The con­vic­tion rate for rape alle­ga­tions in the 12 months to March 2005 was a star­tling 5.3%. This com­pares to a rate of 33% in the 1980’s. What is going wrong?

Cer­tainly more rapes are now being reported and the CPS is more likely to run tri­als. This may partly account for the aber­ra­tion, since I fear that in the 1980’s often the only cases that ran were those which had a high chance of conviction.

Unfor­tu­nately rape is a crime which tends to rely on one per­sons word against another. There are rarely other wit­ness. It is usu­ally a crime com­mit­ted by some­one known to the victim.

Despite the sea changes in society’s atti­tudes to sex­ual behav­iour it appears that juries go all Dick­en­sian when scru­ti­n­is­ing the behav­iour of women in the sani­tised envi­ron­ment of the jury room. The sit­u­a­tion is not assisted when rules to pre­vent a vic­tims sex­ual his­tory being put before the court are often side-stepped. A bur­den of proof of beyond rea­son­able doubt and a typ­i­cal sen­tence of 5 years impris­on­ment make a jury want to be very sure indeed. Dif­fi­cult when you are weigh­ing the account of one per­son against another in cir­cum­stances where one or both par­ties may have been unin­hib­ited due to alco­hol or drugs.

An alter­na­tive charge of so-called “date rape” has been sug­gested, where the defen­dant was reck­less as to con­sent. This may make it eas­ier for juries to con­vict, but cre­ates a sub-category of rape which is per­ceived as less morally cul­pa­ble. For many women (and men) how­ever this notion is abhor­rent. It also helps to per­pe­trate the idea that men are some­how inca­pable of con­trol­ling them­selves and there­fore should not be held respon­si­ble for their actions.

In the mean­time assum­ing a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of rapes go unre­ported and even fac­tor­ing in a per­cent­age of false alle­ga­tions Ruthie reck­ons that cur­rently the chances of get­ting away with rape must be hov­er­ing around the 99% mark.

What a sad and ter­ri­fy­ing thought.