In 1982, the film-maker Roger Graef made the first ever fly-on-the-wall documentary, in 12 parts, about the police. One of the episodes – A Complaint of Rape – showed Thames Valley detectives aggressively questioning a woman with a history of psychiatric treatment who had reported being violated by three strangers. “This is the biggest bollocks I’ve ever heard!” is a fairly representative sample of the police interview technique deployed. The episode caused a public outcry (especially as it was broadcast after a court decision in which a judge accused a hitchhiker of “contributory negligence” in her own rape) and led to the formation of an all-female rape investigation team at the police station in the months afterwards.
It has been seen as a pivotal moment for a revolution in the way victims and their cases were approached and handled. And maybe it was, at least for a while. But it’s hard to say with any conviction that any progress gained has been maintained or built on. Conviction rates for rape are horrifyingly low and there is an ever-growing mass of documentaries and dramas – about historic and recent cases – highlighting the role of the police in creating that phenomenon, be it their negligence, apathy, incompetence, misogyny, active malevolence (in cases such as that of Met officer Wayne Couzens, the killer of Sarah Everard) or any combination of the above.
