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Authors: Jennifer Brown Sandra. Walklate
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sympathy. If she is not lying, after the interrogator has upset her by accusing her of it, then at least the truth is verified.
Horvath and Yexley move on ten years to 1985 and the now notorious scenes from the Thames Valley Police fly-on-the-wall documentary by Roger Graef which showed the oppressive interviewing of a rape complainant. This sequence emphatically illustrates the points being made by both D’Cruze and McGregor as, in the documentary, it was the woman’s reputation as a prostitute which minimised both her credibility and the harm she was believed to have suffered. The ensuing outrage resulted in women’s groups, The Women’s National Commission and the Home Office working to create new principles of good practice when dealing with sexual crime. Specialist training had begun in the Metropolitan Police Service in 1984 with officers being made more aware of the criticality of forensic evidence and the need to support the complainant through the courts process. By 2008, the approach had become a co-ordinated response with officers being familiarised with the special measures that can be undertaken to support or protect vulnerable witnesses.
Sharon Stratton, herself a serving police officer specialising in sexual violence investigation, argues in Chapter 6 that training and guidance have
improved dramatically in police forces in England and Wales. She suggests that the establishment of specialist teams, known as Sapphire units, illustrates the importance attached to police investigations into rape allegations. Certainly in England and Wales there has been a steady increase in the numbers of reported rape cases. Notwithstanding these developments, the Metropolitan Police Service was severely criticised by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (2010) over two specific serial rape investigations involving John Worboys and Kirk Reed. The IPCC concluded that the investigative shortcomings were not just of individuals but were also systemic failures of supervision and cross-referencing of reports. The Commission stated (p. 16): ‘there is a widely held perception that women reporting rape and other sexual offences have not been taken seriously, either because of the nature of the offence or because priority has been given to other offences such as burglary.’
Reforms in police investigations may have had some limited successes but because of the adversarial nature of the prosecution system complainants are also witnesses and often face hostile cross-examination designed to destroy their moral character; a strategy which, as D’Cruze and McGregor show in their chapters, was at the heart of men’s and society’s upholding of the established social order.
Conclusions
The first five chapters in the Handbook offer some historical and cultural grounding to ideas about the perpetration, perpetuation and victimisation associated with sexual violence. Contemporary issues around complainants’ credibility as a victim, the need to have resisted and to have made an early report of the assault have resonances with historical precedent outlined by D’Cruze and with their embedded nature in popular culture as discussed by Bell et al .. Ideas such as that of the more deserving victim have their modern- day counterpart in victim vulnerabilities. Modern medical technologies have been something of a double-edged sword. The contraceptive pill liberated women from the risk of pregnancy following sex, but that very freedom signalled her sexual availability without the previously almost inevitable consequences of conception. DNA analysis has shifted the contested grounds of an allegation from whether or not sex took place, and with whom, to whether or not what took place was consensual. Sylvia Walby and her colleagues suggest that it is crucial that accurate measurement of the extent of sexual violence is undertaken if effective monitoring of policy changes is to be undertaken. They suggest a standard definition of
Horvath and Yexley move on ten years to 1985 and the now notorious scenes from the Thames Valley Police fly-on-the-wall documentary by Roger Graef which showed the oppressive interviewing of a rape complainant. This sequence emphatically illustrates the points being made by both D’Cruze and McGregor as, in the documentary, it was the woman’s reputation as a prostitute which minimised both her credibility and the harm she was believed to have suffered. The ensuing outrage resulted in women’s groups, The Women’s National Commission and the Home Office working to create new principles of good practice when dealing with sexual crime. Specialist training had begun in the Metropolitan Police Service in 1984 with officers being made more aware of the criticality of forensic evidence and the need to support the complainant through the courts process. By 2008, the approach had become a co-ordinated response with officers being familiarised with the special measures that can be undertaken to support or protect vulnerable witnesses.
Sharon Stratton, herself a serving police officer specialising in sexual violence investigation, argues in Chapter 6 that training and guidance have
improved dramatically in police forces in England and Wales. She suggests that the establishment of specialist teams, known as Sapphire units, illustrates the importance attached to police investigations into rape allegations. Certainly in England and Wales there has been a steady increase in the numbers of reported rape cases. Notwithstanding these developments, the Metropolitan Police Service was severely criticised by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (2010) over two specific serial rape investigations involving John Worboys and Kirk Reed. The IPCC concluded that the investigative shortcomings were not just of individuals but were also systemic failures of supervision and cross-referencing of reports. The Commission stated (p. 16): ‘there is a widely held perception that women reporting rape and other sexual offences have not been taken seriously, either because of the nature of the offence or because priority has been given to other offences such as burglary.’
Reforms in police investigations may have had some limited successes but because of the adversarial nature of the prosecution system complainants are also witnesses and often face hostile cross-examination designed to destroy their moral character; a strategy which, as D’Cruze and McGregor show in their chapters, was at the heart of men’s and society’s upholding of the established social order.
Conclusions
The first five chapters in the Handbook offer some historical and cultural grounding to ideas about the perpetration, perpetuation and victimisation associated with sexual violence. Contemporary issues around complainants’ credibility as a victim, the need to have resisted and to have made an early report of the assault have resonances with historical precedent outlined by D’Cruze and with their embedded nature in popular culture as discussed by Bell et al .. Ideas such as that of the more deserving victim have their modern- day counterpart in victim vulnerabilities. Modern medical technologies have been something of a double-edged sword. The contraceptive pill liberated women from the risk of pregnancy following sex, but that very freedom signalled her sexual availability without the previously almost inevitable consequences of conception. DNA analysis has shifted the contested grounds of an allegation from whether or not sex took place, and with whom, to whether or not what took place was consensual. Sylvia Walby and her colleagues suggest that it is crucial that accurate measurement of the extent of sexual violence is undertaken if effective monitoring of policy changes is to be undertaken. They suggest a standard definition of
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