Wikipedia suggests [0] at least 1 rape accusation in 50 is made baselessly and with malicious intent. Maybe a further 4 in 50 are likely to be mis-identified situations with no crime occurring.
On the one hand, those numbers aren't high. On the other hand, these numbers are high enough that the police should be diligent exploring all available avenues of evidence. They should be tactful, discreet and empathetic as they do so.
There are various studies that look into this. Some of them work by examining police reports and looking at cases where the police concluded the woman was lying. These routinely give a figure as high as 50%. In interviews with individual policemen and policewomen, when asked to estimate the false reporting rate they also ballpark it at 50%.
The 2% number is outright fraud. Try and find the original source for this figure and you won't be able to - others have tried. It gets repeated endlessly anyway because it suits the feminist cause to make false reports look extremely rare, but the 2% figure correlates with nothing. For instance the FBI's own figures show at minimum an 8% false reporting rate, which is much higher than for any other crime, and that's based on DNA tests alone. When the cases discarded by the police even before that are taken into account (e.g. because the woman admitted the next day she was drunk and hadn't really been raped, a surprisingly common occurrence) the rate climbs much further.
Unfortunately what you see in this space is rampant manipulation of the figures. For instance it's common for a woman retracting her claim (i.e. saying she wasn't raped after all) to not be considered a false accusation, although there was an accusation, and the woman later decided her accusation should not stand. We can see a user in this thread stating that a woman admitting she lied is not sufficient evidence that the accusation was false - it's apparent that such people are desperate for the narrative to hold up, but what standard of proof would be sufficient for them? Of course in extremely rare cases someone might file a claim, and then retract it, whilst having been correct originally. But very often claims are retracted because the accuser realises an investigation will reveal that they're lying.
If this comment is going to be downvoted and flagged, someone needs to step up and provide a reason. The source is a good one; there's nothing inflammatory in the tone of the comment, and facts are provided. Let's discuss these things, not cover them up.
> For instance it's common for a woman retracting her claim (i.e. saying she wasn't raped after all) to not be considered a false accusation, although there was an accusation, and the woman later decided her accusation should not stand.
I don't like that wording. False and withdrawn mean different things. Withdrawn due to pressure happens, perhaps that is very often as well as your theory at the end.
Wikipedia is a tertiary source; if you are going to cite something, don't cite Wikipedia, cite it's sources (after reviewing them to see if they are worth citing.)
'The woman who accused Allan said he had raped her multiple times over a 14-month period, and that she did not enjoy sex with him.'
'But the text messages show her directly contradicting these claims. In one message, she wrote “It wasn’t against my will or anything.” She also continually asked him for more sexual encounters and discussed rape fantasies.'
Note: this woman's anonymity is still preserved, and she has apparently faced no punishment whatsoever. The UK seems to have a flexible attitude as to whether a false rape accusation should be considered a crime.
Do we have a source for this claim - data on sexual violence is spotty, and data on false allegations of sexual violence is even spottier. The difference in estimated rates of false allegations often vary by 4-10x so I'm not sure how one can reliably make the claim that false allegations of rape are more likely to be protected.
You're right that the stats are not very good, but that's because they significantly under-count incidences of rape.
Rape cases can be complex, especially where the alleged rapist is also accused of domestic violence or coercive control, and this fear of violence from the alledged perpetrator or his family and friends leads some people to retract their allegation. Note that this does not mean they are false allegations, here's a woman who was prosecuted for falsely retracting a true allegation.
> In November 2010, the Court of Appeal considered an appeal against sentence in the case of Ms A, who ultimately pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice on the basis that she had falsely retracted true allegations of rape she had made against her husband.
The annual crime survey (seen as reliable statistics) say that about 140,000 women and about 8,000 men are raped each year. There are about 6,000 prosecutions, and about 2.5k convictions.
There are 35 prosecutions for false allegations of rape, out of about 90 cases that failed because the victim retracted their statement.
The feeling that woman make very many false allegations of rape is not ture; the feeling that they go unpunished for this is not true. It's frankly disturbing that men seek to focus so much attention on this tiny number - fewer than 100 people per year - and not on the very much larger figure of over 8,000 men and 140,000 women who are victims of rape.
> out of about 90 cases that failed because the victim retracted their statement.
That doesn't mean there were only 90 false allegations; it means there were 90 cases in which accusers effectively confessed to making false allegations. It's disturbing that so few of those confessions led to prosecution.
A fair comparison would be: in how many cases did the accused confess to rape, and how many of those were prosecuted? If two out of three confessed rapists were released without punishment, the outrage would be deafening.
