In Britain, Rape Cases Seldom Result in a Conviction

Source: WaPo

LONDON -- After Linda Davies reported to police that her 15-year-old daughter had been raped, it took three months -- plus two dozen phone calls and a threat of legal action -- before police questioned the suspect, a 28-year-old neighbor.

I gave police his name, address, mobile phone number, car registration -- everything but his passport," said Davies, 44, a strong-minded mother of two daughters. "I was basically begging them. He lived five minutes away from us."

The suspect was finally arrested but acquitted at a trial in which the judge told the jury that he was "in a way a man of good character" because his previous criminal convictions, for possession of stolen goods and marijuana, did not involve violence.

Davies was furious at the judge, who also instructed the jurors to ignore the victim's young age, and at police, who lost cellphone records that contradicted the defendant's account.

"This has shattered us," Davies said. "We felt like the whole system was against us."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/28/AR2008052803583.html?hpid=topnews

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We had a case here in Virginia recently where a college student was raped, and the perp got probation because the victim was too scared to press charges -- ironically, she had escaped from one of the war-torn nations (Rwanda?) to have a new and presumably safe life here...

eom

:argh:

There was an investigation into the supposed fall in crime that Tony Blair bragged was an outcome of Labour policies a few years back. It was discovered that most of the fall was due to the way the police had changed their method of reporting.

For example, if 50 cars at a railway station parking lot had their windows smashed by vandals (a depressingly familiar occurrence in chav-culture Britain), the police record that as a single crime. If the perpetrator of the crime is arrested, however, the police record that as 50 crimes solved. The result is that, in some regions, three times as many crimes were solved as were committed.

Good to see that another country is giving the good ol' USA a run for its money in the spin stakes.

...is still filled with stuffy old men of upper-class origin, who are mentally and morally trapped in the 1950s.

Again and again, the newspapers report cases where the judge has to be informed what "text messaging" is and what "DVD recorders" do. Hardly surprising, then, that many of these men (they are overwhelmingly men) still harbor the secret belief that rape victims have it coming.

There was a case about ten years ago, in which a ten year old girl was raped by a twentysomething man (who was learning disabled to a degree but not incapable of discerning right from wrong). The man got off because the judge decided that the girl was "very sexually mature for her age and led the defendant on."

Only when Britain stops recruiting judges from the pages of Brideshead Revisited, will we see a change in the outcomes of rape cases.

His account of being hauled before a clueless judge for busking on the street in England in the 1950s is pretty funny.

This is a terrible problem, and we need to come up with ways to address it that do not involve removing the right of the accused to face the accuser in court.

Most criminals aren't caught over here. A large number of them escape from even getting to trial. Also, parts of the story don't make sense. They want us to believe that the jury was dumb enough to think that he was "a man of good character" even though he was on trial for raping a 15 year-old? Would you buy that argument? I didn't think so. Sounds to me like he was excluding previous crimes. That's very common here in the USA, that unrelated crimes are barred from trial. Looks like this is a hitjob on the British judicial system that could just as well be against the American judicial system.

And no matter how you cut it, in a developed society where women have rights, a 5.8% conviction rate for rapes is an eye opener...as messed up as our American system is, even we have a 13% rape conviction rate...

It's not just the trials, the story mentioned these stories where police were hesitant or lackidasical in even taking statements or making arrests...It points to this ugly societal norm where women have this near-impossible case to make to sway a jury towards a guilty verdict ("After all, women can't REALLY be raped, can they? She was kinda-sorta into it when it was going on, right?")-- That is the general attitude people are trying to change, especially when it comes to judging guilt or innocence

...that Brits were socially progressive in most ways (besides that weird thing about worshipping "royalty"). I guess the pompous, stuffed-shirt, powdered-wig judges portrayed by Monty Python 35 years ago aren't so far from the truth...

Unfortunately, there are remaining pockets of regressive Victorianism and "old boys club" culture, and the judiciary is one of the major ones. Things are changing, but a few hundred of the current generation of throwbacks need to retire or die before we see significant change.

woman cuts off a rapist's dick? I wonder...

use of deadly force is almost uniformly accepted when a male attacks a female. Any non domestic assault meets the bar and some domestic situations could meet the bar, but would be much more carefully scrutinized.

Basically a woman has great deference in use of deadly force..

Here in the UK New Labour introduced a point system whereby police departments earn points per crime solved, allegedly as a way to gauge which departments are doing well and which aren't. Three problems:

- The way crimes are counted as committed versus solved is skewed...see earlier post on 50 cars being vandalized and counted as 50 crimes solved ONLY if the person is caught.

- The system awards one point per crime solved. Write a ticket for jaywalking: one point. Solve a grizzly and time-consuming murder: one point.

- And...(the big one)...Chief Constables (local chiefs of police) are given yearly bonuses based on how many points their department amassed.

Result: big incentive to go after easy points like issuing citations for littering, jaywalking, etc.; little incentive for days or weeks long investigations into murders, rapes, robberies. Officer A scores 100 points in two weeks going after easy kills, while Officer B scores one point in the same period for investigating this rape (IF he/she solves it!). Now, who's going to look better to the Chief Constable?