Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape.

Linda A. Fairstein William Morrow & Co., 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019. 288 pp., $23.

To read the recent headlines, one would think that rape occurs primarily in war-torn Bosnia. In the United States, the media tell us, the incidence of rape is exaggerated by paranoid feminists who see rapists around every corner and under every bed.

For example, a recent Newsweek cover asked whether "sexual correctness" has "gone too far." CNN's "Crossfire" devoted an entire show to the same question. The New York Times Magazine ran excerpts from Katie Roiphe's The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus, a diatribe against what the author calls "rape-crisis feminists." Even the teen-hit television series "Beverly Hills 90210" included in its story line a false charge of date rape against one of its handsome-but-harmless male leads.

Although Linda Fairstein does not present it as such, Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape is a powerful antidote to this one-sided and somewhat simple-minded media blitz. The great achievement of the book is that it clearly and compellingly presents the recent history of rape prosecution in the United States--a history that young women like Katie Roiphe might do well to study.

Until recently, the criminal justice system virtually ignored the problem of sexual violence against women. Indeed, the system actively impeded successful prosecutions for rape. Early in her book, Fairstein relates the astounding fact that in 1969, out of nearly 1,000 men arrested for rape in New York City, only 18 were convicted.

Fairstein explains that until the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, the law of rape required the victim to have offered the "utmost resistance" to the crime--even when she had been in fear for her life or safety. In addition, the law required that a rape charge be corroborated by some evidence independent of the victim's testimony, although robbery and assault prosecutions proceeded every day without corroboration.

In the rape cases that were prosecuted, the victim's sexual past was often explored in great detail through aggressive cross-examination. This was before the widespread enactment of rape shield laws limited the use of these tactics. Moreover, juries were given so-called "Lord Hale instructions," named after the English jurist who warned that rape "is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent." Finally, the major players in the criminal justice system with whom rape victims had extended contact--police, prosecutors, and judges--were, until quite recently, almost all male.

All of this has changed, and most of the changes occurred during the 20-plus years Linda Fairstein has spent as a prosecutor (and a sex crimes specialist) in New York City. Fairstein's account of her career in the Manhattan district attorney's office is valuable not only for its vivid portrayal of the injustices of the "bad old days" of rape law, but also for its empowering recognition that things (even the slow-moving dinosaur that is our legal system) do change.

Those who pick up Fairstein's book for an insider's view of the dramatic world of criminal trials (rather than for an account of changes in rape law and policy) are likely to be disappointed. As a description of the daily life of a big-city prosecutor, Fairstein's narrative is remarkably bloodless. Somehow, the seedy but high-adrenaline atmosphere of an urban criminal court is missing. The dialogue is not authentic or catchy; the descriptions are not colorful or evocative; the adrenaline rush of playing a leading role in a high-stakes drama is altogether absent. Even the final chapter on the trial of the "midtown rapist," while accurate in its description of the sequence of events, lacks the verve that one expects from a book's climax.

Even more significant is Fairstein's failure to do more than merely report on the institutions of the criminal justice system. Her extensive experience with "the system" seems to have inured her to its pitfalls. She appears to see the various stages of a criminal trial as mere hurdles to clear before securing a conviction and fails to critically examine any of them.

Fairstein's unwillingness to question the basic structure of the criminal process reflects a larger unwillingness to deal with real controversy in her book. No one today seriously suggests that we return to the days of "utmost resistance" or "corroboration" requirements in rape cases; nor is there much of a popular movement to repeal rape shield laws. Nonetheless, there are major unresolved questions in rape law and policy. For example:

* What should the scope of date rape be?

* Are the campus sexual conduct codes enacted by aggressively progressive colleges like Antioch a good idea?

* How should police and prosecutors deal with the problems of domestic violence and rape within marriage?

* Should we permit therapists to participate in the questioning of children alleged to be the victims of sexual abuse?

Fairstein consistently avoids these difficult questions, which limits the usefulness of her book as a blueprint for dealing with the future big issues in rape law.

But despite these limits, Fairstein's book provides an important and, it seems, easily forgotten view of the road we have traveled thus far. The book should be required reading for those who are coming of age in this era when complaints of sexual correctness seem to be drowning out calls to "take back the night."