Victim retraction does not mean the allegation is false, and I've already linked to a crown prosecution service document that gives details of a case where the retraction was false, the original allegation was true.
We have 150,000 rapes each year; we have 6,000 prosectutions; fewer than 200 collapse because of victim retraction; and we have 35 prosecutions for making a false allegation.
> In how many cases did men confess to rape, and how many of those were prosecuted?
i: I don't understand what that tells you? and ii: we don't have reliable stats. We can say how many men entered a guilty plea.
2,635 Convictions
1,522 Guilty plea
1,112 Conviction after trial
1 Proved in absence
> Victim retraction does not mean the allegation is false
Not always. Nor does a guilty plea (or even a confession) always mean the accused is guilty. But in either case we have more reason to believe than we usually do.
> we don't have reliable stats
Indeed. Nor do we have reliable stats about false allegations. So why are you asserting that false allegations are rare, knowing your argument is based on unreliable stats?
In 2016, about 90k instances of rape were reported to police [1]. The lowest figure I've seen for the % of accusations that are false is 2% the highest ones from well reputed sources are in the low 20s but let's go with the FBI's figure of 8% (this is for "provably false" accusations, so it's still only a lower bound). That would mean that of the 90k accusations, we have somewhere between 1.8k to 5.6k false accusations. 35 of which were prosecuted. This is a prosecution rate of roughly 2-0.5%, compared to 5% for rape (this is the figure I most commonly see when discussing the percentage of rapes that are prosecuted). I don't see much evidence to back up the claim that false accusations are prosecuted more frequently than rape.
I have already linked the ONS crime survey stats which say there are about 144,000 rapes of women and about 8,000 rapes of men each year, and the CPS stats for prosecutions (4517 April 2017-May 2018).
Why are you using the FBI definition when the submitted article is about advice for England, coming from a case in England?
Kier Starmer used to be head of the CPS (the organisation that's releasing this advice) and he says:
>In recent years we have worked hard to dispel the damaging myths and stereotypes associated with these cases. One such misplaced belief is that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are rife. This report presents a more accurate picture.
I've already linked the report that he's talking about.
> False accusations of rape are more likely to be prosecuted than rape.
We have the rate of prosecution for rape: 4-5%. In order for your claim to be true we need to obtain the rate of prosecution for the false accusation of rape. To do this we need the total number of false accusations and the number of such accusations that were prosecuted.
Even with conservative definitions, about 2-8% of accusations are determined to be false (and I'm being generous and not even considering the estimates that don't just examine instances where th allegations are provably false). I found that 90k rapes were reported, which would yield 1.8-5.6k false accusations.
Thanks for pointing out the mismatch of the 35 prosecutions for false accusations of rape coming from England and not the US. Unfortunately I was not able to find the number of prosecutions for false accusations of rape in the US (Google gave two whole pages of articles stating that it's important to believe accusers, and no statistics).
But if we apply the same analysis with your figures then the results are even worse. Of the 144k alleged rapes we would have 2.8k- 11.4k false accusations. Even if we just used the lowest estimates of the rate of false accusations then it would still only be 35 of the over 2,800 false accusations that get prosecuted - only 1.25%. The higher end for the estimates of the rate of false accusations would put the percent of false accusations that get prosecuted even lower, under one percent.
> there is a implicit accusation that the accuser is lying.
No, this is a bizarre interpretation of the legal system.
A man can think he has consent and a woman can think she did not give consent. That doesn't mean one is lying, it means one didn't understand the situation.
This is very different from inventing a situation that never happened which is what we mean when we talk about false allegations.
Are you using your own definition for "false allegation"? One that isn't used by the English courts or the UK statisticians?
The poster I was replying to was using a very loose definition of unprosecuted crime, basically implying that anytime one person says a crime occurred and it goes unprosecuted then it should be counted as such.
That kind of lazy statistic cuts both ways.
The accuser believes there is a crime, the accused thinks it's a false accusation.
Legally speaking, with rape the police aren't usually really sure a crime occurred as there is no proof. That's why they don't prosecute.
This case alone demonstrates it is true, and apart from this case there are other similar cases where no action was taken. Granted, it would be spectacularly embarrassing for the CPS/DPP if the accuser in the case had ended up being prosecuted herself, which is perhaps the explanation for the egregious neglect of justice here - I'm not sure how it is possible to get much more open and shut than clear evidence explicitly stating that what was accused never took place.
