LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Police and prosecutors in England must overhaul their attitude to the victims of sex crimes in the wake of a scandal involving a late TV celebrity and other high-profile sexual exploitation cases, the country's chief prosecutor said.
Britons were stunned when it was revealed that Jimmy Savile, one of the country’s biggest TV stars in the 1970s and 1980s who died in 2011, was a prolific sex offender who took advantage of his fame to abuse hundreds of people over six decades. Allegations of the abuse emerged last year and were confirmed in a police-led report released in January.
Media coverage of the Savile case and others involving groups of men found guilty of 'grooming' or luring girls into sex rings has led to scrutiny of why the abuse was not stopped sooner, despite some victims reporting the crimes to the police.
Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales Keir Starmer said victims were too often judged on whether they had immediately informed the police of the incident, given a full, coherent account of the crime, returned to the perpetrator or taken drink and drugs.
This approach to assessing the credibility of victims and their allegations was wrong, he said.
"We've asked all those sorts of questions and very often when we've got the answers, we say the victim's not credible. I think that's been a mistake," Starmer told Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview last week.
"I think we've asked too much of victims. We've seen their vulnerabilities as a barrier to justice. What we should have said is we don't want the model victim – whatever that may be – we want to understand the victim we've actually got in front of us."
Starmer’s comments came as the country’s justice system seeks ways to improve how child sex abuse claims are investigated and to make it easier for vulnerable witnesses to bring their case to court.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) issued new guidelines last month that shift the focus from assessing whether the victim would make a "good" witness to assessing the credibility of the allegation being made.
Starmer, a human rights lawyer before being appointed to the CPS five years ago, agreed that when it came to giving evidence in court, the experience for most victims was "not a happy one".
"Most of the time when victims have finished giving their evidence, they say 'I'll never ever do that again'," he said.
Besides the trauma of reliving their ordeal, witnesses are often subject to accusations of lying by defence lawyers. In a sex grooming case, a single victim who has been abused by several men could face cross-examination by multiple barristers.
"I do think it must be possible to elicit the truth without destroying the individual who is giving evidence," Starmer said.
One way was to ensure questions were not put repeatedly and were put through one barrister, not all barristers, he said. Another approach being piloted was to allow vulnerable witnesses to pre-record their evidence and the cross-examination before a trial begins.
RAPE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
For two years running, the CPS has seen record conviction rates for rape and domestic violence cases in England and Wales. In 2012-2013, 63.2 percent of rape prosecutions ended in a conviction while for domestic violence cases, it was 74.3 percent.
The prosecutor also noted that the number of rape cases referred to the CPS by the police had fallen by 4.5 percent this year and the number of domestic violence cases had dropped by 11 percent. But he said he was “not persuaded” that the figures told the real story.
“I'd like to look at each of the regions – is it going down uniformly across the country or is it going down in different ways in different regions if so, what's the strategy the police or prosecutors have got in place in those regions? Is that having an effect? Is there some other prime offence that's going up that might account for it? I don't know but we really need to dig down to find out what's going on,” Starmer said.
He attributed the overall increase in rape and domestic convictions to changes that have been made over the years: better guidance for prosecutors, training on violence against women and girls, specialists to present cases in court and the use of specialist courts for domestic violence in some cases.
Yet a lack of confidence in the criminal justice system and complaints being withdrawn by victims too afraid of pursuing a prosecution were preventing more cases from going to court, Starmer said.
He added that confidence could be built by making sure witnesses knew they had access to counselling, could request the use of a screen in court or ask to give evidence by videolink to avoid coming into direct contact with the accused.
"HARDER TO REACH" CRIMES
Regarding the prosecution of other types of violence against women and girls, Starmer said a different approach was needed for the "harder to reach" offences such as honour-based violence, forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM).
FGM has been illegal in Britain since 1985, yet there has not been a single prosecution for the highly secretive crime, usually carried out at the behest of the victim's family.
Starmer said the main reason for the failure was the need for young girls to testify against their parents at the risk of being removed from their families.
"That's quite a big ask of a young girl and unsurprisingly those victims don't come forward very often," Starmer said.
"One of the things that we've been pursuing and looking at is whether it would be possible to prosecute for other offences, perhaps neglect or welfare offences rather than FGM, which wouldn't necessarily involve the young girl being a witness or a primary witness."
Starmer, who will leave his post in October and be succeeded by London's Chief Crown Prosecutor Alison Saunders, said although it would be preferable to prosecute offences under the principal legislation, it was not always possible to do so.
"Where possible everybody would want to prosecute for the substantive offence and if there's enough evidence then certainly that would be done. That's important because it sends a very powerful message – whether it's trafficking on the one hand, or FGM on the other, or forced marriage," Starmer said.
"On the other hand, if there isn't the evidence there to prosecute on the substantive offence, it is appropriate to prosecute for other offences ... Where there is some evidence of wrongdoing but not enough for the substantive offence then better to do something than nothing," he said.
