Court backlogs mean rape victims are giving up on justice

Rape is notoriously easy to get away with, even when it is reported to the police. Some of this can be explained by the crime itself.

Witnesses tend to be limited to accuser and complainant. Evidence can be scant, especially if reporting is delayed. And, as the stakes are so high, the accused tend to flatly deny their involvement rather than plead guilty. Often, too, the victim knows the attacker, which can make the reporting process particularly upsetting, and puts pressure on them to withdraw their accusations.

But in other ways rape has a head start on other offences. One is that identification is easy. Unlike in cases of theft or fraud, most victims can supply the name and even the address of their attacker. Independent evidence may be hard to get – many crimes happen behind closed doors or away from security cameras. Prosecution and conviction rates are higher for nonsexual domestic abuse, for example. So what is the problem?

Two recent findings highlight points at which rape victims are failed along the way. This week, a report into the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which bridges the gap between police reports and cases going to court, finds that prosecutors fully met standards in only 23% of cases. They are supposed to focus on the suspect’s behaviours and actions – but too often, the report says, they focus on those of the victim. Inspectors also found “coercive control” or “abusive behaviour” went unrecognised: without important context, prosecutors can dismiss the wrong cases.

Earlier this month came other news: that victims and witnesses were quitting proceedings at far higher rates than before the pandemic – 325 prosecutions out of 4,317 collapsed last year compared with 62 out of 2,183 in 2019. This was down to particularly long wait times: victims now face up to four years before a court date. In that time, mental health deteriorates, rates of self harm increase and accusers lose faith in the system.

Why, exactly, does the justice system fall down when it comes to rape? One theory is that this is down to bias – that jurors are still far too influenced by rape myths. These might, for example, include difficulty believing a victim who has previously given consent to their attacker, stays in touch with them, or delays reporting the crime. When Christine Blasey Ford claimed to have been assaulted by then supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump insisted that anyone who had experienced an assault would have gone straight to the police. In fact, sexual assault is one of the most underreported violent crimes.

Can this explain everything? Cheryl Thomas, a law professor at University College London, finds evidence to the contrary. There is a persistent idea, she says, that the conviction rate for rape is extremely low, owing to jury bias. One well-circulated figure, for example, is that it stands at just 6%.

But that’s wrong. Once cases get in front of jurors, they are more likely to convict than acquit, and rates have risen in the course of the last decade. A recent study that looked at 5,623,800 criminal charges found that the conviction rate for rape was 55% in 2007, and by 2021 had risen to 75%. Whether prejudice is still holding juries back is hard to measure – but the prospects for victims, once cases get to court, are not as bleak as some think. Raised awareness of the complexities of the crime – through films, TV and the press – may finally be permeating through to the public.

As Baroness Stern, author of a 2010 independent review into the handling of rape cases, has said: “It is clear to us that the way the 6% figure has been able to dominate the public discourse on rape, without explanation, analysis and context, has been to the detriment of public understanding and other important outcomes for victims.”