You’re extrapolating an entire country’s legal culture on sex crimes from a single editorialized reading of a single case; and at that, it’s targeted toward Joe Schmo’s quick glance at the days news over a morning coffee, not to serve as any kind of legal briefing.
I really don't know what could make someone who has been the victim of such a heinous crime not hand over their phone if they are being honest in their accusations. Not having your phone for a month beats keeping your rapist unpunished in all cases, doesn't it?
Maybe I'm missing something here, so I will welcome any comments that could shed some light on that. There may be cases that I'm not contemplating which could prove me wrong.
P. S. An anecdote: one of my relatives is an attorney; he had a case which had been resolved as a false rape accusation just because they found evidence in the accuser's WhatsApp chats. It turns out she had been discussing with her mother how they would proceed to incriminate her alleged rapist so they could benefit economically from the trial. She wasn't prosecuted afterwards, which is the norm in my country.
> police and prosecutors say the forms are an attempt to plug a gap in the law which says complainants and witnesses cannot be forced to disclose relevant content from phones, laptops, tablets or smart watches
This isn’t a “gap in the law” at all: it’s protection against incriminating yourself. It’s especially horrible that police are trying to push those involved in sexual assault trials to give up their liberties…
Self incrimination is not the same as a false accusation.
Imagine if the person raped committed a different crime, unrelated to the rape, for which there was evidence of that on their phone.
In order to report the rape, they have to self incriminate themself for that crime as well? In this scenario any drug user, prostitute or other criminal has no protection from the law against being raped.
You also have an obligation to help the police solve the crime you reported by providing all and any relevant information.
The issue is that people don't always know what information is relevant / they think stuff is too minor to mention.
You wouldn't go to a doctors appointment and then say my body is private you cant examine me and expect them to go off just the info you provide. If the doctor asks to stick his finger up your rear to check your prostate you don't say er no thanks that's too private. You assume he has a good medical reason that he wants to do that and you let him confirm that you are healthy.
"If the doctor asks to stick his finger up your rear to check your prostate you don't say er no thanks that's too private"
If you don't want your doctor to stick his finger up your butt, then that's exactly what you do. They don't have a right to finger your prostate, even though it might be beneficial to you.
And like the doctor that cannot diagnose you with appropriate information, the police can't prosecute the accused without potentially backing or detracting details.
Isn't that the same though as if you have ill gotten funds / drugs, I steal them from you but you cant report that.
I've still committed a crime against you but you cant report it due to the fact you committed a crime in the first place.
Kinda hard to feel sorry for a criminal being unable to report a crime.....
You don’t feel sympathy for sex workers, who in many places are unable to report being assaulted?
Your example is having something you stole stolen from you. That’s not the same as doing something illegal, and having a completely different crime done to you. “I was jaywalking, and someone robbed me when i arrived on the other side of the street”. I can’t report it because I would have to explain why I was in the middle of the street without having walked past the shops on that side.
I know discussions here are often America-centric, but note that this depends on jurisdiction. E.g. in Sweden, the one selling sex is not a criminal, the one buying is.
I can’t make sense of your line of reasoning on this comment thread.
I thought we were discussing why society would want to incentivize (or at least not disincentive) reporting a crime, even if the reporter is themselves a criminal. The idea is to eliminate at least one act of criminality instead of none.
You’re argument seems to be: people who commit crimes shouldn’t expect protection under the law from other crimes. And when it was pointed out that not all crimes are equal, your reply is “but I don’t consider some of those things as crimes.”
When the grandparent said "Kinda hard to feel sorry for a criminal being unable to report a crime....."
The parent answered "You don’t feel sympathy for sex workers, who in many places are unable to report being assaulted?" -- as if that category was what the grantparent meant by "criminals".
It was obvious to me that this was not what the grandparent meant, and I chimed in to say that one can still find it "hard to feel sorry for a criminal being unable to report a crime" while still feeling sorry for a prostitute that can't report a rape.
It's easy to speak of "criminals" casually without including (into your concept of them) large categories of people that the law might still consider "criminals" (eg. prostitute, a teen that did some weed, a guy who hacked into a website for fun, somebody who gasp pirated some music, etc.).
That's orthogonal to what protection criminals should get or not. I can support the rights of a criminal (to a fair trial etc) without feeling sorry for them. I don't find feeling "sorry" necessary to support people's rights.
>You’re argument seems to be: people who commit crimes shouldn’t expect protection under the law from other crimes.
