Gang rape and a view that forced sex is normal - teenage attitudes to sex paint a troubling picture, writes Kate Holmquist
When a children's support agency revealed this week that it had been asked to help deal with "many cases" of gang rape among teenagers during the past year, even rape crisis professionals were taken by surprise.
The rape of teenagers is so common that teens make up 23 per cent of callers to rape crisis centres. But the gang rape of teenagers by teenagers has barely registered on the statistical radar until now, with only a handful of cases seen annually by the Rape Crisis Network of Ireland (RCNI), which counsels 15- and 16-year-olds without parental consent under a UK legal precedent known as "Gillick competence".
Last year, four gang members - three 16-year-olds and a 14-year-old - were detained for up to 10 years for their roles in a gang rape in Cratloe Woods, Co Clare. A 25-year-old was also convicted and sentenced to 21 years in prison last month for his role in the same attack.
Apart from this, gang rape is rarely exposed to the public gaze. If it is increasing among teens, it is part of a complex picture of intimidated under-age girls and porn-educated boys who think that forced sex is normal and who cannot even define rape, much less negotiate consensual sex.
"The fact that the perpetrators are the same age as the victims and usually known to the victims makes disclosure much harder. The victims fear the finger of blame, particularly where alcohol was used," says Alan Corbett, of Children at Risk in Ireland, the agency that made headlines this week when it revealed that it handled 45 calls from health professionals and gardaí concerning teen rape last year, a "significant" number of them gang rapes.
A dread of ridicule and other peer pressures prevent most teenagers from speaking about "forced sex" to anyone but each other, research has found. Especially where drink was consumed, victims are terrified of telling their parents, for fear of being judged harshly.
"It's difficult for teens to talk to their parents about sex, full stop. It's even harder to talk about being a victim," says Corbett.
Gang rape may be increasing because the teen perpetrators have been convinced by pornography that teenage girls want violent, forced sex as a matter of course.
"We are very concerned that more and more boys are accessing their sex education from pornography," says Fiona Neary, RCNI executive director. "Yet there are no programmes to combat these messages from pornography, and other media, which are now very powerful. No one is educating teens about how to find healthy, caring relationships."
Teenage Tolerance, a survey of 14- to 19-year-olds conducted by Women's Aid, found that 94 per cent of teenage boys and 68 per cent of teenage girls have seen pornography, mostly at friends' homes.
"More of their learning about sex comes from it than open, honest sex education. . .Young men in particular see pornography a major source of information about sex," states the report.
One teen interviewed confessed to having sexually abused a younger child as a direct consequence of viewing pornography, while another said that pornography had taught him how "to have better sex".
Real life is hardly any better. One in five girls and one in seven boys has been subjected to "contact sexual abuse" by the age of 17. Four out of five girls have been subjected to unwanted sexual advances.
The Troubling sexual atmosphere, combined with high levels of tolerance of sexual harassment, abuse and violence among teens, makes them reluctant to challenge abusers among their peers, according to Teenage Tolerance.
When interviewed for the study, teens spoke of "sex parties" and a moral code in which a drunk girl is seen as asking for sex. Girls fear explicitly saying "yes" to sex and may behave with far less inhibition when drunk, with the result that boys perceive girls as getting drunk in order to give themselves "permission" to have sex. At the same time, many boys see their own drunkenness as a way of excusing their own abusive sexual behaviour.
One girl said: "I was 14 and it was Valentine's, and I went off and I got a few cans. I was locked and my fella was grounded because he got caught drinking. He was gone. So I was left out with all his mates. I fell asleep in a field and his best mate came over and forced himself on top of me, and whatever happened I can't even remember. I know he was a bit older, he was 18 at the time. I wasn't sure and I didn't want to tell my ma. I was so locked and there were other people there that was letting him do it."
Girls expect to be in a relationship for a year or more before having sex, while most boys consider a few weeks or a month to be sufficient and will even threaten to end relationships that do not fulfil their "needs".
This puts the sexes in constant conflict, yet they are "deeply confused" about the issue of "consent", the Teen Tolerance focus groups found.
"A lot of people are having sex all the time but we don't know whether they are forced into it or if it is by choice," one girl told researchers.Neary adds: "Many teens cannot name what is happening to them. The boys are completely uninformed regarding consent, and the girls don't know how to give and withhold consent, which has at its base self-esteem and assertiveness issues."
Many teens, perhaps even most, do not know the difference between choice and force. Thirty-four per cent of male teens and 19 per cent of female teens do not see "being forced to have sex" as rape. This raises the question of how teens can report crimes that they may not realise have occurred.
Many teens view rape as being a crime committed by a stranger against a respectable woman in the street, not as something that happens at a party when boys and girls get drunk and go upstairs.
Apart from brothers and fathers, teenage girls are most likely to be raped by boyfriends and ex-boyfriends of their own age.
We tend to view the "sex offender" as a morally corrupt, middle-aged paedophile or pervert. It is perhaps far more threatening to our views of childhood and adolescence to realise that at least half of convicted sex offenders began abusing during puberty, when they were aged 10 to 13.
A proportion of teen rapists are extremely disturbed and have endured years of sexual abuse before puberty. But only about 10 per cent of sexually abused children become sex offenders. Most who inflict sexual violence have not themselves been sexually abused. Three per cent of teenage boys commit a sexual offence at some point, alarmingly, although they do not necessarily become career sex offenders.
Corbett believes that the only way forward is to develop programmes which target teen abusers and potential abusers, because only by understanding and helping them can rape be stopped. Any attempt to look at the victims' attitudes and behaviour for the solution is merely "another version of the short-skirt argument", agrees Neary.
She wants the Government to copy the approach in the UK and Sweden, by funding "sexual health workers" who run education programmes for teens outside the school setting, since the feedback from teens is that they would never speak honestly about sex to teachers and other school personnel. Sweden's programme, the first, was developed to counteract the unhealthy messages of pornography.
In the UK, Shine is a programme run by the National Health Service that educates boys and girls about self-respect and healthy sexual relationships.
"The media love to present teens as out of control, but I think our teens are fantastic and they are trying to figure these things out," says Neary. "But they need help in learning to cope with all this if they are to have healthy sexual relationships in the future. Our Catholic legacy and history of shame has affected our ability to deliver these needed programmes."
Sex talk: what boys think
What boys think when girls say no "It's awful frustrating. Especially if you're going out with them, they're getting their food and getting their drink, they're getting their taxi and then all they do is give you a kiss at the end of the night and then feck off"
Where does the line get drawn, when does no mean no, and where does consent happen?
"When the parents come home"
"It's not always easy to say 'I understand', especially when you're on the couch with nothing on . . ."
"You say you understand just to comfort her, but in your mind, for f**k sake"
"Then you put the porno on"
"You try and sway her mind, try to make her think differently, sit down and ask her why, and talk it out or whatever to make her know it's all right, and try your best to probably have sex with her, but if she doesn't after that then you don't take it any further than that"
Source: Women's Aid Teen Tolerance focus groups