In future, if raped 13-year-olds have the courage to look for justice, and if their families have the courage to support them, and if the case gets to court, they will be interrogated, according to the Minister for Justice, on their "clothes, make-up and sobriety, on their presence at pubs, discos and other venues for adults, on what they said, how they appeared and acted, on what they pretended or boasted about their past and about their experience".

We're right back at the old 'she-asked-forit' mindset. Thirty years ago, received wisdom said that women who cried "rape!"

had really asked for it. Asked for it by wearing skirts like pelmets. By showing their panties or lack of them. By wearing hoor's high-heels. By wearing padded bras or no bra at all. By walking a particular way. By walking in a particular place. By saying "no" when it was obvious they really meant "yes".

Gradually, that got rolled back. A bit. You didn't have to buy into the feminist scholar's view that rape "is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear" to accept that rape is a crime of power and violence, not just the breakdown of normal inhibitions caused by provocatively short skirts.

People began to realise that if short skirts and sexy asses sashaying down the public street caused rape, it was strange that 80year-old women in their faded flannel nightgowns in their own beds got raped. They realised that the most egregious flowering of rape happens . . . and always has happened . . . in the wake of war, when those raped are filthy, fleeing, exhausted and layered in rags: a quantum leap away from tarted up and 'asking for it'.

The forced fast passing of the new law, with its inclusion of the 'honest mistake' defence, recycles the 'she-asked-for-it' claim in a different shape.

Of course, the 'honest mistake' defence doesn't allow the man to claim that he was evilly provoked by cleavage, fishnet tights, bleached hair and a sexy walk. It just allows him to claim that the cleavage, fishnet tights, bleached hair and sexy walk made him believe the 13-year-old was really 17. But the societal outcome is the same: girls (now, younger girls) have to prove their innocence in court. Innocence of being drunk, innocence of being high, innocence of being in a place they shouldn't have been by virtue of their youth. Innocence of causing the crime committed against them.

Most difficult of all, they have to prove they didn't look older than their age. Now, from the age of 11 to the age of 25, every female wants to look older than she is. So any senior counsel asking any 13-year-old accusing an older man of rape, "did you or did you not set out, by your dress and make-up, to convince everybody that night that you were in your late teens?" is going to evoke a panicked and easily disproven lie or the truth: yes, of course, she wanted to look older. Older is cool.

Half-naked is cool, too. As David Brooks points out in his book, On Paradise Drive, "the average square yardage of boyswear grows and grows, while the square inches in the girls' outfits shrinks and shrinks. The boys carry so much fabric they look like skateboarding Bedouins, and the girls look like preppy prostitutes".

The issue, for under-age girls, is not proving they didn't lead the man on and consent to the act: the law says they couldn't consent to the act . . . they were too young. The issue is proving they didn't lead the man into believing they were 17 by dressing . . . and acting . . . like preppy prostitutes.

Post-rape, are you going to encourage your already traumatised 13-year-old to go to court, knowing that's what she's in for?

Most parents won't.

Which, in turn, will skew the figures further. The 'dark figure' for rape . . . the difference between the number of rapes reported to the police and the number that have actually taken place . . . is one of the highest for any crime.

As of this weekend, that 'dark figure' will grow. And grow. As girls and families weigh up the gain of nailing the man against the pain of facing, in court, the accusation that, by making out to be older than she was, the girl was 'just asking for it'.