No, my comment meant to convey (a) that the grandparent's point that "Kinda hard to feel sorry for a criminal being unable to report a crime" is not some bizarre cruel statement, and it doesn't necessarily have to do with some special cases of legally considered "criminals" that are more like victims themselves like a prostitute.
What I didn't like was the uncharitable interpretation of the grandparent's comment.
Not trying to be uncharitable. I’m just stunned by the seeming hard-line black-and-white worldview in the parent post. I’m confused by the idea that the word “criminals” doesn’t include large categories of people who do things that are against the law. That is the _definition_ of criminal, is it not?
Official definitions (like etymologies) are not really relevant to actual language (though they are relevant to court).
It's the typical intended use / understanding of a term (as used casually), which can even change between contexts even when used by the same person, that matters.
> In Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland), prostitution itself (the exchange of sexual services for money) is legal,[2] but a number of related activities, including soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel, pimping and pandering, are crimes. In Northern Ireland, which previously had similar laws, paying for sex became illegal from 1 June 2015.[3] Laws are not always strictly enforced, and there are reports of police forces turning a blind eye to brothels.[4] Many brothels in cities such as Manchester, London and Cardiff operate under the name "massage parlours".
A lot of stuff around prostitution that should be legal isn't.
But that won't happen. If you have evidence on your phone of a crime you committed you're not going to give the phone to the police to look at. Therefor we end up with no crimes solved instead of one. Ontop of that, because everyone knows that a criminal can no longer report a rape, there's a carte blanche to rape anyone who falls into that category without consequence.
I'm not sure how this criticism is supposed to be valid. If someone robs a heroin dealer of their product, and the heroin dealer calls the police and honestly explains their situation then of course the police are going to arrest and charge both the third and the dealer - regardless of the fact that the latter was a victim of theft.
Yeah, it does mean crime becomes carte blanche to do against criminals of a certain caliber. But that's the consequence of deciding to live one's life outside the law.
If the crimes discussed on the phone are trivia in relation to rape (e.g. shop lifting, drug use) I highly doubt the police would bother prosecuting those crimes. How many minors who were raped while.drunk got charged with consu ing alcohol underage? I don't know of any, and the outrage over doing so would be immense.
>Ontop of that, because everyone knows that a criminal can no longer report a rape, there's a carte blanche to rape anyone who falls into that category without consequence.
Could this serve as an incentive for less crime?
Frivolity aside, "raping criminals" doesn't seem a very viable endeavor. They are, you know, criminals to begin with, and they, or their criminal friends, can perhaps do your head in...
(Plus, blackmailing a criminal with evidence of their crime, sometimes for sex too, has happened since time immemorial - even between corrupt policemen and criminals-, it's not something uniquely enabled by mobile phones).
> Could this serve as an incentive for less crime?
Was this sarcasm, or are you actually suggesting that criminals should fear extrajudicial "justice" of having crimes committed against them and being unable to report them?
Neither, it's a fact of life: criminals do fear extrajudicial "justice" of having crimes committed against them and being unable to report them (and have it happen to them frequently, as I say on the second paragraph above).
It’s possible: I’m not a lawyer, much less a British one. But my point was that handing over your phone to the police might be incriminating, so police trying to use the “threat” of allowing your abuser to walk free if you don’t do this is pretty bad.
A thousand times this! I don't think anyone wants law with no gaps, if they could only be convinced to think about it before they beg the government to fix every problem for them.
It's really interesting how governments around the world increasingly view protections of civil liberties as "gaps" or "loopholes" in the law. Shows you right where their agendas lie.
The combination of false accusations and dropped cases probably indicate that it's not unreasonable to seek corroborating or exonerating evidence from the police perspective. That said, they aren't forcing the victim to turn over anything... just like in another thread you don't have to let a doctor examine you.
But the evidence needs to be gathered, and if an accuser is unwilling to cooperate, there is very little the police can do in terms of gathering that evidence.
The implication was "for non-related crimes". Basically the police don't want to spend time trying to find whoever raped you if you're unwilling to hand over your phone because the way they see it if you have something to hide it's because you're probably involved in other shady shit and are correspondingly at the bottom of the priority ladder as far as the police care.
It's like when a known drug dealer gets shot they just figure it was a rival dealer and/or he had it coming so they don't spend more than the minimum time investigating it. Ditto for a hooker who gets raped. They tend to see that as just one of the risks in that business.
Almost everyone has something to hide (for example, I may or may not have software on my computer that I didn’t quite followed the licensing terms for), and they shouldn’t be denied the right to a fair trial for something unrelated because of this.
