Justice lets down the victims

RAPE is a notoriously difficult crime to prosecute - especially in cases where it comes down to a question of consent, with one person's word pitted against another's.

The recent Channel 4 docudrama Consent illustrated the difficulties a jury can face in deciding who was telling the truth - especially where two people knew each other beforehand, and where drink may have been involved.

The Government is desperate to increase conviction rates - which have been going down for years, and now stand at 5.31 per cent. Only one in 20 of rape allegations now end in a conviction.

In North Yorkshire, the figure is higher, with one in ten rapes, or double the national average, ending in conviction.

But many think that is still too low.

Now a damming new report from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons and Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate reveals that nationally, despite a raft of new measures to boost conviction rates, too many rape allegations are being dropped prematurely by police and prosecutors.

The report highlights a number of shortcomings in the way rape investigations and prosecutions are handled.

It points to:

* Police wrongly recording rape allegations as "no crimes" in nearly a third of cases which should have been investigated further.

* Police and prosecutors not making sufficient use of evidence showing a defendant's "bad character" in court.

* The Crown Prosecution Service has no minimum levels of competence for specialist rape prosecutors.

* Defendants' claims of consent are not being challenged vigorously enough.

* Too many front-line police have "very little" training to deal with rape.

* High levels of variation in the detection rate of rape allegations between different police forces - ranging from 22 per cent to 93 per cent.

So what, if anything, can be done to boost conviction rates, while ensuring defendants receive a fair trial?

THE VICTIM

ONE York rape victim today urged politicians, prosecutors and the public to do more to put attackers behind bars.

The 23-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is still undergoing counselling three years after she was raped. She believes she would have made a quicker recovery if she had not had to endure the trial, which freed her attacker and left her feeling as if she were the guilty party.

Her ordeal began when she was raped in her bedroom by a family friend, while her mother and father were asleep next door.

At first, she told no one. Later, she told her boyfriend and her mother, both of whom persuaded her to go to the police.

The trial came six months after the attack and lasted for three days.

The woman said she briefly met a prosecuting barrister ten minutes before going into court, when she was given a summary of her original statement to refresh her memory.

"I never spoke to anybody about what was going to happen," she said.

"You see on TV programmes how victims meet up with their lawyers a few times before a court case and go through their statements and what sort of questions might be asked. I felt very unprepared.

"I made my statement months earlier, but the statement they gave me to look at before I went into court was a shortened version. In court, they asked me questions from my original statement, which I could not remember, so I looked like a liar."

She was also unprepared for some of the questions the defence put to her, including one asking if she was sure it wasn't her father who had committed the attack.

"They tried to turn it round to suggest it was somebody else or that I had imagined it," she said.

Another factor in the case was that the woman had been drinking before the attack.

"From an outsider's view, I could see they might think: She was drinking, she gave him some kind of come-on'," she said.

In law, a victim who is asleep or unconscious cannot give consent to sexual intercourse and consideration is being given to whether this should be extended to rape victims who are drunk or on drugs.

Other suggestions to try to improve the low conviction rates for rape include showing juries a video of the original interview between police and the victim, and allowing experts into court to explain how a rape victim's behaviour can be affected by an attack, which would help explain, for example, why many victims do not report a rape immediately.

The York rape victim said more needed to be done to improve conviction rates.

She said: "It was as if I was on trial, not him. It's just wrong. You have to prove you are telling the truth.

"The hardest thing for me is I know he was guilty but our justice system proved him innocent."

THE PROSECUTOR

YES, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) should be working harder to secure convictions, says Robert Turnbull, Chief Crown Prosecutor for North Yorkshire.

Much has been done in recent years to ensure this, he says.

The CPS employs a referral prosecutor, trained to deal with rape cases. To make it easier to give evidence in court, the prosecutor can arrange for victims to give evidence from behind a screen or through a video recording.

Prosecutors also now begin talking to the police as early as possible during an investigation.

"They're the investigators but we can help them by pointing them in the way of evidence we would need to make a strong case and make it a case we can properly put before a jury."

There have been many changes in the way the CPS handles rape cases, Mr Turnbull says. Victims are put in touch with Victim Support straight away, and are offered support once a case gets to court.

