Summary: Leftists run England’s core domestic policy. Their tinkering with the criminal justice system has produced amazing results, and especially with accusations of rape. (There was much discussion in the comments to the section of yesterday’s post about this. So I have expanded it. Esp. see the section added showing the astounding numbers about rape.)

In January 2015 The Guardian reported some good news: “Rape trials rise by 30% as courts fight to clear caseload” — “The Director of public prosecutions {Alison Saunders} says increase is good as it suggests more victims feel they will be believed. …About a third of crown court trial days are now taken up with cases involving sexual offences.”

Rumors about Director Saunders’ new regime soon circulated. Such as this by Allison Pearson at The Telegraph (only a woman can safely speak out about the feminist outrages).

“‘I began getting messages from police officers who had been sent on training courses where they were taught that any woman who said she had been raped must always be believed and referred to as “the victim’. …Obsessed with pursuing the VAGW (violence against girls and women) agenda, she was on a mission to boost the number of rape convictions and clearly could not give a damn about innocent men and boys who might suffer on the road to that goal. They were just collateral damage in a vengeful gender war.”

By July 2018, even the good liberals at The Guardian had to acknowledge the result.

A series of rape trials collapsed at the end of last year and the beginning of this year when text and social media exchanges belatedly emerged that undermined complainants’ accounts. Trials were halted and charges dropped. When she appeared before the committee in June, Saunders accepted that some people had been wrongly imprisoned as a result of disclosure failings. …

Bob Neill MP, the Conservative chair of the select committee, said: ‘Disclosure failings are extremely damaging for those concerned and can have a permanent life-long impact. These failings have caused miscarriages of justice and – as the DPP even admitted to us – some people have gone to prison as a result. …’

One of those whose trials collapsed late last year was Samuel Armstrong, chief of staff to the Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay. He had been charged with raping a woman in the palace of Westminster but was acquitted after material his lawyers had sought was finally handed over halfway through the trial. ‘The failures of disclosure were a consequence of a toxic culture that treated statutory duties as an administrative burden,’ he told the Guardian. ‘As a result, dozens of young people saw their lives ruined …It’s not about resources, it’s about culture. I was prosecuted by senior lawyers. They were very well resourced.'”

These are not the kind of sexual assaults that excite modern police.

What does this mean on the ground?

What about Britain’s law enforcement apparatus? Alexander Robertson at The Daily Mail explains.

“The five-year tenure of Britain’s top prosecutor has been branded ‘disastrous’ by critics as she prepares to leave her role for ‘a seven-figure salary’ as a partner of an international law firm. …Under her leadership, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has come under extreme scrutiny over a raft of scandals, including the collapse of several high-profile rape trials.”

Forced by unavoidable facts, the leftists at The Guardian had to report the news: “Urgent review of all rape cases as digital evidence is withheld.”

“A rape trial {of Samson Makele, 28} collapsed this month after the CPS offered no evidence when it emerged that images from the defendant’s phone of him in bed with his alleged victim had not been disclosed. …Scotland Yard is already conducting an urgent review of similar problems after another rape case {of Liam Allan, 22} was halted in Croydon in December under similar circumstances when phone messages between the man and woman cast doubt on the prosecution’s version of events. Another sexual assault case {of Isaac Itiary, 25} was abandoned later in December after material recovered from the defendant’s phone was only belatedly handed over as the case was about to go to trial.”

See the horrific story of Allan at BarristerBlog. There were other incidents that The Guardian forgot to mention.

Others speak more harshly and completely about these events than The Guardian. Such as Allison Pearson at The Telegraph tells the story.

