Rape risk higher for women with ‘bad habits’ like smoking, drinking: Chinese court

Beijing: According to a Chinese court, women who smoke, drink and dress provocatively are more likely to be raped.

The court drew this conclusion based on a review of 162 defendants in 151 rape cases over the past three years. The Haidian district court in Beijing put the onus on women to change their habits rather than on the attackers, who were described by the court as youths whose sexual needs were not being satisfied and didn’t know any better, as reported by The Washington Post.

The court’s ruling has garnered immense backlash on Chinese social media.

“Some victims have bad habits such as smoking and drinking,” the court said. “Defendants easily target these people, based on the habitual perception that victims who smoke and drink, especially victims who are drunk, could easily become targets.”

Many defendants confessed that “criminal intent arose when they saw that the victims were young, beautiful and dressed revealingly,” the court said in an article published on its social media accounts.

Earlier this year, a police bureau in the central city of Wuhan suggested on its Sina Weibo microblogging account that “being ugly is the safest way” to avoid getting raped.

The court found that 64 percent of the offenders were between the ages of 18 and 30, who “due to physical reasons had strong physical needs” but were “repressed.” These men were mostly from out of town, either single or married but not living together with their spouses, and therefore their needs couldn’t be “satisfied normally.”