Victim Support can arrange for court visits, and will meet the victim on the morning of the trial. A CPS case worker will always be in court to keep them informed of what is happening too.

"We insist now that barristers who we employ to conduct these cases introduce themselves to the victims," said Mr Turnbull. "It would have been on the morning of the case, but we are moving away from that a little bit now."

Sometimes, however, victims have an unrealistic expectation of what they can discuss with the barrister, he said.

For example, they cannot discuss their evidence.

"I think there is an expectation there we can't always meet because of the way the law is structured," he said. "But we do everything we possibly can to ensure the victim is helped to get to court and kept in touch about what's happening.

"We are well aware of the need to keep the victims informed of what's happening and let them know where we are with the case, and have them be as confident and relaxed as possible when they arrive at court."

* NORTH Yorkshire police have seen a big improvement in the number of rape cases detected - that is, rape allegations in which someone has been charged - in the past year. In 2005/6, there were 144 rapes reported, of which 42 were detected - a detection rate of 29.1 per cent.

Since April 1 last year, there have been 113 rapes reported, of which 46 have been detected - 40.7 per cent.

Acting Superintendent Pat Twiggs, of York CID, said there had been real improvements in the investigation of rape cases. Trained front-line officers known as Sexual Offence Liaison Officers were first to the scene to speak to victims and ensure forensic samples were correctly gathered. North Yorkshire Police also had one of the best witness care units in the country, he said.

All rape allegations were fully investigated - but the police's job was made harder because some allegations proved to be false.

THE DEFENCE SOLICITOR

NO ONE wants to see a rapist walking free from court, says criminal defence solicitor Colin Byrne. But by the same token, no one wants to see an innocent man convicted of a rape he did not convict.

Conviction rates for rape have been going down, concedes Mr Byrne, a partner in York criminal law firm Howard and Byrne.

"But statistics should not determine our outlook in terms of the criminal justice system," he said. "We must always remember that defendants are innocent until proven guilty. It is the Crown who must prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the defendant has committed an offence."

Mr Byrne said it was important to distinguish between cases of brutal stranger rape, where there was no question of the woman consenting to sex and the investigation came down to finding who committed the attack; and the much more common cases of rape claims involving people who knew each other and may even have been in a relationship.

Conviction rates for stranger rape were quite high, Mr Byrne said.

But in cases where it came down to an issue of consent between people who knew each other, conviction rates were always going to be low. There were usually no other witnesses, and no forensic evidence.

"The jury is being asked to accept one version of events against another," Mr Byrne said. Given the "beyond reasonable doubt" requirement, a conviction was always difficult.

The danger was that a public fear of crime, and of rape in particular, could lead to draconian measures to boost conviction rates that infringed the right of defendants to a proper trial, Mr Byrne said.

"What the Government cannot do is use the fear of crime, and the fear of a woman being raped on the way home, to take away the rights of all of us to be properly represented in the criminal process."

There were a number of areas where the balance had shifted towards the victim and away from the rights of the defendant, he said.

The defendant's right to silence had been eroded. Defence lawyers could only in "exceptional circumstances" bring up the alleged victim's sexual history in court, while it was easier for the prosecution to bring up the defendant's previous convictions.

And the victim had the right to anonymity, a right denied to the accused.

"Has anyone ever presented a good reason why the defendant should not enjoy the same anonymity as the victim?" he said. "People get acquitted of rape and their lives are still destroyed."

There may sometimes be reasons to name the defendant in a rape case, Mr Byrne conceded - for example, if he was accused of serial rape and there was a need for more witnesses to come forward.

But that should be a special case, and the defendant should only be named if the prosecution could make a strong case for it, he said.

Rape victims given new help

A RAFT of measures have been introduced in the past five years to make it easier for rape victims to report crimes and go through the ordeal of a court case.

Special measures allow rape victims to give pre-recorded evidence, rather than facing the courtroom.

The prohibition of the defendant cross examining the complainant is also designed to make it easier for those who make allegations.

Procedural initiatives have been accompanied by changes in criminal law.

Defendants used to be acquitted if it was shown they honestly thought the complainant agreed to sex.

Now jurors also consider whether the defendant reasonably believed the complainant was consenting.

Previous evidence of the defendant's "bad character" can now be introduced in sexual assault cases, as well as other trials, and DNA use has also increased.