Little Red Riding Hood Analysis

Genre Piece 2: Short Story I decided to rewrite the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” because it seemed very fitting in relation to my topic of rape. In the story, Little Red is tricked by a wolf into taking off her red hood that protects her from wolves. She is then attacked by the wolf, and afterwards she runs to the village begging for help. Unfortunately no one will help her; they give the responses countless give to victims of sexual assault, and so Little Red cries. Then a hunter decides to help her and teaches her how to defend herself, they kill the wolf and Little Red is never a victim again. However, unlike this story, most rape victims never receive a happy ending, and never receive justice.
This story, symbolic of a victim’s story,
is used to explain the heart-wrenching sadness experienced by myriads of people in a much simpler way. In the story the wolf is meant to symbolize an acquaintance turned rapist/assaulter. With his sheep’s wool wrapped around him, Little Red believes she can trust him, but in the end he is the one that hurts her. Similarly, many victims of sexual assault are attacked by someone they know or trust, and just like in the story, people rarely believe the victim when an acquaintance is involved. Wood brings up this point in his article, “Reality of Prosecuting Sexual Assault” he states, “The third defense defendants use—that the sex was consensual—is the most common and the most difficult to defeat, Zug said. "I've never won an acquaintance rape jury trial," he said, often because of skeptical jurists. Women jurors aged 35 and older are the toughest demographic in rape cases, Zug said. "I went a long time trying to pack cases with women [jurors]—until I started talking to them." At that point he realized older women could be tough judges of victims; in cases where the victim had something to drink (and was drunk or not), older women jurors feel that "she was putting herself in that position" (Wood 1). The women in Zug’s trial are not dissimilar to the villagers in Little Red’s story. The women, just like the villagers, claimed the victim was at fault for putting themselves into the position to get attacked. The victim is never, ever at fault for their assault. Unfortunately, that is the harsh reality of the world around us. Another difference between Little Red’s story and most cases, is that many victims never receive justice.
In The Guardian’s article, “Prosecuting Sexual Assault”, Gentleman states, “ More recent analysis of the figures, based on a more usual definition of conviction rate (the proportion of cases prosecuted in the courts), suggests that 62.5% of rape cases end in a conviction”(Reilly 1). This shows that countless criminals walk free, and a multitude of victims do not receive justice. They will have to live in fear with knowledge that their rapist is walking around in the world. It seems there is nothing to be done, but in fact, there is. Rape kits that could help the victim receive justice are left to sit in a freezer for decades allowing rapists to commit more crimes. Reilly brings up this point in USA Today, “After 18 years without justice, Joanie Scheske believed the man who raped her would never be caught. That changed when St. Louis police called in 2009. Evidence in a separate, eight-year old sexual assault was finally tested and matched her attacker's DNA. Rapist Mark Frisella, whose attack was so brutal Scheske still suffers from epilepsy, is serving 19 years in prison. "I had a really difficult time wrapping my head around why that rape kit was never tested," Scheske said. "My case is a poster child as to why you test these kits.” A USA TODAY Media Network investigation identified tens of thousands of sexual assault evidence kits never tested by police”( Reilly 1).
Each of those kits represent a victim who has not received justice, and like Scheske said, her case is the epitome of why officers should test the rape kits. In addition to having the prints in the system, they may also catch the offender before they commit any more crimes, thus saving someone a lot of grief.
Granted, many victims do receive justice, but until every victim receives the justice they deserve, more needs to be done to help these people.