Rape: Answers needed

Every day last week the number of women that have come forward after being raped or sexually assaulted by John Worboys, the "black cab rapist", went up. By the end of the week a special phone line had been established to record complaints from this one man, and almost 100 women are reported to have come forward. His modus operandi in each case remained fairly constant – saying that he was celebrating a win on the lottery and wanted the customer to join him in a drink. It was then that Worboys spiked the alcohol with another drug, causing the customer to lose consciousness.

The Metropolitan Police's Sapphire team is the most experienced at rape investigations in England. Yet even here, Worboys kept getting away with rape and sexual assault – on a massive scale. So just how did he get away with it for so long? Our disgracefully low conviction rate sends out a negative message to rape victims – that if you report rape it is very unlikely that it will result in any form of punishment for the offender. But the conviction rate also sends out a very dangerous message to potential offenders – that it is very unlikely that you will even be reported to the police for your crime, never mind punished through the courts; and that if the case is reported, the chances are that the investigation—if there is one—will be so poor that it won’t get anywhere near the court system. The police are still far too quick to believe the denials of any man accused of rape, and too dismissive of a woman’s report of rape – especially if she has been drinking alcohol.

Of course, these attitudes are not limited to the police, and in order to create real change within society we need to have a huge public shift in how rape victims are treated. This is why Rape Crisis Scotland this year launched a new campaign, with the slogan: "This is not an invitation to rape me." One of the campaign images shows five young women in a bar, drinking alcohol and enjoying themselves. Rape Crisis Scotland state that until women stop being blamed for rape because they had been drinking alcohol, Scotland will continue to pay for the double standard applied to alcohol consumption.

In the Worboys case, women’s awareness of the low conviction rate, added to their fear of not being believed because they had consumed alcohol, undoubtedly contributed to their reluctance to report to the police. When one woman did report, no prosecution took place – no doubt adding to Worboys' feeling of invincibility.

However, there is another issue here that has gone relatively unnoticed. Here we had one man, raping and sexually assaulting women using a consistent ploy – yet the women of London were not warned. If there had been posters up and reports in the London papers about a serial rapist who was spiking women’s drinks in a black cab after saying they had won the lottery some of these cases could have undoubtedly been prevented. The coverage might have made Worboys realise he could not continue to get away with it. Ironically, at the same time as Worboys was getting away with rape and sexual assault in his registered black cab, widespread general warnings were put out to women about how unsafe unlicensed minicabs are.

The Worboys case represents a series of missed opportunities to act. The police must learn from this case and never let it happen again. Women need to be warned if they are at an increased and specific risk that they are not aware of, the rape conviction rate must be increased as a matter of urgency, and the alcohol use double standard must be eliminated.