In England and Wales, rape legislation did not recognise male victims of rape until the end of the twentieth century. In 1994, rape and sexual assault legislation was re-worded in gender-neutral terms, and in 2003 male victim status was explicitly recognised in law. Despite the fact that men who survived acts of sexual violence were not legally recognised up until these points, psychiatrists, medics and activists had been working with male rape survivors for decades beforehand. This project investigates the cultural, legal, psychiatric and medical construction of the male survivor of sexual violence in the years before legal recognition of such a category. Dr George Severs’ project examines England and Wales in a global context. It looks at the transnational intellectual and activist networks which existed to exchange information and campaign together.
The decades which this project studies intersects with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As such, the research also questions the role which HIV/AIDS had on the aftercare offered to sexual assault survivors (of all genders). In the late-1970s, just a few years before cases of HIV/AIDS would first be recognised in the UK, only 36% of police surgeons (the professionals we now refer to as forensic scientists) provided venereal disease services. Did the epidemic increase their willingness to offer sexual health care? What HIV/AIDS advice were medical doctors and healthcare professionals providing survivors of rape with? How did ‘aftercare’ differ across the country and across racialised and gendered boundaries? These questions sit at the heart of this research project.