FBI Changes Its Definition of Rape to Include Male Victims

[William769]

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]

1. I'm very surprised to learn this is new

and that male victims weren't included in the definition before.

[joshcryer]

4. It was so narrowly defined that even date rape wasn't rape, if I recall correctly.

[Quantess]

5. Jeeeez that's hilarious!

/sarcasm/

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. This might especially help people combatting the epidemic of prison rape

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]

7. Rape is rape

... and rape is never 'funny" or deserved.

(*I understand this is the point you made, just posting in emphatic agreement)

[joshcryer]

3. This was brought up by some DUers as a needed change, glad the FBI is forward-thinking...

...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]

6. Welcome to the 20th century

Let alone the 21st...

Your neighbors to the south might be backwards, but as early as 1987 we treated male rape as well rape.