They could offer immunity against crimes not related to a strict list that they may find on your phone. That strict list including murder, conspiracy to commit murder, treason, embezzlement, securities fraud and a few other felony crimes. That would exclude the rest. It would also have to include verbiage about parallel construction practices.
> We are aware that there are myths and stereotypes surrounding the offence of rape. Examples of such myths include:
[...]
> prostitutes cannot be raped.
> Prosecutors who deal with rape cases are taught about them as part of their specialist training. We will not allow these myths and stereotypes to influence our decisions and we will robustly challenge such attitudes in the courtroom.
>Do you have any evidence that prostitutes who are raped do not have their crime investigated to the same extent as any other victim?
Well, empirical reality is enough.
Unless people live in some middle/upper middle class bubble, and have seldom or never met and talked with prostitutes, policemen, people in everyday contact with either group, etc, they know that this exactly is the case.
That's a 2011 article about a change in mentality in a single country, and with still measly little statistical increase (even if positive). And it doesn't even touch on what happens afterwards, and the rates of convictions in each category. If anything, the article negates the question (it started getting somewhat better in 2011 -- which already means it wasn't anywhere near on parity as per the question).
Given the motivation for this -- the collapse of several high-profile rape case where evidence of false accusation was discovered on the "victim's" phone -- it would ask (not force) false accusers to incriminate themselves.
I'm "keen to suggest" it because because several high-profile rape cases in the UK collapsed in the last few months because police either didn't gather phone data or failed to disclose relevant phone data they had gathered — data that exonerated the accused.
Phone data is one possible source of evidence and it should be considered alongside all the other evidence to determine whether the accused person is guilty. By refusing to hand over that evidence, rape victims deny police and prosecutors evidence that may be vital to making a case, which obviously makes it less likely that a prosecution will go forward. You can't convict someone with no evidence.
I can certainly understand how it would make the accuser uncomfortable, but that has to be balanced against the rights of the accused to a fair trial where all available evidence is considered.
Where I disagree is that her messages were proof she lied to police about the rape. She may well have been telling the truth to the police and lying to her friends -- why aren't people leaving that open as a possibility.
I’d say it’s evidence but not proof. If the phone is full of messages saying the accuser had a wonderful time with the accused, that’s evidence that should be considered alongside other evidence. She may indeed be lying about having a wonderful time, and that should be taken into account. Investigators have to make a judgement that into account.
What's prompted this is a couple of high profile cases recently where evidence from the complainant's phone has come up at the eleventh hour and exonerated the accused, wasting large amounts of taxpayer money and needlessly persecuting the innocent.
'Fake' rape reports are a growing problem and the cases I have seen haven't resulted in any punishment for the accuser. I mean, obviously this isn't the best solution to the problem, but it's by far the easiest and cheapest for the taxpayer. It's evidence that would probably be required for the case in court anyway, right?
Let’s flip this over. In the case of a woman who is murdered and who has a male partner, it is nearly ALWAYS the partner. It isn’t a growing problem, it has been with us forever.
Now obviously, the easiest and cheapest thing for the taxpayer would be to simply lock up the partner when a woman with a partner is murdered.
That would be unjust, even if it is nearly always right and easiest and cheapest. Ok, but MRA folks would go ballistic, so let’s make it easier:
If a woman with a male partner is murdered, we simply require the male partner to give up their cell phone’s contents. No silly paperwork for a warrant, no laws about self-incrimination or any of that, we just cite the “Taxpayer’s Efficiency Act of 2019” and they have to hand it over, or sit in jail for contempt until they do.
Is that still unjust?
It is, isn’t it?
I put it to you that if false accusations of rape, which happen rarely, justify examining phones belonging to the victims, then murder of a woman by her male partner, who is usually the perpetrator, justifies the exact same thing.
What stops us in both cases is the notion of justice. It is unjust whether the person is likely or unlikely to b a law-breaker. And we as a society have decided that justice is a greater good than saving a few bucks or making things easier for police.
There's a huge difference between incarcerating someone and getting a warrant for their phone records. Your analogy is made less relevant by the fact that if a woman is murdered they very likely would get a warrant for her partner's phone records.
Where the 4th amendment applies here is if any evidence of a different crime were found while looking for information on the first. If the phone records were acquired by a warrant, that evidence would not be admissible in court.
It is your responsibility to protect your 4A rights. This is why you never let the police in your house without a warrant. Inviting them in allows them to search and charge you based on anything they find.
Step outside and talk to them if they want to interview you, and password protect your phone and demand they get a warrant if they want to look at it.
