Gay male rape victims: law enforcement, social attitudes and barriers to recognition

Abstract

This paper examines the experiences of gay male rape victims. It discusses findings from empirical studies of police attitudes along with an increasing number of studies that have examined the experiences of these victims. It also considers social attitudes to this group of victims and the way in which those attitudes impact legal responses to the problem of male rape. Further, this paper identifies three barriers to the recognition of male rape: denial of the problem, hierarchies of suffering, and victim-blaming. Finally, it concludes by considering two possible strategies for improving the treatment of male sexual victimisation within the criminal justice system in England and Wales.

The Unknown Victims: Hegemonic Masculinity, Masculinities, and Male Sexual Victimisation

“…Because male rape myths, such as 6.10 6.11 6.12 these, dominate the state and third sectors, male rape victims are actively unacknowledged, invisibilised, alienated and marginalised (Turchik and Edwards 2012). Holding onto these male rape myths, which may induce victim-blaming attitudes (Walker et al 2005;Chapleau et al 2008;Rumney 2009) or homophobia (Kassing et al 2005), ignores that many male rape victims are unable to fight off their offender(s) at the time of their rape because of fear, intimidation, and control. For instance, in Gregory and Lees' (1999: 116) research, while finding that "male complainants were particularly anxious if they had not resisted, which they feared would lead people to assume they had colluded", they also found that many male rape victims cannot fight off their attacker(s) because " [t]he threat of violence [is] usually sufficient to gain compliance" (ibid.…”

“…More recent research supports this (Jamel 2010), in which it is argued that gay male rape victims are perceived as less legitimate or deserving, determined by police occupational culture. Similarly, according to Rumney (2009), gay male rape victims are less likely to report their rape to the police than heterosexual victims of male rape because of the officers' homophobic attitudes and behaviors emanating from the police occupational culture. Carpenter (2009) believes that state agencies always use a woman-focused model of victimisation when responding to male rape victims; in other words, state agencies deal with both female and male rape in the same way.…”

“…This is a particular problem, due to some research arguing that the police are homophobic and execute homophobic attitudes toward male rape victims (e.g., Stermac et al 1996;Lees 1997;Gregory and Lees 1999). Although these research studies were conducted over a decade ago, there is no recent research that examines the police responses to male rape victims, other than Rumney (2008Rumney ( , 2009), Abdullah-Khan 2008's recent monograph, and Javaid (2015cJavaid ( , 2016cJavaid ( , 2017.…”

“…Chapleau et al (2008: 604) "speculate that the same attitudes that function to support rape myths about female victims may also function to support rape myths about male victims." Recent research has found that secondary victimisation is prevalent, which refers to attitudes and behaviors that are insensitive, hostile, homophobic and victim blaming by the police (Rumney 2008(Rumney , 2009). This supports earlier findings from Donnelly and Kenyon (1996), Hodge and Canter (1998), Gregory and Lees (1999), and Lees (1997).…”

Perceptions of male rape and sexual assault in a male sample from the United Kingdom: Barriers to reporting and the impacts of victimization

“…Since it was first legally recognized in 1994, there has been a significant increase in the number of offences of male rape recorded year‐on‐year by the police in England and Wales (Rumney ). In 1995, 150 offences of male rape were recorded by the police.…”