Worth their while? Pursuing a rape complaint through the criminal justice system

Authors

  • Lisa Vetten Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre to End Violence Against Women
  • Rachel Jewkes Medical Research Council
  • Romi Sigsworth Gender Programme, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation
  • Nicola Christofides Medical Research Council
  • Lizle Loots Medical Research Council
  • Olivia Dunseith Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre to End Violence Against Women

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3108/2010/i32a885

Keywords:

rape, criminal justice system, South Africa, victims, rape reporting, legal process, police

Abstract

If the criminal justice system were to advertise itself to victims of sexual violence, would its tag line be L'Oreal's 'Because you're worth it'? Or would the Foundry Premium Cider comment on the building of a pyramid: 'Twelve years in the making and it still doesn't taste very good' be more apposite? Certainly, a lack of faith in, or fear of, legal processes, is one of the reasons why eight out of nine women who are raped do not report the matter to the police.This article explores the extent to which victims' lack of faith in legal processes is warranted and asks if laying a complaint is worth the effort.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

  • Rachel Jewkes, Medical Research Council
    Gender and Health Research Unit
  • Nicola Christofides, Medical Research Council
    Gender and Health Research Unit
  • Lizle Loots, Medical Research Council
    Gender and Health Research Unit

Downloads

Published

2010-03-08

Issue

No. 32 (2010): June 2010

Section

Research articles

License

Copyright (c) 2010 Author and Institute for Security Studies

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

SACQ is licenced under a creative commons licence (CC BY) that allows others to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long a they give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

Copyright for articles published is vested equally between the author/s, the Institute for Security Studies and the Centre of Criminology (UCT).