Some good news about rape--There is much less of it these days.

[Threedifferentones]

38. The fear of coming forward and facing your attacker was also true in 1995.

It is obviously correct to doubt that these stats represent an accurate count of rapes in America. But there is no reason to believe that reporting rape is harder now than in 1995.

This thread is about the fact that the rate of rape has gone down precipitously.

You are talking about accurately counting every rape. As long as the chance of a victim reporting remains relatively constant, we can judge the rate without an exact count. In other words, lack of reporting applied to the initial count in 1995 as well, so it cannot explain the change.

Furthermore, because our culture is slowly changing there is reason to suspect a higher perscentage of vicitms will report today than in 1995. Of course as you point out we really can't know that for sure, but IMO this is doubly good news because the rate of rape is declining even as we slowly strip away the stigma around being raped and get more victims to report.