Criminal justice system disadvantages rape victims, says expert

Dr. Liz Kelly addressing a crowd at the UNB Wu Conference Centre

The criminal justice system provides little support for the victims of sexual assault, says a leading expert on sexual violence.

“We’ve got in the legal system what I call a culture of skepticism and pessimism,” said Dr. Liz Kelly, the London Metropolitan University Roddick Chair in Violence Against Women, at a public lecture Monday.

“We need to extend our concepts of justice. Victims are citizens and they are rights bearers and that means they have the right to be treated with respect and dignity.”

A top legal reform advisor for the U.K. government, Kelly points to the high attrition rate of sexual assault cases as proof that our justice system is flawed, prioritizing the rights of the accused over the rights of the victims.

“Criminal justice personnel are deeply invested in the stereotypes of rape,” she said. “They have an idea of what a valid rape is, and it’s normally a stranger rape, it should involve injuries and it should involve immediate reporting: all things that don’t take place in the majority of rape cases.”

Kelly said victims who do not match this stereotype are often treated with contempt and their case is not thoroughly investigated.

“[Police] reach a decision about whether they think this is a genuine case or not before they’ve done the investigation. That means they don’t collect the evidence that they should because they have prejudged the case to begin with.”

Victims who manage to have their cases tried in court must still combat this stereotype, Kelly said, as their credibility is further questioned by defense lawyers, jurors and judges.

Kelly said there are certain expectations on the behavior of victims court, and the result of the conviction often depends on the victim’s adherence to this unwritten code of conduct.

“You have to enact non consent in the courtroom to be believable,” she said. “You have to be polite but not compliant, cooperative but not submissive, answer promptly and precisely and speak without shame. These are very demanding hurdles.”

The way in which the justice system tries sexual assault cases in court is outdated and irrelevant in most circumstances, Kelly said, as the definition of rape remains constricted to the stereotypical stranger rape encounter. In reality, Kelly said the majority of perpetrators are known to the victims.

“They look for DNA to identify the offender, when in most cases the offender is named,” she said. “You need to identify him, you need to build evidence to show the sex wasn’t consensual.”

Kelly said the number one factor that ruins a rape victim’s credibility in court is whether or not they were under the influence of alcohol during the assault. Women who drink are categorized as risk-takers, she said, making the victims themselves responsible for the rape.

“There are gendered meanings about alcohol and being drunk,” she said. “Somehow being drunk excuses men’s behavior, but for women it makes them more accountable.”

Victims who have a previous sexual assault allegation on their file that did not result in a conviction face even more barriers in having a fair trial, as they are forever marked as discreditable.

“The attrition rate for sexual assault cases is 97 per cent,” she said. “It cannot be that 97 per cent of women or men that report rape are lying. That’s impossible and illogical but if you look at these cases, 95 per cent have a previous allegation on their file that didn’t result in a conviction.”

Kelly mentioned several ways in which the criminal justice system can improve its treatment of sexual assault victims, particularly in the attitudes and reactions of the professionals they come in contact with following the assault.

“They need to be treated as a human being who deserves to be respected and they need to know that their body is being respected,” she said. “Forensic examiners should ask permission each time they do something to the victim’s body. This restores control back to their body that was taken away, but it’s something that very few examiners do.”

Support systems for survivors of sexual assault are few and far between, Kelly said, and the quality of support often depends on where the victim lives as there are no national sexual violence helplines.

“We have a rhetoric about seriousness. It’s the second most serious crime after homicide but it’s never a priority in policing plans or government funding,” she said. “We call it the ‘postal code lottery’ because it depends on where you live in the country whether you have those services or not.”

Kelly’s lecture was part of the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre’s annual research fair, which aims to draw attention to current issues in sexual and domestic violence.

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Posted by Gilean Watts on Nov 11, 2009. Filed under News, This Week's Edition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.