There is no such thing as a perfect victim, but a million ways to be an imperfect one. She was drinking. Her skirt was too short. She went willingly back to the footballer’s mansion, or up to Harvey Weinstein’s hotel suite, so what did she think was going to happen? Maybe she was a teenage runaway, or a sex worker; he was a good boy, or a much-loved celebrity. There is a long list of reasons rapists get away with it, but it all too often starts with a jury’s refusal to listen to a woman they have already decided for some stubborn reason not to like. Remember that, as we come to the distressing picture now emerging of alleged multiple rapes and sexual assaults by Hamas fighters amid the atrocities of 7 October.

This week, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, finally called for what he described as “numerous accounts of sexual violence during the abhorrent acts of terror by Hamas” to be “vigorously investigated”.

Harrowing stories had begun emerging within days from the desert rave where traumatised young women, who survived only by hiding from the gunmen, described watching in silent horror as other women were gang raped, mutilated and shot. Israeli women’s rights groups, worried that chances to collect forensic evidence were missed in the initial chaos of a country under attack, swiftly mobilised – and last week, Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the lawyer chairing a civil commission hastily created to document crimes against women and children during the massacre, flew to meet UN officials to discuss the testimony collated. Look away now if you would rather not read about women and young girls found dead with their pants pulled down, and telltale evidence of bleeding, bruises and scratches; about smashed pelvises, semen samples,........

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