14
votes
Crown Prosecution Service (UK public prosecutor) lawyers still “victim-blame” in rape cases, report says
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- Authors
- Louise Tickle
- Published
- Mar 19 2024
- Word count
- 644 words
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'.