Rape victims must hand over phone or police won't pursue crime

Suspects have this nasty ability to delete things from their phones, too.

Nothing is ever deleted from any online environment. "Delete" simply means removed from visible display.

Police can access all 'deleted' material held by third party service providers via a warrant approved by a magistrate, to the best of my knowledge.

I remain open to be corrected on this by someone with more knowledge of this issue of law.

It's the one crime though where digital evidence. recordings of said rape, are still not enough.

As a pp said where is the evidence of cases of rapes prosecuted as a result of messages on a phone?
We already have one poster who's evidence was ignored as they couldn't prove the phone washt hacked.

We have a newspaper article of a woman dying as she had no way of calling for help.

We have men who murder women and claim it was sex gone wrong and walk free

We have witnesses who still cant convince a jury that hands around the neck in the mid might just possibly be an assult.

And if they do get thrown in jail they get themselves transferred to a womens prison to rape a few more women

We have underwear a rapist couldn't have
even known about until he raped her getting men off.

And theres not one thing that could be found on a phone that doesnt mean that they couldn't still have said no at any point.

This is just another way to stop women from reporting rape.

To remind them they are to blame.

And of course another say to make sure they cant call anyone for help or support. Good way of ensuring they mentally arent in a place to be able to go through with anything.

And of course this article merely tips off men how to get away with it.

This is nothing. ..nothing but a display of utter contempt for women

You get warrants for people accused of crimes (the suspected offender), not the victim. Hence they need the victim’s consent to go through their digital footprint and devices.

So, why are the police demanding access to victim's phones and social media when they can apply for access to suspect's phones and social media?

Surely it is the suspect who is under investigation in such circumstance?

So, use of any consent form is a means of bypassing the need for such a warrant?

You get warrants for people accused of crimes (the suspected offender), not the victim. Hence they need the victim’s consent to go through their digital footprint and devices.

Suspects have this nasty ability to delete things from their phones, too.

The scenario the police and CPS are trying to avoid is the one in which they bearing a charge to court and it all falls apart because the defence has information the police and prosecution didn’t have.

Yes, it’s shit - yet another unexpected consequence of everyone packing around enormous digital footprints around with them that they didn’t have 30 years ago. This is not the only crime affected by this. Workloads for digital forensics units have been going up and up over the past decade.

Something occurs to me:

Is it not the case that your telephone service [thereby your text message] provider stores all your messages for a required period of time, as does all social media platforms?

To access these via those third parties police are required to get a warrant and have to provide evidence to magistrate for such a need?

So, use of any consent form is a means of bypassing the need for such a warrant?

Some women do lie. They just do, and it ruins lives JUST as much!

THERE ARE VERY FEW FALSE ALLEGATIONS OF RAPE it’s tiny. So why the fuck it needs to be brought up on every rape thread is beyond me. It also is not cool to compare it to rape, the two things are incomparable and it’s crass to do so.

THERE IS NO RAPIST TYPE Anybody can be a rapist, including clean cut nice white boys ffs

Seriously, rape myth bingo it very much is

JackyHolyoake, thank you very much for the reminder. I should have widened the question to include sexual assault.

Would not this information be available via the suspect's technology?

The suspect may be somewhat more motivated to destroy evidence than the victim. In fact, destruction of evidence could be very telling.

It really is rape myth bingo night here on MN

"We were shocked as he was not the type"

There is no 'type' of man that commits rape, just as there is no 'type' when it comes to victims. @Honeyduke

Just because this woman had a sexual relationship with him, lots of contact with him etc - none of that has any bearing on whether he raped her or not. There's no such thing as blanket sexual consent: she could have said "yes" a hundred times and "no" on the 101st and the 101st occasion would still be rape.

so they can check to see if the perpetrator was stalking the victim, whether they had any prior contact (whether deliberate, known about, or not), etc.

Would not this information be available via the suspect's technology?

Aren't women less likely to receive custodial sentences for the same crime than men? I realise this may fall into the bigotry of low expectations territory.

In UK law women cannot commit the crime of rape since no woman ever has a penis:

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/1

Sorry - prosecution's interest - not defence.

