ME, MYSELF & MY MATE GOT RAPED - (SV SA)

First, a "don't pull the trigger" warning!

Please be advised the following subjects are included: Explicit sexual details - Rape & Sexual violence

It’s my opinion that the U.K. is in denial on a great many things, especially the “Great” in Great Britain, but sexual violence, assault and rape against men, alongside intimate partner violence and domestic violence perpetrated against male victims, seems to be the elephant in the room in all the mental health conversations we are having.

Netflix’s outstanding Baby Reindeer was seen by an estimated sixty-five million people in 2024. It’s very harrowing account of a series of male on male sexual assaults and rapes, and his perceived failure to report them, exploded over social media in 2024. The well written and acted drama, based on a stage play, which in turn is based on real events didn’t shy away from the effects of being raped which caused a severe mental breakdown for the victim, widespread damage in his life and confusion in his sexuality. It drew both critical acclaim and viewer interest, as well as a media frenzy surrounding his stalker, Martha. But like the newspapers of old, yesterday's Netflix seems to already be wrapping tomorrow’s fish and chips. Where did all that momentum go?

Part of the problem of us not talking about it on a society level, is that men are not speaking about it on any level. “Let’s go down the Dog & Duck later for a pint and I’ll tell you about the time I got jumped by a bloke and raped on the way home” is not a common conversation coming from male lips. It isn’t a conversation at all. So why not?

Women have rightly smashed this agenda through the window of public thought since the 1960’s and before. Finally starting to be accepted as unacceptable in the 1980’s and 90’s, the #MeToo movement of the 2010’s really opened up the debate to a world stage.

It was ok to talk about women being raped, but aren’t men being raped too?

According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) for the year ending March 2022, 1.2% of men aged sixteen and over experienced sexual assault (which includes rape attempts). The figure alone equates to approx two hundred and seventy-five thousand males. Applying that statistic across the entire population and its history would mean that currently 1.9 million men living in the U.K. today have experienced rape (as the victim) since the age of sixteen.

Now here comes the twist - and it’s a very scary one! Let’s consider recent research that shows in all rape cases (including female) five out of six victims do not report their experiences. The maths now becomes pretty terrifying if you consider that men are much less likely to report anything than even women are.

Potentially, 1.7 million men are raped (including attempted) in the U.K. every single year. That could mean that almost 11.5 million men in the U.K. could be surviving after a rape experience.

With 32.81 million men in the U.K. currently, that leaves us with the estimate of over one third of our male population potentially having suffered as the victim of sexual violence in their lifetime.

So where’s the help? The debate? The change? The support? Well, that depends on what you need and where you live.

If you identify as gay and are in Blackpool, Brighton, London, maybe Manchester, there might be a service for you. But identify as anything other than that and dare to live in a market town, or rural areas - no chance.

I am a gay man, I am confident enough to know myself and my sexuality. I am unapologetic about it and unafraid. I would argue that most men who identify as gay are able to speak about sex and sexuality easier than those who identify otherwise. My major concern is that a man who perhaps identifies as “straight” is going to be far less likely to be comfortable discussing the very complex emotions and feelings of male on male rape for many reasons. Humiliation for one, but also the sexual words and phrases, the feelings their body provided to them as it happened, the mental concerns they now feel are going to be very difficult to express. It seems the ones who need the care most, have the least.

The NHS recommends the use of SARC centres and depending on your location their services for men are varied. Most of the individual websites seem to be fairly focused in their presentation in the sense they either avoid images and graphics, or equally split them between genders. 

In these centres you can get physical help, video interviews if you choose to tell your story, and evidence can be gathered along with medical help if required. All great if that’s for you, but trust me, when even the world Police is mentioned as it often is on their websites, sometimes thats enough to put anyone off the conversation about their own experiences. They do have the ability to forward you for mental help, but to be honest that’s all it is, a forward back to the NHS.

The biggest issue here is that you need to go to the SARC in your ‘catchment area’ so to speak and this is generally a problem across the U.K. in regards to all sexual assault services for men, you need to approach a charity near you. A charity - an organisation with minimal money, sometimes limited experience and reach, and often with no ‘clout’. I know they are doing their best, it isn’t their fault, but their best isn’t good enough and they do it because the NHS is not recognising the need for it.

From my recent local research this is the horrific situation in my surrounding counties. Of my nearest services for sexual assault survivors:

Coventry: An immediate NO from viewing the website alone. The front page lets you know the service is currently overwhelmed & wont even add you to a waiting list, male or female. Try elsewhere.

Northampton: A female only space that suggested I tried elsewhere as they could not help men.

Leicester: A female only space also suggested I tried elsewhere for the same reason.

Birmingham: Has LGBQT+ support as well as for men generally, but are also overrun & not offering any assistance at this time.

Nottingham: Offer female, male, LGBQT+ support but I was told sorry, we can't assist you (even online) because I was out of their catchment area & they suggested I tried the above. 

Going back to the thought process that five out of six victims are not reporting anything, and that men are particularly a major concern in this area and the statistic is higher. Imagine the very few men who pluck up the courage to discuss their sexuality, a violent attack, a mental and physical rape they may have experienced that they perhaps have mentioned to no other single human being in their lives before. Imagine them finally reaching out for help and getting those five responses. You wouldn't ask for help again would you.

Now imagine we can change it, because we can.

There appears to be a lack of understanding around the complexities of male rape because it is different to female rape. In female rape there are issues men don't have to worry about when they are victims, like pregnancy for example. But for men there are other issues that are less physical perhaps and far more mental. No rape can be compared to another, but that is precisely my point. Every victim needs different things.

