Rape victims should not have to face police trawls of their social media accounts or checks on how drunk they were, police were told today - as the Government admitted it was not “job done” despite more suspected rapists being prosecuted.
Justice Secretary Alex Chalk said more rapists were also being jailed and serving longer sentences than in 2010, as he hailed an increase in the number of “people being punished, convicted and disgraced” for the “appalling” crimes they had carried out.
He said further changes, including the training of an extra 2,000 police rape investigators by the end of the next year, and specialist training on sex offences for all new recruits were intended to achieve further progress in bringing more offenders to justice.
But he admitted that with figures still showing only a tiny proportion of the thousands of rape complaints made to police each year result in a charge, further changes were needed including new legislation designed to stop police leaving victims feeling like “they are on trial” when they report an attack.
Mr Chalk said the focus should instead be on the alleged perpetrators and that a police blueprint designed to achieve this, called Operation Soteria, would be rolled out nationally to ensure that officers targeted suspects instead of the women they had attacked.
“Supposing there’s an allegation made of rape and the initial contact was in a night club and the police go and look at the CCTV. Should they be poring over the CCTV to say how drunk was she, how was she behaving, or should they be poring over her social media to look at her lifestyle to see how she behaves? Absolutely not,” Mr Chalk told the BBC.
“The focus must be on the suspect – look at his previous convictions, look at the evidence in his phone, what it is from witnesses at the night club, witnesses subsequently, forensic evidence, DNA, any other samples. The difficulty has been in the past that too many victims have felt that they are on trial.”
He added: “The concern has been in the past that all too often that as a matter of automatic investigation, the police were trawling through people’s phones, social services records or even school records and so on. That should not happen.
“Those sort of investigations should not be routine, they should only be when absolutely necessary and proportionate to ensure there is a fair trial.”
Mr Chalk said progress since the government published an “End to End Rape Review” two years ago included hitting a target to return the number of police files sent to prosecutors and the volume of cases sent to court to 2016 levels.
He said statistics also showed charges up 90 percent over the past two years and offenders receiving longer sentences than in 2010 and that although “I am not suggesting for a second that it’s job done .. progress is on the upward trajectory.”
But London’s Victims’ Commissioner Claire Waxman said that although the new focus on suspects would end the “injustice” of rape victims feeling on trial, more far-reaching reforms were needed to drive up convictions.
She said these included action to “address the rape myths and stereotypes we see used and accepted in court rooms” and warned that government proposals to stop “inappropriate requests for personal records such as school, medical or counselling notes which are being used to discredit victims” were “weak and insufficient.”
Ms Waxman said the court backlog was also still too high with rape victims, particularly in London, “still subject to some of the longest waits in our criminal justice process.”
She added: “We need dedicated resource for justice agencies and support services to fully transform the experience of rape survivors in coming forward to obtain support and justice.”
Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said changes, including the introduction of specialist rape courts and the creation of specialist rape investigation units in every police force, were needed to “speed up justice and punish rapists”.
