Who the devil are they? is the response one can sometimes get from people who know exactly who they are but don't wish to admit this for fear of being considered naff.
They are "The Archers", the longest running soap, starting life in the late 1940s in an effort to get farmers to grow more crops and now with a weekly audience of around 4.4 million on BBC Radio 4.
And I am ready to confess. I'm an addict, and I want to stay that way. It may be "an everyday story of countryfolk", and often parodied as being as white and middle-class as Radio 4's listeners are alleged to be.
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But as well as being very good drama it has developed a much more inclusive role, covering human life in all its many shapes and sizes, in almost any community, rural or urban.
Addicts like me have recently been glued to their radios as the saga of the rape which one of the key figures - Kathy Perks - claimed to have suffered at the hands of one Owen Taylor - came to in court. Kathy knew Taylor as a friend before the rape took place.
Most rapes are not however "stranger rapes", but "acquaintance rapes", where the central issue in the investigation and the trial is not the identity of the assailant, for that is known, but whether the woman concerned consented.
The "beyond reasonable doubt" standard of proof in our criminal courts is high, but rightly so; for whatever revulsion all of us should feel about such awful crimes, it would be equally dreadful if someone innocent of a crime like this were convicted.
The consequence of all these factors means that at present fewer than six per cent of rape cases reported to the police ultimately result in a conviction; and in only a third of those where there is a prosecution is there a guilty verdict.
The drama of Kathy Perks' rape brought out these issues very skilfully over many months of The Archers.
She did not tell anyone of the rape for a long time; she'd destroyed the clothing she'd been wearing when it happened. She had "allowed" herself to be alone with Taylor at a time when she was feeling vulnerable about her own long-term relationship. All situations typical of some acquaintance rapes. The script writers did well to bring out the huge stress which she suffered right up to the moment the verdict of the court was given.
In the event she got the verdict which every listener, myself included, thought was the right one - guilty.
There is still a long way to go, but some things have changed for the better in rape cases. Everyone, police, prosecutors, the courts, now take allegations of acquaintance rape with the seriousness they deserve - a far cry from the situation two decades ago, when it was not unusual for the police to brush away such claims with the suggestion that the woman "must have asked for it". There is now greater confidence in the criminal justice system, with the result that the number of rapes reported to the police has more than doubled in the last 10 years. The average sentence lengths for rapists have over the last 20 years more than doubled - from 40 months in 1984, to 82.4 months in 2005.
Bad news for Kathy's rapist Owen Taylor, but good news for the rest of us.
Posted by: Nostradamos, Blackburn on 12:15pm Fri 18 Apr 08
Thak you Jack for bringing this subject up,rape is a most difficult crime to get to the truth of the matter,i.e different messages being sent from the female to the male,being misread by the male who could easily be fooled into thinking that the female is playing hard to get and then after a point the male not taking NO for an answer,i have actually known some females who have told me that there fiends were disapointed when the male actually stopped his advances even though he was respecting there wishes,a very difficult situation arise in those circumstances,but blatant out and out rape needs punishing to the highest degree.
Gladly we have progressed from the dark old days when in the 60s i was serving my apprenticeship and my teacher had a very simple answer to all rape cases and this was his thinking then Jack,,"Man with trouser down cannot run as fast as girl with skirt up"the girl is at fault pretty simple really,i think not..LOL
Thak you Jack for bringing this subject up,rape is a most difficult crime to get to the truth of the matter,i.e different messages being sent from the female to the male,being misread by the male who could easily be fooled into thinking that the female is playing hard to get and then after a point the male not taking NO for an answer,i have actually known some females who have told me that there fiends were disapointed when the male actually stopped his advances even though he was respecting there wishes,a very difficult situation arise in those circumstances,but blatant out and out rape needs punishing to the highest degree.
Gladly we have progressed from the dark old days when in the 60s i was serving my apprenticeship and my teacher had a very simple answer to all rape cases and this was his thinking then Jack,,"Man with trouser down cannot run as fast as girl with skirt up"the girl is at fault pretty simple really,i think not..LOL
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