I'm actually slightly baffled as to why this is such a big deal. Rape is a very serious crime and in order to investigate such a serious crime, surely the police will need access to the victim's phone and social media so they can check to see if the perpetrator was stalking the victim, whether they had any prior contact (whether deliberate, known about, or not), etc. Most victims of crime are known to their assailant. Checking to see if there had been any contact prior to the rape is surely in the defence's interest? And if the victim is trying to hide stuff then the police need to know why and whether that could prejudice the trial if it comes to light.

@grumpygran

At college a Scandinavian exchange student claimed a VERY good friend of mine had raped her. We were shocked as he was not the type - a very studious, gentle and reserved person. She said she didn’t really know him at all and he’d just jumped her after a night out.

He admitted they had slept together but said they’d been talking/ spending time together secretly for months as she didn’t want her friends (the other exchange students) to know.

Anyway police siezed his laptop/phone and he was telling the truth, months of constant conversations.

Soon after she was in tears apologising for lying. Her justification was - her friends found out that she’d had sex with him. But she had a long term bf back home (genes the secrecy) who they all knew, her friends had turned on her for cheating- so she’d ‘had’ to say my friend raped her!

He was 18 and spent the night in a police cell. He was arrested in front of his then 12 year old sister at his family home! And for the entire second year of college was nicknamed X...the rapist.

...she was sent home!

🤔 Some women do lie. They just do, and it ruins lives JUST as much!

Goosefoot, I want a system where male violence is recognised as common place, where men are not assumed to be nice, and women are not assumed to be lying tarts who are all asking for it from the age of 8 or 9. That's all.

GrumpyGran8

More simply, how many women have suffered rape and seen no justice, how many men walk away with rape and even murder scot free, absolutely scot free - are even imbued with a kind of dark aura of success and celebrity as a result - compared to how many women lie about it?
Why do you think so many young teenage girls want to mutilate themselves and pass as men?

It sounds like people want to see rape treated in a way where you don't actually include the basic principles of the law system though. Things like the defendant's right to defend himself, or be assumed innocent.
While it's nice to imagine that by some magic we could have a criminal system that doesn't cause any pain to people, I can't really picture what that would look like, for rape or any other crime. These procedures and principles exist because we know what things look like when they aren't there - and that isn't pretty either.

Instead of endless stories about women who hand over their phone only to either be victim blamed or have the evidence disbelieved....

Yes. In my case of sexual assault (not rape thankfully), in contrast to the earlier story about location information on phones being used to secure a conviction, I had an eye witness confirming I and my assailant were in the same place at the same time. It wasn't enough for the police to even want to investigate.
PoliceMEN never want to investigate crimes by MEN. The "law" is made by men for men. I think women everywhere need to instigate a sex strike, and we need a strong pushback against all this 'sex positivity' shite. It's just for men's benefits, not ours.

LeslieYep, thank you for taking the time to write your reassuring explanation. I think the papers may well know exactly what they're doing but found the story too juicy to not present in a balanced fashion.

I daresay his "knickers" would never be displayed in court and passed around jury members.

I've had trouble locating the statistics but it might be informative to look at the conviction rate for male and female rape victims in order to draw a more robust conclusion.

It is men who design the justice system so that it is biased in favour of men with the possible exception of where men may harm other men.

Aren't women less likely to receive custodial sentences for the same crime than men? I realise this may fall into the bigotry of low expectations territory.

ow I'm out of here until everybody has calmed down

Rude

Is there any need for that?

If i understand you correctly, the major bias is that the jury need to be sure beyond all reasonable doubt for a finding of guilt. Is that one area you'd like checked ?

What needs to be "checked" is the learned behaviour of men to abuse females to such an extent that they have no means to be aware that this is what they do.

It is men who design the justice system so that it is biased in favour of men with the possible exception of where men may harm other men.

Indeed Smotheroffive .. I somehow suspect GrumpyGran is a GrumpyGrandad!

@GrumpyGran8
Goodness indeed! Drop a bomb then run off till all you silly 'hysterical' lot have just calmed down
Patronising shite.

GrumpyGran8

What % of such incidents of women lying about rape do you think there might be?

What might be the motivation of any such women to lie, given we women know what the system is when it comes to reporting rape or any other sexual offence?

What % of men accused of rape do you think might be not guilty?