Theft of Privacy as Sexual Abuse

Since writing the April post I have discovered that stealing the privacy of the victim is an extension of sexual abuse.

Children who have been sexually abused state that the pedophile would watch them in the bathroom and while they were sleeping, constantly violating their privacy.(1)
Stalkers steal the private information of the person they are stalking in order to monitor them and initiate feelings of fear.(2)
The Australian Law Reform Commission states that stealing someones personal information could be done simply 'to distress or intimidate the person'.(3)
Apart from these reasons there is also another reason.

In an article from the Daily Telegraph (Sydney) by Cindy Wockner "Accused 'taped sex assault victim'" Friday July 5th 2002 (4) an individual, (M1), who was charged with being involved in the rape of a girl in Sydney in 2000 states that video tapes of the girl have been made. He states that these tapes show that the rape is 'bullshit' and that the girl is lying.
In other words if you can make images of a rape victim that show her to be complicit or promiscuous then rape and sexual abuse become acceptable.
For this arguement he is relying on an age old prejudice that cuts through societies, culture's and classes, the prejudice that women are morally deficient. That a woman's dress or behaviour must have somehow contributed to the rape and because she is morally deficient she will lie about it.
When a woman pursue's a rape charge she "will face challenges to her own morality. What sort of clothes did she wear? Where was she? Why was she there? Is she sexually active? Did she know her attacker? Had she or does she ever, drink?"(5)
Time and again this prejudice is reinforced through our culture and our language despite our awareness of the impact and extent of sexual abuse.

"What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing- the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others"
John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women ch. 1 (1869)(6)


(1)Herman,J & Hirschman, L 1981 Father Daughter Incest Cambridge M A Harvard University Press cited in Peters, J & Kaye, L 2003 Childhood sexual abuse: a review of its impact on older women entering institutional settings Clinical Gerontologist vol.26 (3/4) pp.29-46
(2) Reid Meloy, J 2007 Editorial: stalking the state of the science Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health vol. 17 pp.1-7
(3)Australian Law Reform Commission 2007 Review of Australian Privacy Law
(4)This article is located in the archives of http://www.news.com.au/. It can also be found on the NewsBank or Factiva database
(5) Marea Donnelly 2001 'Our society is so easy on rape that it's a crime' Sydney Morning Herald Tuesday june 19th 2001
(6) Shapiro, F (ed) 2006 The Yale Book of Quotations Yale University Press New Haven