THE Dublin Rape Crisis Centre has been granted £80,000 from EU funds to study how victims of the crime are treated by the legal process throughout Europe.
The project, to be carried out with the Law School at Trinity College in Dublin, will focus on rape victims who are given their own legal representation in other EU states.
The centre is among many victim organisations calling for victims to be separately represented in Irish courts.
Normally the victim appears only as a witness, and is not represented by a barrister.
Ms Olive Braiden, the director of the centre, said that the project also aimed to develop "a framework for developing further protections and assistance for victims throughout the EU".
According to Ms Braiden the way the Irish legal system currently deals with rape victims "exacerbates rather than alleviates the devastating effects of the crime on the victim, and by intensifying the distress, creates an experience of revictimisation".
She added that victims are usually further distressed by the results of the trial. "Of the small percentage of rapes reported, the proportion resulting in convictions is in the order of no more than one per cent," she said.
While crime generally has fallen in the State over the past 18 months, the level of reported rapes has continued to rise, according to provisional figures.
Rape also remains among the least reported crimes - a third or fewer victims who approach crisis centres have reported the crime to the Garda.
The 1996 crime figures have yet to be released, but 191 rapes of women and girls were reported in 1995, compared to 184 in the previous year.