RAPE: FOUR HYPOTHETICALS

You are a middle-aged woman. You are alone in the house when your estranged husband calls round. You and he are still on reasonably good terms; it’s just that you can't live together. On this occasion, he's clearly very down. You give him a cup of tea and you both talk for a long time standing up in the kitchen, inconclusively. Suddenly, he starts to cry. You are touched. You put your arms around him and comfort him. After a while, he starts to kiss your neck. You say 'no'. He's still tearful, but persistent. You realise that at some level you still love him but you don't want this. But he does. He starts to kiss you again gently, then passionately. You say no again, firmly. He pushes you down onto the kitchen table. You struggle a bit, then you accept that he isn't going to stop. He was always stronger than you. He penetrates you. Then he weeps copiously. He begs your forgiveness. You tell him to go, coldly. After a while he does so. You feel angry and humiliated.

Meanwhile, your 15 year-old daughter has been beyond your control since puberty. She sleeps around without a thought. The boys she sleeps with think she's 18 because that's what she tells them and it's convincing, especially when the boys have had a few drinks and she's coming on to them so heavily.

Your brilliant 19 year-old son is at university, a gleaming career ahead of him. You've met his girlfriend of a few weeks. You instinctively didn't like her, felt she was manipulative and untrustworthy. You hoped your boy would find someone you felt more positive about. But you know they've slept together and you fear he may be smitten. Then all hell breaks loose. The police arrest him and accuse him of date rape. He denies it. He at once agrees that they've had intercourse in the past but he's sure they didn't on this occasion. He says that they'd both drunk quite a lot and that she had indicated that she might want a change from him. He had indeed begged her not to move on but she wasn't to be persuaded. She alleges that he raped her because she had refused his advances and that she wasn't drunk.

Your septuagenarian mother is wonderfully independent, travels widely, drives herself everywhere, is full of life and vigour. One day, when she stops at traffic lights, her car is surrounded by a gang of motorcyclists. They drag her from the car, gang-rape her on a building site and leave her there. She is found in the morning. Her life is saved but she never recovers. She refuses to go out. She sits at home and weeps for the rest of her curtailed life.

Rape is rape, you say. The boys who sleep with your daughter (though they don't know it and you perhaps don't either) are guilty of statutory rape because she is under age. So, the estranged husband, the his-word-against-hers son, the boys who slept with your out-of-control 15-going-on-18 daughter and the bikers who gang-raped your mother must all have the same sentence, right? Discuss.