Why doesn't society care about male rape?

*Contains language that some may not find suitable

(Telegraph.com) May 25, 1015 - Male rape survivor John Lennon is adamant that group therapy at a dedicated, male-only support network helped save his life.

Lennon’s attacker was sentenced to four years and three months after he brutally raped him for three and a half hours at his flat in Manchester in August 2010. At he end of his horrific ordeal, Lennon needed plastic surgery to rebuild his battered face – but it was his shattered mind that would bear the bigger scars.

Yet, like many survivors of male rape, he had no idea where to turn for help.

“After my attack I was suicidal, and in desperation called a Rape Crisis helpline, but the woman said, ‘This service is for women only,’ and hung up on me,” says Lennon, 45, from Manchester. “I don’t blame her, but I felt so angry and rejected that they turned men away. Luckily, I used my anger to get help.”

Then Lennon found out about Survivors Manchester – one of only 20 services nationwide that offer help to male rape victims and one of four that offer male-dedicated help – and his slow path to recovery began.

“I started two years of group therapy, which is crucial,” he says. “It makes you feel like you’re not alone, not such damaged goods; like a whole human again.”

Yet in spite of John’s experience that single-sex therapy is essential,Survivors UK (based in London and the UK’s biggest male-only victim support group) has recently had its funding slashed to zero, meaning the only male-dedicated service in London now has to turn desperate men like Lennon away – despite a staggering 120 per cent increase in male rape in the capital in two years.

Police crime figures for 2014 in England & Wales show there were 38,134 incidents of rape or sexual assault of a woman and 3,580 against men.

Yet due to the shame and stigma surrounding perhaps the darkest male taboo of all, Survivors UK believe only 2-3 per cent of men report their rapes (official figures for women are 10-12 per cent reporting) meaning many thousands of men are suffering in silence.

Furthermore, there are an estimated 1.5 million adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse in the UK – abuse against boys accounts for around 70 per cent of cases. Read the rest