Letter: Prison rape toll

Sir: Natasha Walter suggests that rape is a crime committed "almost always on women's bodies" ("No man has the right, ever", 13 September).

This is a terribly mistaken assertion. In the US it is conservatively estimated that in the region of 300,000 men are sexually assaulted in jails every year. The number of women raped annually in the US is estimated at less than half this figure. We have to look at these figures and learn that the crime of rape cannot be fully understood or addressed if viewed purely in terms of gender.