Crying rape over the Christmas period is precisely what a latest campaign is all about preventing – making both sexes realise that rape can ruin lives.
"I said 'yes' to a drink but not to sex" is the spot-on regional police poster campaign called Short Word, Long Sentence.
The national campaign has been criticised for blaming women for drinking too much.
And the ads urge women to "let your ha
ir down, not your guard".
It's crucial that women don't feel that they are to blame if they are sexually assaulted while drunk and men understand that they are not consenting to sex.
How easily we judge women, saying they've asked for it because of their scanty, provocative gear.
And that prejudice goes for her own sex as much as the opposite. Is it any wonder that victims are loath to face their rapist in court when only 5.7 per cent of reported rape cases end in a conviction for the perpetrator?
The utter and complete humiliation is, for so many women, as bad, if not worse than the physical violation.
When she is forced against her will to have sex, unlike a man, she will fear for her life, especially if she's fighting him off.
It is a fact that the majority of rapists know their victims and it's not a case of being pounced on – it's someone they have talked with or had a drink with.
Take this 16-year-old who was raped by three men in her own bedsit. A neighbour called asking for a light and then, with two mates, subjected her to sickening, repeated rape. They bit inside her mouth and into her gums setting up an infection that caused her to lose her teeth.
Like so many others,she didn't press charges, terrified that she wouldn't be believed and couldn't face further humiliation in open court.
A friend of a friend who was sexually assaulted after a night in the company of a man she had a drink with and met in the company of a mate, didn't go to the police either.
She feared she would be pilloried as the one who had led him on, that no one would believe her story, only his that she was drunk and had consented to him climbing into bed with her.
And like so many rape victims she couldn't believe it was happening with someone she knew.
When a woman's refusal is ignored and it all goes past the point of no return and she's in shock thinking "I never expected him to come onto me, we just had a bit of a laugh and a few drinks," it's understandable that she reckons it will be impossible for him to be convicted and her word against his.
As Clare Phillipson, boss of Wearside Women In Need told me: "People should not delude themselves that rape is a quick act of penetration with a penis.
"We have come across some terrible stuff, horrendous. It's absolutely gross."
Some 80,000 women suffer rape and attempted rape in the UK every year. Only a handful report it to the police.
And no wonder, when the Government's victims champion, Sara Payne, believes women who had been drinking or came from poorer areas were not always taken seriously by the police.
Nothing new there....
