The End Violence Against Women Coalition have published the results of their December 2018 survey (pdf) to better understand attitudes to rape, and people’s understanding of the law on rape.
This research, with almost 4,000 respondents, shows a worrying confusion both about what rape is, and how much harm rape does.
The paper finds:
- A third (33%) of people in Britain think it isn’t usually rape if a woman is pressured into having sex but there is no physical violence
- Over 65s have most troubling attitudes to rape, while younger people have opinions that are more closely aligned to the law
- Some people (11%) believe the more sexual partners a woman has, the less harm they experience from rape
- 60% of people think that free counselling services are available to victims of rape
- 33% think that sex which happens without consent, but where there is no physical violence, isn’t really rape.