“I was also outraged by the case of Paul Gambaccini. The well-loved DJ, the gentlest and most civilised of men, was arrested in 2013 for historical sexual offences following allegations by two men he had never met, who were allowed to remain anonymous. For 12 months, Paul was plunged into a Kafkaesque nightmare, despite there being no evidence against him, and no charge either. …

“Casualties like 17-year-old Jay Cheshire, who took his own life in 2015 after being accused of rape by a girl who withdrew her complaint after two weeks. Described by his mother Karin as “a vulnerable and sensitive boy”, Jay was distraught to be branded a “sex offender”. He had hoped to become a history teacher or a writer when he grew up. Now he never will. …

“{Eventually} the CPS was forced to order an urgent review of all ongoing rape cases. A stony Saunders tried to defend the debacle, telling Radio 4’s Today programme she didn’t think there were any men in jail who had been wrongfully convicted. …

“{On April 2} the Metropolitan Police announced it had ‘abandoned its policy of automatically believing victims’ …. Commissioner Cressida Dick said she had told officers they ‘must have an open mind when an allegation is made and that their role was to investigate, not blindly believe.'”

Juries are not impressed

Yesterday The Guardian attempted to spin the news to boost the jihad, despite the unfortunate facts Their skillful propagandists produced the following.

Due process and trial by a jury of one’s peers are considered obsolete by many on the Left. Those who care about our rights will prefer a more accurate headline …

Pursuing its feminist jihad, the government prosecutes with flimsy evidence so many young men that British juries convict only 32% of them.

A pop quiz

There were 45,100 rapes recorded by the police against both men and women in the year ending June 2017. How many were committed using a knife?

…

The number of rapes using a knife or sharp implement: 438 (1%). They do not show the number using a gun, probably because that is de minimis. Source: tables 2 and 3 from “All data related to Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2018” by Britain’s Office of National Statistics.

Another unfortunate effect of the feminist jihad

Crime has soared while Saunders pursued her radical feminist agenda.

“Meanwhile, the latest figures show that every category of victim-based crime has increased on her watch, with all crime going up by a third since 2014. Most shockingly, sexual offences rose by 89% from the year ending September 2014 to the year ending September 2017. The streets of London are now more deadly than New York, with the capital recording a higher murder rate for the first time in modern history in February. …

“In January, the BBC reported that the number of prosecutions in England and Wales that had collapsed due to a failure by police or prosecutors to disclose evidence had jumped 70%.” {The Daily Mail.}

Choices have to be made as to how much to spend on police, and which crimes are most serious.

“There were 21,331 fewer police officers in England and Wales as of March this year compared with the same point in 2010, according to the Home Office. Total officer numbers across the 43 police forces were at 122,404 as of March, the lowest number since comparable records began in 1996. {With a much larger population.} …Sgt Kempton said: ‘Knife crime in large cities is right on the brink of being out of control. …He said in Dorset the situation is so dire that even if every officer turns up to work every day the force ‘can’t do the job the public want us to do. So when people don’t turn up, we come very close to losing the streets when it is busy,’” {Metro UK, 8 September 2018.}

Repeat from above: “About a third of crown court trial days are now taken up with cases involving sexual offences.”

But all ends well …for Director Saunders

How was she rewarded for her failures? Her terms ends in October 2018.

“Alison Saunders will enjoy a £1.8million taxpayer-funded pension when she is replaced as Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) ….But despite facing criticism for ‘not being up to the job’, the QC, who has been with the CPS since 1986, has secured a top role at ‘Magic Circle’ law firm Linklaters, starting in the autumn. She is expected to earn a salary in excess of seven figures, with the average pay of equity partners at Linklaters surpassing £1.5million last year.” {The Daily Mail.}

The Empire always strikes back!

BuzzFeed complains that the British authorities prosecute women for false accusations of rape! The even have rules guiding when to do so!

“The Crown Prosecution Service, the state prosecutor for England and Wales, has even written rules for whom to target and when – something other Western countries don’t do, experts say. …At least 200 women in the UK have been prosecuted for lying about being raped in the past decade, according to a BuzzFeed News analysis of press reports. …

“Britain’s approach stands in stark contrast to that of the US, Australia, Canada, and other European countries. Women in these countries do not typically face prosecution – let alone prison – for lying about rape, state prosecutors and experts said, because it’s not considered to be in the public interest. Norway’s public prosecutions authority, for example, said its priority is encouraging more victims to come forward and warned that ‘a low threshold for opening a false accusation case could counteract this goal’.”

