What changed after Savile?

Media storms over Jimmy Savile and child grooming cases extracted solemn promises from police and prosecutors to change the way they dealt with claims of historic sexual assault and child sexual exploitation.

But Professor Stanko believes the lessons learned from Savile are not being applied to more typical sex crimes.

Recent rape claims are still dropping out of the criminal justice system in the thousands for the same reasons that lead to the Savile victims being silenced, she says.

‘Savile’s exploitation of vulnerability is considered separate from ‘typical’ rape or sexual abuse.’

Revelations that authorities had steadfastly ignored complaints because of the youth and vulnerability of the complainants lead to the CPS publishing new guidelines on child sex abuse cases in 2013.

A serious case review into one of the Rochdale grooming cases had noted that a rape complaint by one girl had been dropped on CPS advice because she was deemed likely to have consented as she was, as the CPS lawyer put it, ‘known for going with men’.

‘The advice was based ‘very considerably on consent by (the girl) although given that she had also been physically assaulted, sustaining injuries, the issue of consent could not have been an issue.

‘… the CPS focus appeared to be in looking for failings in the prosecution case rather than considering the weaknesses in the case for the defence,’ the review said.

In the new guidance, prosecutors were told to focus on the overall credibility of an allegation rather than the perceived weakness of the person making it.

The move was announced by the then Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer as ‘the most fundamental attitude shift across the Criminal Justice System for a generation’.

No similar change was announced with regard to adult rape cases.

Asked why the attitude shift was limited to child cases, the the CPS said existing guidance on adult cases already warned prosecutors to be aware of myths and sterotypes around how sexual offence victims were handled.

The CPS has also excluded vulnerable adults from a new protocol requiring police and prosecutors to share and seek information about vulnerable youngsters with and from social services, local authorities and family courts.

The 2012 HMIC report that recommended the development of the information-sharing protocols did not mention that they should only be applied to child cases.

And minutes of a meeting of the Rape Monitoring Group in 2012, a group chaired by HMIC and whose members include police chiefs, officials from the Home Office, CPS and Attorney General’s Office as well as the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, note that ‘the desirability of including vulnerable adults in this protocol was commented on’.

In the end, they were not included.

For adult rape, questions around consent, rather than vulnerability, continue to dominate, and while it is too soon to tell whether the change of approach to child cases is working in one case uncovered by the Bureau involving a 16 year old girl, a presumption of consent is still trumping evidence of injuries.

‘The debate, policies and law reforms continue to address issues of consent – the legal line separating sex from rape,’ says Professor Stanko.

‘Exploitation is seldom recognised, though it is critical to how rape happens.’

A recognition of this exploitation must be at the heart of any reform, she says. Anything else is ‘tinkering around the edges’, which will be unlikely to produce real change.

And change is still urgently needed.