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

Sounds like police using abused women wherever possible to bypass encrypted communication systems.

I must say, that seems like a very unfair assessment. Being proactive and taking the maximum steps to ensure that a fair verdict is secured with the maximum amount of admissible evidence is hardly something to criticise.

Suggesting that all women should be 100% believed, with no investigation or question...is quite literally insane.

So, how do police deal with a woman who is no longer alive? Is it not the suspect(s) who is (are) interrogated and evidence collected on behalf of the female victim in such a case?

What makes the difference if a woman is still alive? Should suspects not be very thoroughly investigated and evidence be collected in the same way?

Suggesting that all women should be 100% believed, with no investigation or question...is quite literally insane.

Don't remember reading that on here..when was the post made?

Sorry, wrong link. This should be right.

qz.com/980766/the-truth-about-false-rape-accusations/

Overall, in the CPS’ view, false allegations of rape are “serious but rare”. They estimate that there is one prosecution for a false rape claim out of every 161 rape cases prosecuted. That means — according to the best available data — false allegations make up 0.62 per cent of all rape cases.

Channel 4 found different 'facts'

I think the last time I actually managed to find an official statistic that it was about the 3% mark...ill keep looking for it

This article from 2017 goes through the features that rape allegations that turn out to be false have in common.

Basically, false allegations are onle rarely made by the alleged victim themselves, and the are rarely accusing a named individual. Furthermore, they hardly ever get as far as prosecition, let alone trial.

“Furthermore, in the most detailed study ever conducted of sexual assault reports to police, undertaken for the British Home Office in the early 2000s, out of 216 complaints that were classified as false, only 126 had even gotten to the stage where the accuser lodged a formal complaint. Only 39 complainants named a suspect. Only six cases led to an arrest, and only two led to charges being brought before they were ultimately deemed false. (Here, as elsewhere, it has to be assumed that some unknown percentage of the cases classified as false actually involved real rapes; what they don’t involve is countless innocent men’s lives being ruined.)”

<a class="break-all" href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100408125722/www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors293.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100408125722/www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors293.pdf

Here's the reality of this disproportionate, putting a victim on trial policy.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rape-victims-told-to-hand-over-phones-i-take-a-lot-of-selfies-i-m-worried-i-ll-come-across-like-i-asked-for-it-j88k9r8vk?shareToken=31d63a0aebde1a64b20c5748de0c80e8

A young woman living in fear for month after month after being courageous and reporting a sexual assault. And evidently being victimised by the police who still have her phone 9 months later - cos "it's policy" . I thought we'd moved away from seeing the victim as 'guilty' but evidently not. She'd have been better reporting what happened as a bloody hate crime! Then the police positively leap into action!

Gronky

Thanks for that additional info. So, it seems the consent form may be used by police to gain access to WhatsApp and other similar services.

That is interesting. Sounds like police using abused women wherever possible to bypass encrypted communication systems.

Suggesting that all women should be 100% believed, with no investigation or question...is quite literally insane.

Sounds but like Acceptance Without Exception, doesn’t it? 🤔

Sorry, but you can't 'degender' rape, that's preposterous

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.

On the offender’s SMS messages. yes. But not for all messaging apps, where they need warrants for the US that may take months to come back. In the meantime, they could get the info from the victim WITH HER CONSENT.

Honestly, it’s like people would rather see fewer prosecutions altogether.

Some people tell the truth, some people lie.

🤔 It’s not about gender. Men lie, women lie...

It’s just a fact of life.

If everybody just told the truth all the time the police would have a much easier job.

Suggesting that all women should be 100% believed, with no investigation or question...is quite literally insane.

The woman who lost her life just some weeks ago, having obviously lied to the Sussex police that she was being stalked. She reported six incidents of stalking, and was ignored, because she must have been lying I can only assume, and was killed.

The woman who was stalked, had her ddog killed and strung up in her garden, etc, etc., considered a nuisance.

Explains why her inbox has an email from Victoria secret confirming her order.

Was due to arrive three days after she was raped but proves she was up for it...

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?

Because they need to ASK. Why is that a problem?

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.

SMS messages (common or garden text messages) are held for at least 6 months (metadata is held for 12) by mobile network providers and can be accessed with a warrant. However, the process of securing one is not straightforward and relies upon the consent of a designated individual. However, online communication apps can bypass this entirely by using end-to-end encryption so it's quite possible that a message may only be retrievable by taking it directly from either the sending or the receiving device. It's also quite trivial to secure a device in such a way that, without the password, it is impossible to decrypt it. Even if the encryption of the communications is not quite as robust, the provider may well be outside of the United Kingdom, operating in a country where UK investigatory powers do not apply.

While it is extremely indelicate, in the latter case, not immediately taking a copy of the alleged victim's data would potentially cause the integrity of the evidence to become questionable.

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

It's distressing but video recordings have been ruled inadmissible in other cases:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-39885614
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/phantom-tyre-slasher-police-cps-blunders-carlton-miniott-appalling-inexcusable-failure-prosecution-a8487456.html

Honeydukes92

I hope you are not suggesting that the behaviour of one misguided teenage girl should dictate the entirety of UK law or law in any other country in this respect?

Yes, obvs, they also like to play sex games that they know will kill them and happily agree to this!!! They must do, as the courts and justice system and police couldn't possibly be wrong, right?!

I have this right don't I?

Just for clarification I was being sarcastic!

Well girls are obviously all liars and the proof will be on their phones...

Victim blaming codified.

Gdpr should be stopping this!

If you delete something it means you refuse anyone to hold this data about you.

I get that if it's not something shared on the net, like held locally on hdd, and then laptop seized (in cases of images in paedo cases, or convo s planning violent crimes or burglaries).

But to take a woman's potentially only.means of communication in an situation of risk and harm is foolhardy to say the least..downright stupid and coming from a place of increasing risk at the very least, and short-sightedness

@Ruffle

🤔 Did you misunderstand? They only had sex once. After talking and messaging for months. (They were teens)
She ADMITTED she had LIED about it! He had in fact done NOTHING wrong and you’re trotting out ‘blanket consent’- does it pain you that much to accept that a teenage girl just straight up lied?

I read A LOT of ‘minuscule amounts of false rape claims’ but sorry, where are your sources, where are you getting that from? Because I would not describe it as minuscule.

A quick google says the BBC put it at somewhere between 2-8% of all alleged attacks are proven to be fabricated.

At the end of the day, I’m a rape survivor, I went through the court process, I luckily got a conviction against my attacker.

I DO NOT agree that all women should be believed without proper investigation and procedures being followed. The legal system is there for a reason!

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

This statement sums up our UK justice system for women as created by men to protect men.

So many myths!
Jeez..
When trying to talk about the rights of women to have a fair hearing along come the complaints about the miniscule number of women that lie, the farce that women are actually raping men!
Ad nauseum, ad infinitum, instead of just talking about the big issue for women.

Oh yeah, and the convo's before and after all 'prove' nothing!

There is certainly no point in shutting down all the women raped just because a miniscule minority might lie. So lets quote one case of heresay to try to knock the whole argument. Pffft!

That has to be far more important than all the women actually raped.
.it's a massive issue, and its the tip of the iceberg of those actually reported, so get real and bloody deal with the real issue here, and stop derailing with insignificance.

It's like some pp want to actually shut women down.

Other women, and men don't want to see that