'There are no good rapes - but some are worse than others'

The remarks about rape by Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke have struck a chord with victim Lucretia Stewart.

I was raped on January 18, 2003 by a young black man who broke into my Camden Town flat at one in the morning and tied me up with my own dressing-gown cord. I had never seen him before nor, thank God, have I seen him since. He has not been caught and I now live in another country.

Some days after I was raped, I called the VD clinic. "We don't have any appointments for two months," the woman told me. "But I've been raped," I said. She softened; she told me she had been raped as an eight-year-old in Sri Lanka. What happened to me is nothing like as bad, I thought.

Some months later, I reviewed Alice Sebold's memoir Lucky. In 1981, when Sebold was 18 and still a virgin, she was raped by a stranger. She was in her first year at Syracuse University and the rape took place at midnight in a park near campus. Her rape seems to have been particularly terrifying. When the rapist had finished beating her, he asked her what her name was. "I couldn't lie. I didn't have a name other than my own to say." So his parting words were, "Nice knowing you, Alice See you around some time."

There are no good rapes, but some are worse than others.

I think it must be particularly awful to be raped as a virgin. At least if you have experienced sex, you know it can be enjoyable. If you are a virgin, then the rape must surely shape your view of sex for ever - as appears to have been the case with Sebold.

Of course, it is terrible to be forced, either physically, by peer pressure or by emotional blackmail, into having sex with anyone, but it is not the same as being raped by a complete stranger - although the betrayal of trust involved in being raped by someone you know must be traumatic. While I have never been drugged and raped on a date, I have certainly ended up in bed with men whom I didn't really fancy, let alone love and desire.

Each rape experience is different. Not just the nature of the experience but the individual's response to it. I am lucky. I seem to have dealt with my rape. I seem to have survived. But some women don't, and we shouldn't censure them for it. A few months after I was raped, I appeared on a reality TV show with other women who had had the same thing happen to them. One girl's life had clearly been destroyed. One's response to trauma is like one's response to anything in life: some people handle stress better than others.

This is why blanket legislation is so wrong, and why any legislation about rape is a minefield. Rape is one of those crimes which span an entire spectrum of motives and responses. Each case must be judged individually; all we can safely say is that rape - be it date rape, marital rape or the violent rape of someone by a complete stranger - is wrong. But only the victim can judge its effects. Some women, and men, recover; others are scarred for life.