Absolutely true, but it is not your sole responsibility to project justice. Society also should enact regulations and oversight to prevent the police from coercing people into forgoing their rights.
That’s why there is the Miranda warning, for example.
You should know and protect your rights. Yes. AND the police should not as a matter of course attempt to coerce you into giving them up.
You are - willingly or unwillingly - mixing two very different legal statuses there.
One is being the accuser, to whom evidence is asked about the validity of the accusation (this law proposal). The other is to automatically accuse someone (in your proposal) and demand evidence to deem them innocent.
If someone came to the police and said, "so and so murdered someone", and there's no body to be found, would the police not demand as much evidence as is available? Would they charge someone with murder just based on an accusation?
The police would almost certainly seek a warrant to get cell phone records, location records, and even access to the suspect’s phone if they can show probable cause.
But as I noted in another comment, a warrant involves judicial oversight.
That article gives me the chills, treating false rape allegations as if it was some trivial "no harm done" kind of thing. It's a serious matter.
It's up there with allegations of murder, except that people who are cleared of murder generally face less prejudice and discrimination than people cleared of rape.
Intentionally making false allegations should carry a sentence proportionate to the alleged crime, not to mention compensation for harm done to the reputation of the accused.
Most of these people got off easy.
The article also glosses over the fact that most of them were found guilty by a jury, whereas if the alleged rapists would've been found guilty, nobody would've spared them a second thought or cried foul.
Except in most of these cases the allegations aren't false, and harm was done. The harm isn't being done to the abusive men, but to the vulnerable women.
And, in the context of rape, false allegations are vanishinly rare. In the UK commonly accepted figures say there are 90,000 rapes each year (and the real number is likely to be higher). That's a huge number of people who aren't seeing justice.
> Except in most of these cases the allegations aren't false, and harm was done. The harm isn't being done to the abusive men, but to the vulnerable women.
There was not only no evidence of any crime committed by the accused, there was evidence of the accusers lying.
A jury, after being presented evidence by both sides, first found the accused not guilty.
Later, a different jury, after being presented evidence by two sides, found the accusers guilty of lying.
What makes you so confident that, after reading an article that is objectively one-sided, you have a better grasp of the situation than the jurors in question?
This absolutely boggles my mind.
Maybe they all have been found not guilty by another jury by now and I just glossed over that fact?
Criminal trials use "beyond all reasonable doubt" as their burden of proof. A criminal trial does not clear the accused of any charges. The jury may well think "he probably did it, and I would not leave him alone with my daughter, but the prosecution failed to prove that he did it beyond all reasonable doubt". Juries do not clear someone.
Guilty people are found not guilty, by design, every day.
I want to respond separately to the notion of fake reports being a “growing problem.” You haven’t cited any evidence, so I don’t know is this is true or if you are just repeating something somebody said on the internet.
But if there was some evidence along these lines, my first question would be whether rape reports are growing. One thing that used to happen was that there was an enormous amount of disincentive to report rape.
Society assumed by default that the woman was “asking for it.” The defence was allowed to grill her in open court about her sex life, and paint her as a harlot, implying or even openly arguing that she asked for it and/or deserved it.
The notion of consent was weak, to say the least.
Police where sexist AF and often laughed off reports, or went to investigate and told the suspect exactly who had reported them, opening them to retaliation.
Women reported rape much less often, because there was almost no incentive for them to do so, and that’s exactly how society liked it.
Naturally, this meant fewer accusations that couldn’t be proved, as well as outright fabrications. But also naturally, this meant many fewer guilty perpetrators were charged, much less convicted.
If changes in the way rape is viewed, investigated, and prosecuted produces many more accusations, it is not necessarily a “problem” that there are more false accusations.
If there are twice as many false accusations and simultaneously twice as many convictions, there is no problem at all, there is simply more reporting with exactly the same proportion of falsehood.
If there are twice as many false reports and four times as many convictions, perhaps society is much better off.
The fact is, false reports are sensational and get lots of attention. As they should, a false report is not only a crime, but a great injustice. We should work to discourage and disincent them.
But not at the expense of discouraging all reports. And the side-effect of invading the privacy of those eho report rape is a return to the days when there were fewer false eports because women didn’t want to report rape at all.
And the side-effect of invading the privacy of those eho report rape is a return to the days when there were fewer false eports because women didn’t want to report rape at all.
Regardless, it's not unreasonable to expect that in a legal matter all correspondence between two parties will be examined in order to determine what is just. We have to also be careful not to return to a time when an accusation alone is enough to determine guilt.
