Interesting Links for 14-03-2013
- The Dark Knight Rises was the best selling movie of 2012. Still beaten by Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Fifa 13.
(tags: music games uk movies media ) - Rape investigations are undermined by the false belief that false accusations are rife.
(tags: police rape ) - I had no idea there was such a charge as "Recklessly producing household electricity"
( ( Read more... )
http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/research/perverting_course_of_justice_march_2013.pdf
I should say at the outset, that I do believe false accusations of rape are rare but I've no idea really what the true figure is. The most credible reports put the figure at 1-10%.
In the UK British Crime survey estimates put the estimated number of rapes per year between 60,000 and 95,000 offenses only around 16,000 of which go to the police (only around 1,000 of which become convictions).
Figures from the report -- over 17 months (note previous figures were 12 month figures) 5,651 prosecutions for rape and 121 investigated cases where the CPS thought the "flase accusation" flag was important enough to investigate and 38 prosecutions for making false accusations rape (3 of these also for false accusations of domestic violence) -- the actual accusations were for perverting the course of justice or wasting police time.
What can we tell from this? Well, firstly note that these are prosecutions brought by the CPS, not convictions. However, if we boldly went ahead and assumed that the CPS were 100% brilliant in their judgement and all of those people were guilty (though some of them would be found not guilty in court). If we make that radical assertion could we then say that 38/5,651 = 0.6% of rape prosecutions are, in fact, false prosecutions.
However, there are more serious problems. Prosecuting for perverting the course of justice (which is the majority, 28 of the 38 cases) or wasting police time are actually hard to prove as you have to show conclusively that the person making the accusation has not been raped. In the case of perverting the course of justice this has to be against the background of the CPS originally believing there was enough evidence that they had been raped to prosecute (and as noted, such cases were rare). However, it doesn't include cases where the prosecution is for libel -- this does happen (I guess pretty rarely but that is a guess) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/634356.stm http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2007/06/21/5453/brand_wins_rape_libel_case
The "rape libel" would only happen with someone wealthy I would guess but would not go via the CPS as it is civil not criminal.
There are other caveats -- a wasting police time complaint has to happen within 6 months of the initial complaint.
In short, the 38 cases are:
1) Prosecutions not convictions
2) Not always of false prosecutions, sometimes of falsely withdrawn accusations, sometimes of accusations which did not result in prosections.
3) Perhaps not the full set of prosecutions as some civil prosecutiosn take place.
4) Representative only of those accused both able and willing to prosecute back.
5) Not including cases where a prosecution would be made but considered not in the public interest (an example given is a woman who had been raped but had deliberately accused the wrong person).
In short, the 0.6% figure you'd get from naively dividing the headline numbers could be either hugely too low or hugely too high.
This article gives a good summary.
http://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2013/03/keir-starmers-report-rape-allegations-tells-us-more-about-their-nature-their-number
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Incidentially, in one of the more WTF cases discussed in the original report a woman charged her husband with rape but said she didn't want to continue with the case as she'd made up with her husband. When she was told the police would continue with the prosecution she said she lied and had not been raped. When told she'd be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice (husband had been in prison all this time awaiting trial) she said she hadn't lied and the prosecution continued on her husband. Separately she was charged for perverting the course of justice in claiming she had not been raped and was found guilty of this (presumably her husband was found guilty of rape or her conviction for saying he had not raped her wouldn't stand). I conclude nothing in particular from this other than that life is complicated and sometimes unpleasant but certainly interesting.
The report is rather sad reading in fact.
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If this is the Ms A case from the report, it wasn't quite like that, going on the details in the court report on her appeal here http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/a-v-r-judgment.pdf. (Warning: It's very distressing, and certainly made me sympathise almost entirely with her and utterly loathe her husband.)
The husband's rape charge came up while she was still insisting that she'd lied about him having raped her. The CPS offered no evidence, and he was found not guilty.
Subsequently, she was charged with two almost-identical counts of perverting the course of justice: one on the grounds that she'd lied when she made the allegation of rape, the other on the grounds that she'd lied when she made the retraction. She pleaded not guilty to the first charge, and guilty to the second. The CPS offered no evidence on the first charge after she'd put in the pleas.
(I was slightly surprised that the charges worked that way - if it were me I'd have had a single charge that didn't require proving which was true, just that they couldn't both be. But I'm not a CPS lawyer.)
She initially got a custodial sentence (as you'd expect for the offence), but it was swiftly reduced to a community order on appeal. This report adds the distressing detail that she had four children whose situation "had become so uncertain and problematic that the court, as then constituted, believed that it would be of positive assistance to all of them to make a community based order, taking immediate effect".
Although her appeal against sentence was upheld, and pretty quickly, her appeal against conviction failed. The revised CPS guidance came out as a result of her case being reported, and under the new guidelines, she would not have been prosecuted. (Which makes me think better of the guidelines.) But the court held that this didn't change the law, so the conviction had to stand.
The appeal court were very careful about whether the initial rape had happened or not, saying that they'd proceed on the basis that the allegations were true, since that was no longer a disputed fact in the case before them, but noting "Nevertheless it is only fair to the appellant's husband to record that he has consistently denied the allegations and has not had any opportunity publicly to challenge or refute them."
From some of the details in the report about what he was getting up to, I strongly suspect that the husband was at least convicted of various offences in breaching bail conditions and non-molestation orders.
(I'm fairly sure that this case is distinct from another high-profile case that hit the media in the same sort of time span, where a Ms A (or Miss A) was convicted of perverting the course of justice after making false allegations of rape, after the alleged perpetrator had spent 3 years in prison.)
The report is rather sad reading in fact.
Yes. This whole area is deeply upsetting, and not easy. It's sort-of reassuring to know that the number of women who made rape allegations which they then withdrew and were then referred to the CPS for prosecution for perverting the course of justice is small. But I suspect that knowing that this can happen at all makes it harder for a rape or domestic violence victim who's conflicted about reporting it. And by god we don't want to be making things harder for people in that situation.
On the plus side, I do think we are making some overall net progress. For one thing, I can remember the time when in law a wife could not be raped by her husband. Though obviously we have far to travel yet.
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It also adds the detail that she made up with him and breached his bail condition that he was to have no further contact with him. (They also managed to be in a road traffic accident together during the period he was supposed to not be in contact.)
The CPS summary is found on P7 of the report I linked.
Though obviously we have far to travel yet.
Indeed, though some of the sections of the report I link have moments of hope. E.g. the police informing a witness that a particular behaviour (not related to her original complaint) consituted rape, a fact she was unaware of.
Oh... genuine "For fucks sake" moment... A vs R summary you linked to includes quotes with her husband's real name.
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