Abandoned by the state: How the police fail survivors of sexual assault
By Marienna Pope-Weidemann
June 29, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Red Pepper — A study released today
revealed that one in five festival goers have been subject to sexual
harassment there, with the figure rising to 43% of women under 40.
Campaigners say the report should be a wake-up call for the industry to
“start treating sexual violence as seriously as other crimes.” The
sinister extent of rape culture in this country remains widely unseen –
especially where it extends to the state itself. Much of the rhetoric around tackling sexual violence focuses on
encouraging women to come forward and report their assaulters to the
police – to treat it as a crime, and use the formal mechanisms of police
and state to deliver justice. But those mechanisms have perennially
failed survivors of sexual assault.In 2014 it was revealed that a quarter of rapes reported to police were not even being recorded as crimes. Of those, only 28 percent were being referred to the Crown Prosecution Service for further action. Since then, we’ve seen institutional abuse exposed, the globalisation of #MeToo
and a resurgent feminist movement here in the UK. At a moment like this
you might expect the state – and especially the police – to pick up
their game when it comes to sexual and gender violence. But what we’re
actually finding, beneath the progressive rhetoric, is a strong
political backlash. Research suggests that a staggering 85 percent of adults raped in the UK never report
to the police in the first place. With that in mind, this seems a
bizarre moment for the Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick to
abandon the force’s policy of believing people when they first report they have been raped. The ‘believe first’ guidelines were introduced after the breathtaking scale of police failures to investigate allegations against Jimmy Savile were revealed. Rather
than impartiality, her comments indicate a return to a historic double
standard, with people – especially women – reporting rape less likely to
believed than victims of any other crime. The usual counter-argument is that
‘innocent until proven guilty’ is a cherished moral principle in our
society and with some notable exceptions – young black men walking at
night, for example – this is true. But innocent until proven guilty is a
legal consideration put in place to protect the civil rights of those
wrongly accused of a crime; it does not in any way lessen the obligation
of the police to investigate reported crimes properly. What see all too often in practice,
when it comes to women reporting sexual violence, is a principle of
‘don’t bother investigating unless you really can’t avoid it’ .
Rape decriminalised?
Imagine calling the police after
being burgled. They arrive to find you traumatised and injured, only to
tell you they have to ‘keep an open mind’ about whether a crime has
taken place. You wouldn’t accept the fact someone else once lied about
being burgled as a justification for being treated like a criminal in
your hour of need. Yet, this is the reality facing many rape survivors,
forced into silence and isolation by a culture of disbelief not just in
wider society but the very police force meant to protect us. And the
moment that silence begins to break, we are met by the assertion “it
isn’t all about victims” – from the Met’s first female commissioner, no
less. “If
it’s a long time ago, or it’s very trivial, or I’m not likely to get a
criminal justice outcome, I’m not going to spend a lot of resources on
it,” says the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
“And what might be a misunderstanding between two people, clumsy
behaviour between somebody who fancies somebody else, is not a matter
for the police.” These comments are particularly incomprehensible given that the Met also credits the new guidelines with a 20 percent increase in rape reporting last year. However, they also warn the increase is so sharp it may also indicate an actual rise in sexual violence. As many survivors and advocacy groups are crying out, this may well have something to do with the fact that the police drop so many cases now that experts say rape has effectively been ‘decriminalised’.But the criminal justice system has
far more to answer for than simply ignoring sexual violence. In many
cases, the state is actively complicit.
Police as perpetrators
The Spycops Scandal has highlighted the way undercover police officers have infiltrated campaign groups, entering into abusive sexual relationships and even fathering children under false identities. But police involvement in sexual violence extends much further. Many women have bravely spoken out about sexual abuse in prison and police custody. But staying out of prison isn’t enough to keep us safe. In 2012, the Guardian revealed that at least 56 officers from 25 forces had raped, assaulted, harassed or groomed women they met in the line of duty. Since then, hundreds of officers have been implicated in sexual abuse allegations, with a senior police watchdog calling this “the most serious corruption issue facing the service.”
Perpetrators often target vulnerable women in domestic violence
shelters, sex workers, homeless women and women with substance abuse
issues. Looking deeper into this culture of
complicity, we start to understand why it is harder today to
successfully prosecute a rapist than it was in 1977. Over the past 40
years, the conviction rate for rape has plummeted from 32 to 5.6 percent. Of the cases that do make it to court, as few as 1 in 30 can expect to win a guilty verdict. Still, if we are looking at an
increase in sexual violence, it could not have come at a worse time. The
state isn’t just failing survivors in the courtroom; it’s failing them
in almost every sphere of life.
Abandoned by the state
Funding for women’s refuges has been slashed by a quarter
since the government’s austerity program was introduced in 2011.
Survivors of sexual and domestic violence are now being turned away from
shelters and onto the streets at a rate of 200 per day and psychological support is evaporating as quickly as practical protection. According to a report
produced by the Women’s Resource Centre and Rape Crisis (England and
Wales), the funding cuts have forced over half of Rape Crisis centres to
cut services or close down, with just 21 percent of services now fully funded
and survivors waiting on average three months for support and
counselling. The report concludes that support for those needing to
rebuild their lives after rape has been turned into “a privilege
determined by a postcode lottery.”State support for individuals is also
being hacked away by government cuts. In January, for example, the High
Court confirmed that government’s Personal Independence Payments system
was ‘blatantly discriminatory’ towards people with severe mental health issues.Almost half of women
who experience severe mental distress are survivors of sexual violence,
yet the only government intervention specifically addressing survivors
is the Family Tax Credit ‘Rape Clause.’ This allows payments only for a
woman’s first two children – unless one child was born of rape, in which
case the woman is forced to disclose this to the authorities or lose
the payments her family is entitled to. This approach is pushing thousands more families into poverty. Clearly, having a woman in No.10
isn’t doing us any more good than having a woman in Scotland Yard. But
perhaps these things aren’t happening in spite of each other – but
because of each other. The men and women in No.10 and Scotland
Yard are still holding us back. It’s the survivors breaking the silence
over sexual violence that will change everything. Let
down and ignored first by men in power and now by women, we are
realising that justice isn’t coming from above. That is the first step
towards bringing it up from below.
