I always figured that if a woman showed up in the emergency room for injuries related to a rape, they were required to call the police, kind of like if you show up with a gunshot wound.

So they will use these kits, but the police don't have to be notified? Am I reading this right?

Unless they photograph the woman or take fingerprints, which would violate the anonymity, then how do they connect a particular woman to a particular kit? I suppose it could be possible, but I'm sure that prosecutor's are not enthusiastic about prosecuting cases in which the defense says that the woman was so reluctant to say she'd been raped that she wouldn't even let them put her name on the rape kit.

I think that the solution to women not wanting to report rape has to be societal, not procedural. Women should not be ashamed of being raped, any more than they should be ashamed of being robbed or beaten. That means that we have to stop silently sending the message that rape is "different", secret, shameful. Treat rape victims the same as other victims - with compassion, respect, respect for privacy, and counseling. If this requires that we treat other victims differently (like not releasing personal information about beating victims), then so be it.

The first woman is convicted of murder based on one of these anonymous DNA kits. Then it will be some kind of violation of gibbity jab and such like.

The kit doesn't remain anonymous during prosecution; it's just held anonymously until the woman decides to prosecute. The number is what connects the woman to the kit. It's no easier for a woman to falsely accuse a man of rape through this means than the means that are available already. There's not a real downside except the expense, which is what the hospitals are bitching about. And I really think that expense shouldn't be a factor in determining whether evidence for a potential prosecution is collected.

but what IS to prevent a woman who gets PO'd at a man from obtaining one of these kits after sex and then claiming he raped her?

If there's nothing, then I DO have problem with this. I see this as ASSUMING the guy is guilty until proven innocent...which is against everything our current legal system is based.

Now if there is a way for her to show brusing and forced rape, then I'm all for it.

chefpayne: Now if there is a way for her to show brusing and forced rape, then I'm all for it.

Not all rape shows brusing or what you call "force." Sometimes when a woman has a gun to her head or a knife to her throat, she doesn't make a move until it's all over.

I wonder though, would a woman have to be trained in how to obtain & preserve the appropriate evidence?

but what IS to prevent a woman who gets PO'd at a man from obtaining one of these kits after sex and then claiming he raped her?

Nothing, but there's nothing to stop her from doing that right now anyway if she were determined to press charges against the guy. The only difference this would make is that it would allow women the option of first submitting the evidence for a rape kit, and then thinking about whether they want to press charges or not, rather having to decide on the spot whether they're going to press charges or forever forfeit their chance to do so.

I suppose if you really want you can imagine some screwed up case where some scheming woman gets the rape kit done after consensual sex and then tells the guy that she did so and proceeds to blackmail him under threat of going to the cops and using the evidence that's sitting there waiting to be opened. I'm not gonna deny that's possible. But you have to weight it against the statistic likelihood of that to the number of women who actually get raped and don't report it.

I'm not claiming to have the answer here. I think when you talk about the number of rapes that go unreported you have to account for how 'rape' is being defined, and I suspect that a large chunk of that number includes instances where the reason that it's unreported is that the girl is unsure whether it was actually rape (college party, both participants are drunk, not sure what happened, whether she said stop, whether he heard her, etc.) I don't think all of those cases should automatically be considered rape. But I'm inclined to think that even when you exclude these, the number of unreported actual rapes is still high enough to justify something like this.

I agree with the poster who said that this is only a partial solution and the real problem is one of social stigma. Ironically, I think that the refusal of many feminists to make a finer distinction between the situations I described above, where it's at least possible</> that the woman was partly responsible, and actual forced rape contributes to the stigma, because the discourse has become so polluted that when women say 'rape' a lot of people's natural instinct is to assume it was the former kind. I'm not saying this is right, I'm just saying that the horror of the notion of rape has become somewhat diluted by the expansion of the term to include those ambiguous situations.

Try to ignore those italics at the end please.

Chiefpayne, there's nothing preventing a woman from falsely accusing a man of rape after consensual sex right now.

About victim blaming and shame: I'm not sure it's possible to change culture enough that a rape victim never feels guilty or ashamed. Rape is about overpowering someone, and it's natural for someone who gets overpowered to second-guess every decision that led up to that moment. Should she have walked through that particular parking lot? Should she have struggled more? Were there signs she missed that might have told her what kind of guy she was dealing with before she let him in her house? Should she have bought a house in that neighborhood, moved to that particular city at all? Should she have smiled at that guy at the bar?

The rapist is counting on shame; he's TRYING to make the victim feel ashamed. It would take a heck of a lot of support from any possible culture to overcome that.