With reason, rape victims often see attempting to lodge a complaint as pointless, and as exposing them to further degrading treatment. Police routinely try to dissuade rape victims from bringing charges, stressing the difficulty of obtaining a conviction. But unless rape victims insist on a complaint being filed, they are often denied medical care, since hospital staff demand to see a police certificate before providing treatment. Even where complaints are filed and charges pressed, rapists frequently evade justice. Fearing revenge attacks, rape victims often disavow their earlier testimony.
Witnesses too are liable to be intimidated.
Murder and rape are at least prohibited by law, but large holes remain in Russian legislation covering the broader phenomenon of violence against women. Today, domestic assault and battery still generally goes unpunished, regarded by law enforcement authorities as a family affair, or worse, as a form of sport. And during the last few years it's become more brutal. Sociologists link the increasing spread and gravity of crimes against women to the rising stresses of lives that now include the threat of unemployment, and to the growing national catastrophe of alcohol abuse. If materially underprivileged women suffer a disproportionate share of the violence, women from other social categories are far from being spared.