Buzzfeed mentions this case: Rhiannon Brooker (30), a trainee barrister, was found guilty of fabricating allegations that led to her ex-partner Paul Fensome being jailed for 36 days. She was sentenced to three-and-a-half-year jail term {The Guardian}. Both The Guardian and BuzzFeed consider the sentence too harsh. Neither asked her victim’s opinion of the sentence.

See the surprising numbers

See the surveys and police data about sexual assaults in England and Wales. They are surprising to people who read the news. Here are the numbers for the year ending March 2017, for sexual assault of females in England and Wales. These are from the Appendix Tables of “Sexual Offences in England and Wales: year ending March 2017“. I found the report to be somewhat misleading. These numbers paint a very different picture about sexual assaults than do the news media.

Table 1: Survey data about rates of sexual assaults on women 16-59 in 2016-17.

Rape or assault by penetration (including attempts):….0.9%

Indecent exposure or unwanted touching:……………………2.7%

Table 25: Survey data – What was the outcome of the crime?

Outcome of police investigation of rape or assault by penetration (including attempts) experienced since age 16 by adults aged 16 to 591, by sex of victim, year ending March 2017.

Note that that answers are from surveys of self-identified victims.

14% – Police warned the person who did it.

43% – Police arrested the person who did it.

30% – Police charged the person who did it.

11% – Police took some other action.

07% – Police tried to take action but were unable to locate/identify person who did it.

19% – Police took no action.

04% – Too early to say.

Table 25: (same as above) Did the case come to court?

64% – Yes.

35% – No.

01% – Not yet.

Table 8: Police data – number of rapes of females, by age of victim, in year ending March 2017.

All:…………32,286.

Over 16:….26,464.

Under 16:….5,822.

Under 13:….4,369.

Table 8: Police data – Change in the number of rapes of females, by age of the victim.

Age……………………Since 2008-09….Since 2012/13

Age 16 or over:…….348%…………..……274%

Age under 16:………240%…………..……208%

Age under 13:………294%…………..……184%

Table 10: Survey estimating rate of rape of adult women (using traditional definition of actual or attempted penetration) in 2017-17.

All adults:..2.9%

White:…..…0.8%

Mixed:….…3.4%

Asian:………0.3%

Black:………1.6%

Other:……..1.7% (mostly Arab).

13% gave no ethnic group.

As often seen in these reports, the numbers in Table 10 don’t make sense. The rate of rape for all females is higher than for the subgroups (only 1.3% of the sample self-identified as “mixed”).

Note they do not track the ethnicity of the perpetrator. That would be wrong, a violation of political correctness! It is best that we do not know.

A closing thought

“{T}he increased victim orientation, the special attention paid to victims in the last 25 years, has primarily focused on specific victim groups and their protection. Maltreated children were ‘discovered’ first, later came women who were victims of violence and rape, and finally children who had been subject to sexual exploitation. The numerically largest group of victims of crime, on the other hand, continue to be overlooked and not regarded as victims: men and boys.

— From “Victim orientation in society, research, criminal justice and crime prevention: Status, problems and perspectives” by Wiebke Steffen in “More Prevention, Fewer Victims”, a Report for the 18th German Congress on Crime Prevention, 22-23 April 2013.

In this, as in so many things these days, men are second class citizens.

Other posts in this series

For More Information

Ideas! For shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about women & society, about rape, about MeToo, and especially these…

Books about self-defense – against false accusations

See “A sadly necessary handbook for men falsely accused of sexual assault“, Barbara Kay’s book review in the National Post discussing False Accusations of Rape: Lynching in the 21st Century

by John Davis (2015). Davis is a retired international lawyer, former Assistant District Attorney, and Assistant Attorney General. He has broad experience in rape and sexual assault cases.

His other major book is How to Avoid False Accusations of Rape: Self-Defense in the Feminist State

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. Both look interesting and timely. See his articles at Medium