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Earlier this fall, in an interview with GQ, Helen Mirren said that if a woman is date raped, she shouldn't press charges because if she's voluntarily in a man's room with her clothes off, that's something to be "worked out between them." Yesterday, in a jaw dropping interview with the Times of London, Mirren was quoted saying that women are sexually competitive with other women, and as a result, they are less likely to convict rapists when on a jury. "In a rape case the courts in defense of a man would select as many women as they could for the jury, because women go against women," Mirren says. "Whether in a deep-seated animalistic way, going back billions of years, or from a sense of tribal jealousy or just antagonism, I don't know." More »
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Less than 6% of rapes reported in England lead to convictions — and that's out of as few as 10% of rapes that are reported in the first place. I'm no mathematician, but the good people at the Washington Post have underscore the fact that those statistics are deplorable. The well-researched article by the Post's Mary Jordan is bookended by the tale of a 15-year-old London teen who was raped by a 28-year-old neighbor. Her mother immediately called the police, and yet it took several months for the police to question the rapist. The man was eventually set free, although he had a previous criminal record; the judge in the case said, he was "in a way a man of good character" because his prior convictions were non-violent. This is clearly not an isolated event, as a 2005 report commissioned by UK police described a "culture of skepticism" surrounding rape cases. And the horrors don't end there! More »
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