When claims of historical sexual abuse are made, police should not have to adopt the policy that "a victim must always be believed". This is the position laid out by Bernard Hogan-Howe, commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, this week. Instead the police should proceed "with an open mind" - a more "neutral" approach.
That all sounds very reasonable, doesn't it? It's not that the police don't want to believe you, or think that what happened to you wasn't really a crime; they just don't want to be taking sides. Forget about the long history of police officers treating victims of rape and sexual assault appallingly. We don't need safeguards any more. We can trust the police to be honest and objective, so much so that they shouldn't be expected to offer complainants the same in return.
But what would an open-minded, impartial approach to investigating sex crimes look like? Would it involve protecting the "anonymity of those accused"? Or ignoring the fact that 99% of sex offenders are male, or that false accusation rates are extremely low? Would it mean portraying those accused of sex crimes as rational people with "tarnished" reputations, while accusers remain "emotional" and "damaged by their experience"?
The trouble is, what Hogan-Howe presents as neutral and impartial is anything but. He has offered yet another biased account of the problem, in which certain elements (e.g. the trauma of those falsely accused) are included and other elements (e.g. actual false accusation rates) are omitted. This is deeply unfair to victims, not to mention potentially dangerous.
Hogan-Howe admits that his proposed impartiality may not give victims confidence in the police. But a lax approach to victim testimony in cases of sexual abuse does not merely affect confidence; it limits the reach of investigations, preventing other survivors from coming forward and putting more vulnerable people at risk.
When we say "a victim should always be believed", we are saying that those who make complaints of sexual assault should be treated the same as victims of other crimes. As Joan Smith writes, "you wouldn't expect a police officer to laugh in your face if you reported a burglary or to suggest, without evidence, that your car hadn't really been stolen." The people who tend to lie about rape are rapists. We offer them the benefit of the doubt, so why can't we do the same for those whom they abuse?
Sex crimes are gendered crimes and we live in a society in which women and girls are still not considered credible witnesses to their own lives. To say "I believe you" does not secure a conviction – that remains a matter for a court of law – but it validates the experiences of victims. Women have never been permitted to claim ownership of "neutrality" - as feminists have often argued, male experience is always seen as just "experience" whereas female experience is always female - that is, partial and biased.
To engage with the full extent of sex crimes we need to recognise that there is a serious problem with how men are raised to disregard the bodily autonomy of others, and using language which makes these 'others' less credible - that is, less real – can only make things worse.
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Guest post: "Survivors of sexual abuse must know they'll be believed"
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MumsnetGuestPosts · 12/02/2016 13:21
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