>I mean, obviously this isn't the best solution to the problem, but it's by far the easiest and cheapest for the taxpayer.
If your "easiest and cheapest" solution involves the violation of liberties, let alone people in vulnerable positions such as rape victims, you might wish to rethink it.
> It's evidence that would probably be required for the case in court anyway, right?
If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear, right?
I genuinely don't understand how this is still a valid argument in the minds of some people. Yes, it might probably be required, but the law was written like this for a reason. You're further disincentivizing rape victims from reporting the crime, which already is a huge issue due to stigmatization and the psychological trauma.
---
And as others have mentioned, I would like to see a source on "'Fake' rape reports being a growing problem", that would warrant this kind of response.
We can argue about whether criminal law should focus on punishment or rehabilitation, but it should be completely evident that it's about punishing/rehabilitating the right person. Criminal prosecution isn't a game you're trying to win.
If the investigation surfaces any evidence at all that the defendant might be innocent (or hints at the existence of said evidence), it's a gross miscarriage of justice not to bring this evidence forward.
> The prosecution is under a duty to pursue all reasonable lines of enquiry in an investigation, and to disclose to the defence any material it uncovers which may be reasonably capable of undermining the prosecution case or assisting the defence.
> the prosecution does not have to search for and provide evidence that may exonerate the defense
Nobody said the prosecution had to do anything. Where do you think you saw that? But the police are required to investigate. It has been the police who have been at fault, and censored rightly so, for not finding this evidence in these cases.
No, but the defense can and probably will subpoena these things. As a prosecutor you’d be dumb not to look at evidence you guess will come out at trial anyways.
All I can say, is that when I was 19, I was falsely accused of rape. It was terrifying as a prospect even before fully knowing all the following results that would happen.
First, you're in prison for a crime you didn't commit. Second, you're unable to get most jobs after prison because of the sentence. Third, you have to register for the rest of your life and deal with harassment or worse from vigilantist neighbors. Fourth, you aren't allowed to even live in a lot of places as a former felon and sex offender.
If a false accuser goes far enough to actually see a trial and they're found to be lying, they absolutely should at the very least have to register on the sex offender registry as a potential risk to ANY future partners even if they don't see jail time when convicted.
Edit: I've also been on the victim side of this... being falsely accused was far, far, far worse.
Edit 2: The accuser doesn't have to turn over their phone... beyond that, I'd be fine to see an immunity from all but a specific list of felonies against any evidence found on the phone. I understand the risks against personal liberty and would prefer some protections... but it's too easy to get a false conviction. How many people every year are convicted under false accusations, and only accusation without evidence?
> "We seem to be going back to the bad old days when victims of rape are being treated as suspects."
It's tiring and in fact dangerous to see some groups continuously campaigning for women reporting rape to be blindly believed.
Being accused of rape is devastating it is just that the police should start with a neutral stance and try to assert the plausibility of the accusation.
Absolutely, I agree.
The presumption is innocent until proven guilty and the problem with sex crimes is even the accusation can completely destroy someones life regardless even if they are later found to have been innocent.
In reality it is no different from ANY other crime in that there needs to be evidence that a crime has actually been committed.
This seems broadly in line (but less intrusive, and less protective of defendant's rights) with what has always been US practice in that no one is immune to being compelled to provide evidence except for very specific privileges.
Not only can police/people ask for this information in the US (and the British use appears to be purely voluntary but with potential impacts on prosecution if it does not), but also either the prosecution or defense can issue subpoenas or secure court orders for evidence in the possession of victims or other parties.
The case this stems from seems to have had problems due to historical Tory cuts to police budgets by Theresa May when police was her responsibility as shown in the Analysis section here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42873618
Would the entirety of the phone's contents become evidence that prosecution and defense can both look at to support their case?
Also, if a victim/accuser refuses blanket consent, can they still make certain content available as evidence? Eg, text messages but not tinder or browsing history.
I can't speak to the U.K., but in the U.S., the answer is: it depends.
Typically, a search warrant will be limited in scope, whereas a consent search will not be. In fact, law enforcement is usually trained to ask for consent to search even if they have a warrant, because it precludes a lot of legal issues. For example, if they are executing a search and they see something out in the open that suggests some other crime but isn't conclusive, and they want to search for more evidence related to that other issue, they are supposed to seek another warrant unless an exception applies (e.g., exigent circumstances). If they have consent to search the house (or car, or ...), then they do not need to stop, and they do not need to worry about the evidence being excluded if the judge disagrees that there were exigent circumstances.
