As I have explained on my blog and others have explained elsewhere, low percentage of rape convictions relative to other countries can result from a huge number of factors. Different numbers of accusations, differences in the legal systems, different thresholds for providing evidence, different methods used by the police when dealing with accusations etc etc. As mentioned above by another commentor, the need to stand firm on the requirements for providing evidence that puts a conviction beyond any reasonable doubt is essential, and this kind of Daily Mail-esque scaremongering by the Lib Dems on such a delicate and sensitive issue is appalling.

So are you saying that the reason why other European countries have higher rates of conviction, is that they don’t have “the requirements for providing evidence that puts a conviction beyond any reasonable doubt”? because I’m fairly sure France, Germany etc, require the same standards of evidence.

“Different numbers of accusations” – Yes true, and as mentioned above, this post should really have said “alleged r*pes”. Either way, there’s still a problem to solve here: either more women here are crying wolf, or more men are getting away with r*pe (proportionally). One of those is true, and so there is a problem that needs solving.

“differences in the legal systems, different thresholds for providing evidence” – Unlikely, especially since most of the relevant countries are under the ECHR. And which do you think is more likely anyway: that the differences in our legal systems mean that we don’t convict as much as we should, or that the differences in our legal systems mean THE WHOLE OF EUROPE convicts more than it should? The latter seems the most likely of the two IMO, and therefore should be looked at surely?

“different methods used by the police when dealing with accusations” – and surely this is also a problem that would need to be looked at, namely: why is our police force being harsher to women in alleged r*pe cases? Which is more likely: that our police force is using overly harsh methods when dealing with allegedly r*ped women, or that THE WHOLE OF EUROPE’s police forces are a bunch of pansies?

Yes, there are potentially numerous reasons why we have such a low conviction rate in r*pe cases. But all of these reasons are things that can and should be solved if they are the real reason.

Surely, the substance of the “article” – certainly as presented above – was about the rate of conviction for rape. That’s what most of the discussion has been about.

What’s not apparent is how “classes about rights and fair treatment in relationships” will improve the conviction rate. Or what changes you’re advocating when you say you want the legal system to “[take] account of the actual experience of victims and the psychological issues that rape victims suffer from”, or in what way “society … expects people to adapt to it and how it thinks they should be”.

No doubt everyone would like to encourage rape victims to come forward as early as possible, and no doubt if they did that would improve the conviction rate. The question is, how can that be achieved? Vague statements about “a society that tries to adapt to how people actually are” don’t seem terribly helpful.

Personally, I think the measure that includes teaching about rights and fair treatment in relationships at schools would be a great help. Violence towards women, perpetrated by men, whether sexual or not, is deemed as acceptable in many social groups – educating young people that it’s not, has to be a good thing.

Anthony – your advice is no doubt good advice to support a lawyer in trying to do their job more easily but what about a legal and justice system that takes account of the actual experience of victims and the psychological issues that rape victims suffer from that means many times they don’t come forward immediatley.

You know, a society that tries to adapt to how people actually are, rahter than one that expects people to adapt to it and how it thinks they should be?

Are we saying that, of every 16 cases where rape is agreed to have occurred, only one is solved? That would indeed be damning, and cause for serious contemplation.

Or are we saying that out of every 16 rapes alleged, only one is eventually proven against a suspect in court? If that is the case, I have no concerns at all.

Rape is, in most cases, horribly easy to claim, but horribly difficult to prove. That’s not fair, to anyone. But neither is it anyone’s fault. Only in conditions where rape has unequivocally taken place, can conviction statistics have any qualitative value.

So, which is it, please?

Andrew: thanks for posting the details, but your numbers and logic look pretty faulty. Two examples: first, you’ve still not quoted evidence to support your original comment about people getting drunk.

Second, you talk about “47% of dropped cases for which the accuser was entirely responsible”. But that’s not what the 47% really is. There are all sorts of reasons why an accuser drops a case, including – for example – a fear of how they will be treated in court and having to answer questions in public about extremely private behaviour. They may make the decision to drop the case but that doesn’t mean there isn’t responsibility shared more widely. How the legal system treats women (or men) who report rape is part of what determines the frequency of such events. Suggesting that for all of them it is “entirely” their responsiblity is just shifting the buck and turning your back on people who deserve far better than that sort of dismissivness.

I’ve prosecuted a rape case. It was a young man who raped at least two young women on the same housing estate estate. He is now serving a long sentence.

One problem for any jury in rape cases is that they are often, like domestic violence cases, one person’s word against another.

My advice for any victim of rape is to report that matter as soon as possible. I know it it easy for me to say that, but it really helps build the case if, for example, your bruises are still visible to be seen by a doctor. And be consistent as you can be. Do not exaggerate or embelish a single detail. Trust me, you do not need to do so in order to get the authorities to believe you. If you do exaggerate or embelish you will probably be caught out and the jury will have a reason to doubt your credibility.

