course dismayed at such a stance. She is quoted as correctly stating that protecting rapists will only make it even more difficult for rape victims to come forward.

To single out rape defendants sends a very powerful message to juries in rape cases that the rape victim is not to be believed. It sends a devastating message to rape victims that uniquely of all victims they are not to be believed.

Although the article cites the statistical odds piled against rape victims in the UK, it concludes with the justification for rapist protection stating "number of cases in which celebrities were named in newspapers over allegations of sexual assault, even though in some cases they were not charge". Of course the actions of a few will endanger hundreds of thousands of other women, and for the British government that is apparently okay.