For this reason, I think a lot of the reactions in this thread against compelled evidence are misplaced. A victim is much more likely to implicate herself or himself in collateral conduct in a consent search than they would be if the evidence were compelled. A search warrant, for example, would likely be limited to text messages between the alleged victim and the alleged perpetrator... and not include, e.g., text messages between the alleged victim and her/his drug dealer.
Defense access will depend on discovery rules, which vary widely between jurisdictions. Either way, it won't be admissible in court unless a judge rules that it is relevant to the case.
This won't help if a woman making a false accusation simply deletes the exonerating messages. If they used encrypted/ephemeral messaging, the phone/app company can't turn them over either. If the victim is lucky they'll still have their own copies.
Would the accused also be forced to hand over their phone? My initial impulse is that if we're going for equity, the same policy should be applied to both. I'm also assuming that there is an implicit accusation of false accusation by the originally accused.
If the accused says "it was fully consensual and I have messages on my phone that prove it" then yes, they would hand over their phone. This is the context in which the victim's phone would be searched.
If the complainant said the phone was used during the rape to record the act then the phone would be seized as evidence.
> I'm also assuming that there is an implicit accusation of false accusation by the originally accused.
This is the difficult balancing act the police have to do: they have to treat complainants with respect and robustly investigate the alleged crime, but they have to hold open the (small) possibility that it didn't happen like the complainant says.
Clickbait. The prosecutors will only request the phones to be handed over when they're expected to contain evidence that's "relevant" to the case - possibly, evidence that might exonerate the defendant. Even in the U.S., prosecutors are in fact not allowed to withhold exculpatory evidence; it must be disclosed, according to the law.
I don't think that is correct, because the question before the court is not whether or not the person is a victim. The question is whether or not the accused committed the crime they are charged with.
If the accused is convicted, we can infer that the accuser was indeed a victim. However, if the accused is acquitted, we cannot infer that the accuser was not a victim--we can only infer that if they were a victim, they were victimized by someone other than the accused.
(There's also some fuzziness in here because of the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard from criminal cases).
Your observation would only be correct in judicial systems in which an alleged victim has to undergo some sort of trial or hearing at which they must prove that a crime occurred against them before the system moves on to finding and trying someone for perpetrating that crime.
> However, if the accused is acquitted, we cannot infer that the accuser was not a victim--we can only infer that if they were a victim, they were victimized by someone other than the accused.
Hm? I suppose that an overwhelming majority of rape allegations are made against one or more specific persons. If the accused are acquitted, the rape either didn't happen or cannot be proved because there are no witnesses and no evidence of it (which is in itself rather suspicious).
And BBC journalists can't be bothered to explain even roughly what the current law is. Just copy-paste a few quotes, waffle a bit (don't forget to hit return twice after every full stop!) then move on to the next story.
When I was in another commonwealth country, Australia, I found that newspapers would often dance around uncomfortable issues to the point where you wouldn't even know what they are talking about.
That was very odd to me. Who, what, why, when, where and how was just missing from articles like with Myanmar immigrants, or sexual assault solutions.
A gross invasion of privacy if I've ever seen one. A person's phone contains their most private thoughts, conversations, photos, etc. and victims are now expected to bare it all to police if they want a trial? What has the UK become?
If the plaintiff's case is so weak that it could be discounted by a text message, then the jury should be ruling not guilty either way.
Why stop at rape accusations? Why not theft, or hit and runs? How about whenever you accuse anyone of any infraction, you have to hand over all your digital data to law enforcement?
Oh I bet you’d never want to be subject to that, yet you want to make a special rule for one kind of accusation.
One kind of accusation? Do you mean the kind of accusation in which the only evidence that a crime ever took place is the statement of a single witnesses? It doesn't seem unreasonable that you'd want to investigate the credibility of the witness in such cases. I certainly wouldn't stop at rape accusations.
However, I think I'd prefer to see a court, rather than just the police, decide what data should be obtained/requested and how it should be used.
I suspect that in some of these cases the police think it's a hopeless case and are looking for a justification for dropping it. They are perhaps thinking: if this person really wants us to prosecute, then, OK, we'll do it, even if it seems hopeless, but if they won't even fully cooperate by letting us examine their phone then we really can't be bothered any more because we've got lots of better cases to be working on.
On the one hand, those numbers aren't high. On the other hand, these numbers are high enough that the police should be diligent exploring all available avenues of evidence. They should be tactful, discreet and empathetic as they do so.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape