this is not an invitation to rape me

In 2002 the UK Home Office published the findings of a British Crime Survey to which 6,944 women had responded. Nearly half (45%) of rapes reported to the survey were committed by perpetrators who were victims’ partners at the time of the attack.

Women who are raped by their partners are much less likely to report the assaults against them or seek legal redress than those attacked by strangers.

Fear of retribution, a sense of family loyalty or even a lack of awareness that what has happened is against the law, silences many women who have been assaulted by their partners, and prevents them from naming it as rape, even to themselves.

Rape in marriage has only been recognised as a crime in Scotland since as recently as 1989 (and only since 1991 in England and Wales).

The concept of “conjugal rights” may have died out in the context of our legal framework, but the sense of a man’s entitlement to sex with his wife or partner is still very much alive in the minds and imaginations of many people, and often used to excuse or trivialise rape.

From Rape Crisis Scotland's current campaign, This is not an invitation to rape me, which challenges beliefs that dress, behaviour, drinking or relationship status, invite or justify rape.