Rape considered worst than murder

[Tongera]

What POD would it take for rape to be considered one of the worst crimes to be committed, even worse than murder by most of society and to be treated accordingly.

[ND4]

Somehow make it even more traumatizing for the rapeee?

[Polish Eagle]

Originally Posted by Tongera

What POD would it take for rape to be considered one of the worst crimes to be committed, even worse than murder by most of society and to be treated accordingly.

One way is to eliminate the influence of certain Greek philosophers in the matter. Some Greek philosophers taught that women can only get pregnant if they too experience an orgasm (some rubbish about the female organs being mirrors of the male). Rape that resulted in pregnancy (the most socially significant kind in the ancient world), therefore, was considered consensual, and thus the woman was blamed as much as (or more than) the man.

Make it universally accepted as forced and violent and therefore completely an attack on an innocent would therefore make rape an attack, not just on the individual, but on the entire family, an attempt by the rapist to ruin the usable daughters of a family. While that social justification would become less relevant as time went on, the stigma attached to rapists would be much stronger than IOTL.

[Coalition]

Of course you have the situation of where if rape is worse, the rapist will kill the victim, to go to jail for the lesser crime.

[Evan]

Originally Posted by Coalition

Of course you have the situation of where if rape is worse, the rapist will kill the victim, to go to jail for the lesser crime.

Until science/mores advance enough that people could and would look at the corpse and see what had happened before her death.

[Jello_Biafra]

Originally Posted by Evan

Until science/mores advance enough that people could and would look at the corpse and see what had happened before her death.

It still places a perverse incentive to kill your victim. After all, you lose nothing in terms of potential punishment, and you silence a potential witness.

[Tocomocho]

Short of everyone converting to Catarism ("terrenal life sucks, funerals are parties, bringing life to this sinful world a crime") I can't see this happening.

[tallthinkev]

It does seem to me, that in many cases rape is worse. Being accused of rape always sticks even when if that person was not even there, their life is over. No smoke without fire and all that. Accused of murder? He/she didn't do it and life begin's again. Before the Labour goverment took power, in '97, all those involed in a invesigtion of a sex crime where anomous, names only came out when the party was found guilty. So much for Jack Straw and Tony, worship him, Blair.

[Bob in Pittsburgh]

There is no question in my mind that this would encourage murder. It is much easier for a lawyer to defend a murder trial than a rape trial. The rape victim testifing "He is the one who did this to me" is difficult to counter. This, in part, is why consent is so often raised as a defense.

[Meadow]

You'd need to go back long before 1900 and change how we view the sanctity of life (by which I mean actual life, not some anti-abortion mumbo jumbo) as a world society. Christianity, Judaism and Islam having a different view of what it is to take a life would be a good start. I think the only way you'll make rape worse is to make murder 'better'. Maybe the logic that a rape victim must live with his or her torment, while a murder victim has ascended to a higher plane and is happy now?