In the wake of outrage about Judge Mabel Jansen's comments about rape and culture, Chris Barron asked Lisa Vetten, research associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research...Are you concerned that this has diverted attention from our rape crisis?I do think one has to focus on the racist nature of what Judge Jansen has said, but one must also engage with broader questions around the high rate of rape in this country.Turning it into a race issue doesn't help, does it?One of the difficulties with rape is that it's always been very closely tied to race. So when Judge Jansen makes comments like that she steps right into that history. We do need to start thinking about how we integrate race and gender, because what happens every time is it either becomes a race issue or a gender issue. Our way forward is to think how are the two mutually entangled and intertwined.Do we see the same outrage about our rape stats as we have seen around Judge Jansen's comments?Our outrage against rape is reserved for very particular sorts of rape. We've seen it, I think, when very young children are raped.story_article_left1Is there enough outrage when young children are raped?It sparks an outcry but very little of concrete value gets implemented.We've had debates in parliament, law reforms, marches, campaigns, but is it getting worse?It's hard to say. Because one of the things one would like to see more outrage about is the quality of the police statistics.According to these there was a slight drop last year, but the experts say it's actually getting worse. Do you agree?It is very much worse.How do you know that?If you look at what research has been done, where you go out into communities and do household sampling and ask about experiences of rape in the past 12 months and over the course of a lifetime.Has underreporting got worse?It's hard to say, but at best it has stayed the same.Because of the reaction of the police when it is reported?Partly that, but just fear of the criminal justice system in general. Also, there's not a great deal of confidence that there's going to be any positive value to engaging with the criminal justice system because conviction rates are so low.Why?It's a very difficult crime to prove. Often it's one person's word against another and magistrates and judges tend to default into a very stereotypical understanding of what proper male-female sexual behaviour is. Although the law states clearly that there is supposed to be social context training for all those in the criminal justice system, I don't think that is happening. You can see from her comments that Judge Jansen clearly hasn't gone through any.To what extent are her comments indicative of the traumatic toll rape cases are taking on judges?That might be a way to read that. From the work I've done with police and prosecutors, why they start to blame victims is that it stops you from feeling sympathetic towards them. Blaming is a way to diminish the effects of it on you, but it seems in her case she has generalised her blame to cover an entire racial group. This is why what needs to happen - but doesn't - is debriefing on an ongoing basis for anybody in this field.At what level do changes have to be made?We have to start looking at budget allocations because this stuff costs money. There's a tendency to write fantastic policy but not give people the funds to implement it.NGOs?Absolutely. I've just done research on counsellors at care centres, and in all but one of the organisations I surveyed those counsellors are getting a subsidy from the Department of Social Development that is less than the minimum wage for a farmworker. And they're working 12-hour shifts doing really emotionally stressful work.How does it get away with that?story_article_left2The department has been allowed to get away with the exploitation of care workers for years. They're fearful that if they're critical they're going to lose their funds altogether.Why isn't there more outrage about this?There is a tendency to take this kind of work for granted, especially because it is quite feminised.Does most sexual abuse of children happen in families?Yes. With children under 12 it is overwhelmingly someone they know.A relative or close friend?Absolutely. Probably two-thirds of child rapists are known to the child.In the context of our crisis, how damaging was Zuma's rape trial?Extraordinarily damaging. It reinforced a whole range of stereotypes around the way that what women wear signals that really they want to have sex.And he made it a cultural thing, didn't he?Yes. I think that's what makes some of these debates so complicated. Race and culture are not the same, but in South Africa we often speak as though they are...