“Rape is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused…”

Sexual assault is, to my mind, the worst crime of them all. The idea of being murdered is preferable to the initial assault, then slow torturous anguish and violation that pervades in the fall-out. It’s not just a physical assault, it’s an attack so personal that it strikes straight through the heart and carves a permanent scar on memory and basic function. In women especially, it robs them of their very essence and can take away the thing that makes them unique and wonderful, turning it into a painful, devastating reminder. Such events can stop a woman from feeling female, which is one of the greatest crimes of all. So, tuning in to Dispatches: Rape in the City (Channel 4, Monday, 22 June, 8pm), we were to face up to this grim aspect of human behaviour and look at sexual assault in Britain and how, depressingly, a large number of these attacks come from the black British community.

Journalist Sorious Samura walked into the dark world of rape – more specifically, gang rape. The police, it seemed from the report, don’t have particular record of how frequently this ultra violent form of sexual assault is happening, so off he went to collect the numbers and info from the courts, barristers and rape referral centres.

The extent of the problem was grisly viewing.

Sorious, stern and thorough, talked to people in young black communities, where of course, the problem isn’t wholly theirs, but numbers crunched showed that a big portion lay at their feet. Naturally, all the usual things were pointed at as reasons, like gangsta rap and violent movies, but mercifully, a community worker refuted that outright by saying that it wasn’t the influence of pop-culture, but rather, the communities they lived in. If this was to be stopped, then those with answers better breach the gang front lines.

Within these tight-knit boundaries, we heard the traumatic accounts of the young victims who have been forced into sex via a variety of means, be it through being ‘punished’ or being ‘a link’.

The former is pretty clear-cut and straight forward, yet no less harrowing. Girls surrounded by young men, and in some cases, lead to the scene by other girls, and repeatedly assaulted. In one case, a boy as young as twelve got in on the act. In the latter, ‘a link’ is a girl who is, in essence, a fuck-buddy of a lad, who will invite her to an orgy. The worrying feeling that arose from this was that many young men seemed to agree that, if a girl should accept an invite to an orgy, then in effect, she’s asking to be raped or at least, inviting trouble.

Through dialogue between two different groups from one area, there was a blur on the meaning of “no”. It doesn’t always equate for the right for a girl to be free to walk away from a situation. A situation that played out in gruesome detail in the show, which in itself, was quite surprising as the programme was pre-watershed.

While the show offered no answers – in fairness, how to do solve a problem like this in a hour-long TV show? – it did uncover some rather upsetting views. It made for incredibly uncomfortable television… most of which was fascinating and very powerful. The way in many of the young men and women talked would chill the marrow in many of you… but it’s important that this kind of thing is spoken about.

Many of the assaulted girls never pressed charges due to pressure from peers or because they felt stupid. That’s the main thing that has to change. Rape victims need the lines of communication opened, a hand to help them come forward or else, this will continue and victims will slip through the cracks in the paving stones.