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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFBI Changes Its Definition of Rape to Include Male Victims
The FBI recently changed its longstanding policy that only recognized rape as a crime affecting women, a change that will bring more accurate counts of male rape and provide better resources to victims.
In their crime reports and tallys, the FBI will now include men among rape victims. Their new provision describes rape as any kind of forced penetration against a person. Along with advocates for sexual crime victims, vice president Joseph Biden pushed for the change. He said that the new policy will reverse 80 years of not accounting for male rape victims.
The change has practical merit as well as symbolic millions in federal aid goes to sexual abuse victims and the new accounting for male rape will help assist those victims.
"If you can't measure it accurately, you can't monitor it, and you can't direct appropriate resources to deal with the problem," Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women's Law Project, one of many groups to push for the change, told USA Today. Read more here.
http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2012/01/06/FBI_Changes_Its_Definition_of_Rape_to_Include_Male_Victims/
Quantess
(27,630 posts)and that male victims weren't included in the definition before.
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)Quantess
(27,630 posts)/sarcasm/
alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)Which continues to get light treatment from even people on progressive boards like DU.
Maybe one day soon it wouldn't occur to anyone to joke about "Bubba the cellmate" whenever anyone is sentenced for a crime.
Rape is rape.
etherealtruth
(22,165 posts)... and rape is never 'funny" or deserved.
(*I understand this is the point you made, just posting in emphatic agreement)
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)...on this issue.
Note: this is for FBI statistics, which are some of the best statistics out there on crime rates in the US. This will only improve those statistics.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Let alone the 21st...
Your neighbors to the south might be backwards, but as early as 1987 we treated male rape as well rape.