“False Allegations,” Forensic Science Digest, V. 11, no. 4, Dec. 1985, p. 64, by Charles P. McDowell
(20-30% false claims; n=1218)

Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science: Case Studies in the Use of DNA Evidence to Establish Innocence After Trial

The US DoJ processed about 10,000 cases for DNA evidence between 1989 and 1996; 20% conclusively disproved the “victim”‘s claims, and another 20% failed to support their claims while not managing to prove the “suspect” innocent.

Since we’re on the subject of our own police forces, let’s look at their own statistics behind that “1 in 16″ figure – since nobody else could be bothered, I hunted down a report with the numbers. It’s A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases, Home Office Research Study #293, from 2005. They looked at 2284 cases after discarding errors, and had 12% who admitted filing a false report to the police, 17% cases where the accuser dropped the case, 17% where the accuser abandoned the issue before the complaint was filed, those last two presumably including some percentage of false accusations that were not admitted, and 5% where there was no evidence found to support the accuser’s claims – hence presumed false, that doesn’t include the 21% cases considered genuine but for which the evidence was insufficient to prosecute.

So, let’s put some real numbers on that “1 in 16 (6%)” figure: 21% where the police tried but couldn’t prove anything (not much to do about that), 13% where the suspect could not be found (okay, we could do better there), and a staggering 47% of dropped cases for which the accuser was entirely responsible, either for not pursuing the case or for lying about it in the first place.

About .3% were let off with a caution (sounds reasonable to me). 1.5% were dropped by the CPS, for whatever reason (could do better there, but it’s not a terrible number). 14% actually went to trial.

Of the cases brought to trial, 32% (4% of the population) were acquitted. 28% pled guilty, 20% were convicted. Those last two added together are your “1 in 16″ figure (actually it’s 1 in 15, but I presume that’s just the variation between 2005 and 2009). The rest of the cases were dropped at trial or partial convictions.

So, a few salient points:
– more than half the people who pled innocent were acquitted
– there were more people who admitted making a false accusation than there were convicted (12% vs 8%)
– half the time it’s the accuser’s decision to drop the thing

This report also has an excellent section dealing with the subject of false accusations.

I followed the link you provided and it doesn’t support you at all. Your quote “These false rape allegations constitute 41% the total forcible rape cases (n =109) reported during this period.” doesn’t come from the conclusions to the report which was clearly not an investigation of the incidence of false reports but of the reasons for such false reports. It’s also based on reports from a single “police agency of a small metropolitan community”: no indication of how representative said community was, or explanation (perhaps there is one in the full report, I could only see the abstract and preview) of how reliable the local police figures are.

To be clear: I am not suggesting that nobody ever lies when making a rape allegation. People lie about everything, and there’s no reason to think rape is an exception. But as evidence for your claim that “It’s well-established that a huge proportion of cases reported to the police are in this category ” the report you cite is useless.

The solution? ‘Double what Labour will do.’ This country is bankrupt, in case none of you noticed. It’s just a game where you pluck figures out of the air and promise more than the other guy, isn’t it?

Lynne Featherstone’s further statement is also an outright lie.

These false rape allegations constitute 41% the total forcible rape cases (n =109) reported during this period.

Usual estimates are that in the region of 30-40% of rape accusations are false (about 10% are disproved in court, the rest are either dropped or simply fail to convict; I don’t have numbers of the proportion of which go on to secure perjury convictions for the offenders). That would suggest that 7 of those 16 cases reported to the police were false, so the actual rate of conviction is closer to 1 in 8.

If I understand correctly, we are talking about alleged rapes reported to the police, not prosecutions.

In response to your earlier point, obviously there’s a need for clarity and accuracy, even when the discussion is a general one – as you have just demonstrated!

As I have explained on my blog and others have explained elsewhere, low percentage of rape convictions relative to other countries can result from a huge number of factors. Different numbers of accusations, differences in the legal systems, different thresholds for providing evidence, different methods used by the police when dealing with accusations etc etc. As mentioned above by another commentor, the need to stand firm on the requirements for providing evidence that puts a conviction beyond any reasonable doubt is essential, and this kind of Daily Mail-esque scaremongering by the Lib Dems on such a delicate and sensitive issue is appalling.

There is, however, about the same amount of evidence behind my assertation as Andrew’s.

Do you really not see the importance of distinguishing between rapes and alleged rapes, even in a headline?

I can only hope you’d be more careful if you were writing about an individual case.

I am simply saying it’s incorrect to say that “Less than 1 in 16 rapes result in a conviction”, because it’s important to distinguish between “rapes” on the one hand and “alleged rapes” on the other (or perhaps “alleged rapes reported to the police”, but the principle is the same).

Do you disagree?