A University of Winchester academic has welcomed a new report by the Law Commission which seeks to improve the understanding of consent and sexual harm in the criminal justice process and improve treatment of complainants.
Dr Amelia Shooter, who teaches criminal and evidence law and is the faculty lead for postgraduate research, was one of the academics who contributed to the report on evidence in sexual offences prosecutions.
Her area of expertise and research centres on how well people, including jury members, understand and respond to technical and scientific evidence and she is cited several times in the Law Commission’s report.
Dr Amelia Shooter
Dr Shooter said: “Rape prosecutions are up but convictions are down. This report outlines the need for reforms to redress the balance so that complainants are better represented and better supported.”
“We have to look out how evidence is used effectively while treating the complainants with dignity and ensuring any exposure of their private life is done in a way that is proportionate.”
The report recommends several reforms, including that evidence on a complainant’s sexual behaviour or personal records, including counselling records, should only be introduced if relevant to an issue at trial or to the competence of a witness to testify, and must be necessary in the interests of justice.
To counter popular misconceptions about sexual violence, the report also warns against the use of ‘rape myths’ by lawyers and recommends training for all legal practitioners on rape myths should be mandatory. Such myths include rape will always be reported promptly; if the victim didn’t scream or fight back it wasn’t rape; and if the victim didn’t say ‘No’, it wasn’t rape.
The report also recommends the inclusion of expert testimony on trauma responses to challenge stereotypes about “typical” victim behaviour.
Another key proposal is the establishment of specialist sexual offence courts and improved physical environments for complainants, such as separate waiting areas and entrances.
Dr Shooter welcomes changes to the physical shape of the court to make a trial less distressing for the complainant but cautions against ‘creating a two tier’ legal system.
“I wouldn’t like to see a system where rape and sexual offences trials no longer bear any resemblance to other criminal proceedings,” said Dr Shooter.
She hopes that the government adopts the report’s recommendations and that their implementation will result in more people reporting rapes and sexual offences and fewer delays in victims coming forward.
“Many victims don’t have confidence that the justice system will understand their case and properly investigate it,” she said. “The system can’t be perfect but it should be fair and it can treat those involved with dignity.”
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