Richard Graham, UK Lawmaker: Short Skirts Risk Rape Comment Causes Controversy In UK: LONDON- According to a British lawmaker Richard Graham, wearing a Short Skirts and High Heels puts women at risk of being raped victim. Richard Graham made the comment to a local newspaper today and anti-rape activists said Graham’s comments smacked of blaming rape victims for having been assaulted.
“If you are blind drunk and wearing those clothes how able are you to get away?” Conservative Party lawmaker Richard Graham, of Gloucester, was quoted as saying by his local newspaper, The Citizen.
Richard Graham said: “A night out is about having fun without putting yourself at risk. If you are a young woman on her own trying to walk back home through a park early in the morning in a tight, short skirt and high shoes, and there’s a predator, if you are blind drunk wearing those clothes how able are you to get away?
Graham clarified his comments later in a blog post saying that his comment “in no way intimates ANY excuse for predatory behavior.”
Graham said that his comment did not imply that a woman in a short skirt is “asking for it.” Instead, Graham said that he was trying to talk about risk management.
“Risk management is a million miles from saying anything like ‘she was asking for it … It’s not about the impact of your clothes on a potential predator in my view, it’s about whether the clothes you’re wearing make it harder to get away from a predator.”
Jo Wood, a trustee of Rape Crisis England and Wales, said that the rape was not about clothes or how drunk a woman may be.
Wood said that Graham’s comments put the blame on the victim instead of the predator.
He told to the Gulf News: “These comments have set us back about 100 years. It doesn’t matter if you are off your face and lying naked on a bench, that man takes it upon himself to rape you. This should be about putting the blame back on perpetrators.”
What do you think about Graham’s comment? Do a short skirts and high heels put women at risk of being raped?