Society holds a very strong boundary even in 2024 around male sexuality. We can all say “but thats changed now hasn’t it?”, but that doesn't make it true. Because a generation of twenty-something males are happy to flirt with another man without offence being taken, is not the same as a man of forty-five being comfortable to say he was in a public toilet late at night and was raped by another man. 

I can hear the whispers already, and I know you can too. 

“Well, if he was in a public toilet late at night he must have been looking for it” - right?

Homophobia still rears its ugly head here and has to take some blame, along with toxic masculine culture and the general consensus that men don’t have worries or concerns and they just get on with it. They don’t and yes, that is slowly changing but it’s at a snails pace. Sixty-five million people watched a graphic depiction of male rape in Baby Reindeer, but of those same people I can guarantee many asked the question, even if just in their own heads, “He’s a man though, why didn’t he fight him off, say no, punch him. Why was he so scared of the bloke, why did he go back, why hasn’t he named him?”

It’s the male equivalent of “Why was her skirt so short” and all of this is linked to the major issue here.

There is a complete lack of understanding about who men need support from, and what they need support with, after this kind of event and that seems to come in part from the lack of understanding that male and female rape victims need different things, every victim needs different things.

I have been raped. 

I have been raped multiple times.

I have been raped by men I knew, and men I did not, and do not know to this day.

I have been raped by multiple men at a time.

I never gave my consent to any of the above.

So finally, let’s talk about the word consent.

There is one national U.K. based charity specifically set up to offer LGBTQ+ support for the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. BRILLIANT! They do amazing work in educating, supporting, and caring for victims and a lot of their team volunteer for free. Amazing people I am sure, but do they really understand who they are helping?

I recently reached out to them after being turned down at every other service locally. I waited over six weeks to get a telephone appointment to discuss a care plan going forward. My support worker offered me multiple time slots for our first call, explained clearly it would be about an hour and that it could be a difficult conversation to have. They told me to try to have a safe space to do it in, and support in place incase things got difficult for me answering their questions about my experiences being raped. They gave me over a week's notice of the call so as to give me time to ready myself.

Some context - Aside from two very close longterm friends, I have never spoken of these events to anyone at that time, let alone a stranger via a telephone call. I was nervous, unsure, frightened and certainly anxious about even answering my phone, but I had referred myself so it was clear I felt I needed to speak to someone, and in my self referral had given a decent enough account of my physical experience of rape for them to be able to grasp the complexities. 

I was anxious, sure, but I was ready to take the call and start the process.

But when they asked me to give them ‘consent to fully act on my behalf' and for me to ‘give them consent to share anything discussed with any third party they deemed necessary' less than thirty minutes before my call was due, and via an email, I refused.

Triggers.

A trigger is a scenario, word, a feeling, a noise, whatever really, but something which has the potential to cause a reaction in someone that brings up feelings of anxiousness or worse. For me and I believe a lot of victims, using language in an electronic form like “Act on my clients behalf” and “Shared this information with a third party or agency” screams out legality, police, crime, court cases, judges in wigs and uniforms. It says I am giving up control to others, I am not the master of my journey from now on. I am being ‘forced.

Ironically, my support worker at GALLOP did not seem to see the irony of kindly pointing out their policy is that “GALLOP wants you to stay in control of your journey at all times”. You mean, at all times accept when before we even start when you want control over what I say and do, and who knows my shame?

That’s not even the worst of it, can you imagine a trigger worse than telling a rape victim they must give their consent TWICE in the first two lines of your “Consent agreement”. 

It is actually called a consent agreement. Consent.

I didn’t give the last bastard consent and look what they did, why the hell would I give it to you, a stranger over the phone? I never gave the men who did this to me consent. I never had to give the nurses in the hospitals consent, the NHS trauma specialist never asked for consent before we spoke about it, my private therapist has no “consent clause” in her contract, my GP never asked for my consent before we spoke about it either. My mates didn’t need consent to act on my behalf either before I opened up to them.

The idea of giving consent to share my shame ridden, embarrassing, traumatic story so that a stranger can decide who should know it and make choices on my behalf was terrifying to me at that moment. Why the hell would I trust them now to even have a conversation about male rape, they clearly have limited understanding of the issue if they are defending the use of the word. How has no one noticed this glaring error, surely if they were any good at what they do this would not be happening.

In full on anxiety mode, panic attack and PTSD, I refused and told my support worker via email, I don’t know what to do because of my fears of the call. You know what their reply was, they said they could not go ahead with the call without it & closed my case, suggesting I could reapply if I changed my mind, but they “supported my right to have control over my journey”.

Supported, or wanted my journey to go elsewhere?

Services to discuss these issues are as vital for men as they are for women, and it's a terrible shame on our history it took so long to get them for the female 50% of our population. Let us not have to wait the same amount of time again for the need for mens services to be recognised and implemented. It's a crisis that needs addressing now.

Of the first twenty men you see after reading this article, potentially a staggering six of them are the victims of serious sexual assault or rape in their lifetimes, and only one of them ever told anyone. Do you think he ever got any help?

The only real support I have had in this has come from myself and my mates - where is the help from organisations? It’s hiding behind the word “consent” it seems, and isn’t that where the rapists hide too?

It’s time to open the door and shine a light on the subject of male rape. Not just for me, the one in twenty men who asked for help and got none, and the five other men you will meet in twenty who didn’t tell anyone it ever happened.