CPS [Crown Prosecution Service (UK public prosecutor)] lawyers still “victim-blame” in rape cases, report says

The research showed:

• the ‘respectability’ of a complainant being used as a proxy measure for whether they would be a believable witness;
• some prosecutors displaying a poor grasp of how coercive and controlling behaviour can impact someone’s ability to freely consent to sex;
• where a charge of rape did go forward, there was often a failure to charge the suspect with other potentially criminal behaviours such as coercive control;
• a risk of trivialising adolescent sexual abuse, which meant opportunities to disrupt and address a young person’s offending behaviour before more serious crimes could be committed could be lost; and
• poor handling of issues that resulted from the state of complainants’ mental health, leading to ill-informed assessments about a woman’s credibility.

A decent summary, and unfortunately unsurprising. I'm not familiar enough with the system in the UK to know how it differs from the US's system on these matters.

I wonder if the prosecuting attorneys end up taking a 'my experience with juries makes me think this complainant won't get a conviction' perspective. The follow-on observation to that being society needs to train potential jurors re: what is believable behavior for a victim. Later seasons of Law & Order SVU do a better job than anything else I can think of in showing that commonly held understandings of how a victim should behave 'if they're not making it all up' are just plain wrong. There's definitely some improvements to be made on the prosecutorial end too - both in personal attitudes AND in changing the success metric away from 'win rate'.