Redheadinred said:

This is good! God, why can't we do that in England, though? What is it about Scotland and England that has such disrespect for women?

Bring on this training! I bet the media will pick up on this in a negative way and rebrand it as 'a blow against fair trials for men'. A girl can dream. It shouldn't have to be like this, it should be a given that when a woman is raped she can have faith in the justice system to help her.

Posted on 29 August 2008 at 1:23 PM

Christina said:

27 out of 922?! I mean I knew that the results for rape convictions were bad, but that really puts it out there in black and white doesn't it? With conviction rates like that rape might as well be legal. Urgh.

Posted on 29 August 2008 at 2:50 PM

JENNIFER DREW said:

Unfortunately two days training will not be sufficient to challenge ingrained misogynstic myths concerning male violence against women. The US has used specialist prosecutors but these specialists received more than 2 days training. Notably Alice Vachss worked for 10 years as a specialist prosecutor in the Queen District of New York city. Ms. Vachss did not achieve successful rape prosecutions by training staff for 2 days. There was a long-term programme put into effect since challenging ingrained myths cannot be effected by short-term misplaced strategies.

Commentators responding to Scotsman article continue to claim women rape survivors are lying and make false claims against 'innocent men.' False reporting has remained consistent at between 2-3% and this applies to both Scotland and rest of UK.

Posted on 29 August 2008 at 3:38 PM

Rachel said:

Jennifer - I don't mean this confrontationlly, but what is the stat that only 2-3% of reported rapes are false based on? Surely thats impossible to know?

Posted on 29 August 2008 at 4:24 PM

Shea said:

I think I'm with Jennifer on this one. How is it possible to change ingrained and hardened attitudes to rape in two days? There is an endemic attitude I come across all the time, that women who report rape are lying, that they are malicious and it is a way to "get back" at ex-partners. It seems to be a part of the backlash. The more power and position women achieve, the more medieval attitudes to rape become.

I think we need a serious overall of the justice system regarding rape- period. Make it so that consent can no longer be used as a defence, disclose the defendants previous convictions for rape and sexual assault and keep secret the victims sexual history. How to do that and still keep a trial fair I don't know. But it is clear that the law does not and cannot protect women in its present form.

Posted on 29 August 2008 at 5:29 PM

Rhona said:

Well, it's a start, I suppose.

However, until the institutional misogyny and cynicism that lies within the heart of the police force - and society at large too, let's not forget where juries are drawn from! - is addressed, I fear that two days' 'retraining' will be nothing more than a token sticking plaster over a very large and gangrenous wound.

Posted on 29 August 2008 at 5:29 PM

Anne Onne said:

Hopefully it's a start. I would hope for a lot more than a couple of days training, especially when a couple of days 'sensitivity training' normally does jack all to turn bigots into decent people. At least they are realising that it IS possible to prosecute rape fairly and get a higher success rate than 2%, though. It's a sad state of affairs that I'm happy about that, but I'm so sick of hearing people lament the conviction rate is so low, then shrug and say 'Oh well, women just have to be more careful then!', as if that solves anything at all.

For some reason, they never seem to spot the correlation between everyone blaming victims, low conviction rates, and a high incidence of rape, even though depressingly rape seems to be practically legal, the way it's treated by the law and other people.

The true mark of how equal a society is: How that society treats those with less power. If a society takes crimes against those groups seriously, it shows a respect for the people. What the current state of how rape is dealt with says about our society is really not great. Low conviction rate, not taken seriously by the police, blaming the victims and a relatively high occurrence. Yeah, I think that's pretty good evidence we don't yet have equality, should we need to bring it out.

Part of the problem, a huge part is the jury. If the jury decide to give weight to 'evidence' that does not in any way prove consent as meaning consent (she was wearing a skirt, she talked to the man, she agreed to be alone with him), then any real evidence that a rape occurred is negated in the jury's heads by the idea that the above are evidence of consent, when they cannot reasonably be taken as so.

The only way they could ever be taken to guarantee consent occurred would be if 100% of women have consensual sex every time they wear revealing clothing, flirt with the man, are alone with a man, have drinks with a man etc, which clearly doesn't happen.

I think it's also worth noting that the defence (correct me if I'm wrong) gets to choose 12 jurors out of a possible 10 men and 10 women. It's therefore perfectly possible that a jury with only 2 women and 10 men gets selected to sit for a rape case, which is incredibly unfair. Granted, I can see why the defence would want more men on the jury; it's more people likely to empathise with the accused rapist, make excuses for them and assume the victim must be lying, but it's incredibly unfair that there should be this advantage, particularly with such few rape convictions.

I can see the excuse that 'women might be more emotional and likely to side with the victim even if there's a lack of evidence (which is misogynistic and untrue, since women are very good at victim-blaming, too), but the same could apply to men. Surely being in the position to empathise much more with the accused, it would be unfair of them to make up a majority when they are far probably more worried about potentially wrecking a man's life than looking at the evidence and guaging whether a rape has been commited. The fact that men are seen as perfectly rational and any empathy they may have played down, where women would be seen to be irrational and man-hating and therefore unsuitable is very problematic.

It's amazing that although the 'people' are supposed to decide, and we make up 50%, as women we are unlikely to sit in on a rape trial. It would be far better if aLL juries had to be 50/50. There's no reason why a jury should not reflect the population accurately, particularly when women are not a small minority.

Posted on 29 August 2008 at 6:10 PM

CMK said:

@ Shea: “Make it so that consent can no longer be used as a defence…”
Where there is genuine consent then surely there is no rape, regret maybe, but not rape. Or am I misunderstanding you?

@ Anne Onne: Jury selection for trials in Scotland is random (see here). Individuals can be challenged on their suitability by either party where there is a reason. I would guess that the rationale for not selecting a balance of individuals is that all people are expected to be ‘fair’ unless it can be shown otherwise. 50/50 splits are a dangerous path as you end up with every 'group' having to be represented (and it is a bit offensive to group people I think).

Does anyone have any ideas on how to increase the conviction rate of guilty people? Proper investigation, supportive facilities on complaint and in court are musts, but beyond that it appears to me to be a really tough conviction to achieve as it is invariably one word against another’s.

Posted on 30 August 2008 at 6:02 PM