How can rape be the victim's fault?

AT 1am, he was dark- haired, stubbly and swaying to rock idols Kaiser Chiefs' Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. But outside the nightclub he looked more like Trigger – Del Boy's mate.

His nails were long and painted black and his leather jacket smelled of beer and dead animals.

At Amir's Chicken on my street corner, he was "bursting for the loo". My friends had branched off to their streets. They knew Trigger's lookalike. So 10 minutes later, he was in my downstairs toilet as I waited in the living room.

"Good night then," I said, hinting for him to leave. Then he lunged at me. I tried to dodge, but my head smashed backwards against the brick wall. I wriggled away under his arm and he smiled at me as if I was teasing.

I remember being pushed flat on to the sofa and trying to move away, and his fat, fish lips. I mumbled something about Pete being "a light sleeper", even though my hairy, Bigfoot-like flatmate slept through his own German death- metal music.

Next thing, I was standing on the bottom stair as Trigger opened the front door. He said: "What's your mobile number?" I was muddled and said it. Then he shouted: "Just **** off!"

He slammed the door hard. Pete still slept. I drank tea until sunrise, and listened to every footstep and clock tick. That was just two years ago when I was 20.

It's not an isolated incident. And it's not as grave as the hundreds of serious attacks on women that lead to rape. Every day, 135 women are raped. Most attackers are like Trigger. They are ordinary men. More than 40 per cent are in their late-teens and 20s, and the majority know their victim.

That's why Dame Helen Mirren's comments are so dangerous. The actress told a national magazine she was date-raped on multiple occasions as a student.

She follows Jenni Murray as the latest celebrity to bravely admit that she was raped – but her revelation was meant to heighten awareness of a prevalent crime usually discussed in whispers.

But Dame Helen added if a woman voluntarily ends up in a man's bedroom and says "no" at the last second, and he rapes her, the man should not be prosecuted.

She said: "I guess it is one of the many subtle parts of the men- women relationship that has to be worked out between them."

Her conclusion is a dangerous get-out-of-jail-free card for attackers. But her opinion is not isolated. More than one in four adult men and women believe women are responsible for rape if they are too flirtatious or drunk, if their clothes are sexy or they have a sexual history, according to a survey by human rights group Amnesty International.

British courts are locked against victims – judges bypass laws and examine women's sexual history. One judge described a 10-year-old-girl who had been sexually assaulted as "no angel" as recently as 1992. And the tabloids can trivialise victims by describing them in a titillating, sexual manner and often position rape articles next to topless photos and sexy articles about women, according to a study by Rosalind Gill, lecturer in sociology at the London School of Economics.

Perhaps that is why 40 per cent of rapes go unreported in Bristol, Bath and Somerset, according to a national survey. Of cases reported, less than one in 100 accused attackers were convicted in Glou- cestershire in 2004. The number of convictions rose to 7.4 per cent in 2006, but in Avon and Somerset less than five per cent of reported rapes resulted in a conviction.

RAPE victims – real women who have endured dangerous and painful attacks – are sifted into two categories, like pure flour from lumpy. And for those who are not pure enough during the ordeal, their attacker is unpunished, and the victim is then deemed somehow responsible.

Had Trigger turned nastier, would it have been my own fault, because I was too naive, too smiley, too bouncy on the dance floor?

Does allowing him into my home mean I surrender my right to safety? Perhaps my wedges were two inches too high and my jeans were too tight, or does it extend further back than that?

That I had the audacity to walk home alone in my low-crime suburban hometown at 3am, or maybe I was asking for it because I attended the gig – after all, it was called "Smack my bitch up".

Yes, women have a responsibility not to down two litres of vodka and walk around wearing clothes less modest than a plaster. But that responsibility is for their health, their warmth and, importantly, their dignity.

And since Mirren's controversial interview, too much attention has focused on how women should and should not behave.

Responsibility is with the attacker and him alone. Rape is about power as much as it is about sex. And by making women too frightened too walk the streets or drink too much wine or laugh too flirtatiously, that noose of power tightens. The victim is demonised and the attacker is unpunished.

The rape reform movement, made up of charities, academics and victims, is campaigning against the perception among some judges and police that women can be blamed for getting raped. The campaigners say the benchmark should be that women are never to blame for being raped.

Some progress in changing attitudes has been made, but the process is slow.

More change is needed.

Rape is sexual intercourse without consent – whatever the woman wore, drank or implied. And public figures such as Dame Helen Mirren have a duty to communicate that message – to rape is to rape – ugly but simple.

■Journalist Laura Powell studied how society perceives rape for her masters degree in journalism at the University of London.