Even as the Belfast Telegraph reveals that one of the world's most notorious convicted rapists is going to be welcomed and given a platform at the Waterfront Hall, we also read the very just criticisms that a foreign tourist has made about the way she was treated after being raped in Colin Glen Forest Park.

It beggars belief that it's cead mile failte to Mike Tyson when he arrives in our city, but a woman tourist who was subjected to a horrific rape at a tourist spot felt she was treated unsympathetically and unprofessionally in one of our hospitals, saying that the doctor spent five minutes with her, the nurse told her to go home and have a few "wee cups of tea or a glass of wine", and that she was sent back to her hotel with a packet of Iboprufen (an old Irish remedy for the physical and psychological effects of rape?).

It would not be difficult for an outsider to assume that we treat rapists better than we do their victims here in Belfast, or that we have little regard for the welfare of guests in our country.

The stinging criticisms that this American-educated rape survivor made publicly about the treatment of victims in our judicial system and the lack of properly funded support mechanisms for people who have suffered sexually violent crimes have been made by the Rape Crisis Centre for more than 25 years.

However, when I hear our words echoed by a foreign woman who was victimised in our city I feel a deep sense of shame.

Not just as I normally feel as a rape crisis counsellor that the system works better for perpetrators than for victims, but as a citizen of Belfast I feel great personal shame at our city and our country. That, in spite of the fact that we proudly promote Belfast as one of the safest, friendliest places in the world for tourists, in actuality, this is how we treat our guests.

The woman who courageously detailed the catalogue of shameful treatment after her rape, sadly, is not the first visitor to Northern Ireland to be raped in this way.

A similar attack happened to a European student in Woodvale Park involving more than one perpetrator. She was also stabbed.

Inga Marie Hauser - a German tourist - was found murdered several years ago: the RUC said at the time there was no "obvious motive", in spite of the fact her body was found half-naked.

Thank God times have moved on a little since then. The only part of officialdom not criticised by the woman attacked in Colin Glen was the PSNI's Rape Crime Unit and I was thankful of that, but a little confused that they appeared not to have suggested she contact our centre for support and counselling or even told her about Victim Support's witness support service until the rape trial was about to start.

In spite of the fact that Belfast City Council spearheaded its own anti-rape campaign, and has worked with the Rape Crisis Centre and other voluntary organisations, it is prepared to permit a hero's welcome for Mike Tyson, subsidised by our rates.

Perhaps to finish off their Evening with a Rapist event, when the great sportsman will be telling his life story and promoting whatever he is trying to sell us, they could invite Gary Glitter to do a few Seventies songs to remind us of the good old days of the Troubles when we didn't have to worry about scathing criticisms from uppity, foreign, female tourists?

It would also further emphasise the message our city is sending out: perpetrators of sexually violent crimes against women and children are not only protected by our system, but lionised if they are celebrities, their victims forgotten.

Many times I have said that there is a complex hierarchy of victimhood in Northern Ireland and survivors of rape and sexual abuse are at the bottom of the scrapheap.

I am ashamed to admit that I felt a strange need to console myself as I read the sensible, unemotional, honest words of this brave woman about the treatment of rape survivors in my country, so I told myself that there was community outrage and candle-lit vigils in both Protestant and Catholic west Belfast communities where the rape of this woman and the European student took place.

If we are the decent, humanitarian people that I believe we are, then we need to show courage in changing the systems we have in place to protect women and children and work to prevent rape, prosecute perpetrators and support victims.

A very small start would be for Belfast city councillors to publicly state we will not welcome foreign rapists at the ratepayers' expense.