HELP STOP the imprisonment of women who (under duress) retract rape/dv allegations

[InmaculadaConcepcion]

You may remember last autumn a woman was given an 8-month prison sentence for "falsely" retracting a rape allegation against her husband. She was convicted of perverting the course of justice despite the knowledge that her husband was violent and she had been facing serious intimidation, hence her decision to retract the original allegation.

Thankfully, the Court of Appeal freed her.

As a result of that and other cases, there is now a Criminal Prosecution Service consultation underway about the issue and anyone can respond.
The consultation ends on May 6.

You can have your say online via the CPS website

Thanks to forkful for flagging this one up.

There was an article about this in the law society gazette calling for the imput of solicitors to make sure the CPS gets rape retraction prosecutions right. Fingers crossed it will make a positive difference.

Thanks for the encouragement!

Thats really sad, can these idiots not put 2 & 2 together, violent huband- retract allegations

Well, I've read through the interim guidance on prosecuting false allegations/retractions and it looks okay to my lack of legal expertise. Nothing leaps out as being wrong about it, anyway.

I was grimly amused by the following paragraph included in the interim guidance:

If all the circumstances lead the prosecutor to believe that it was the original retraction which was false, then she/he will need to give very careful consideration to whether a prosecution for the "retraction of the retraction" is likely to be in the public interest. This is because as a matter of logic, if the original allegation was or may have been true, then it follows that the suspect may have been a victim of rape or domestic violence.

Like, duh!

As Sue said, it's sad this has to be spelled out.

Well it has been spelled out because it is a policy of the CPS and also because it is in the interests of justice that any policy is in the public domain ; accountability etc. Not sure why this is seen as being objectable.

Thanks for this.

Yes Merle, I realise that. And it's good it has been spelled out because clearly without that happening, some victims of rape and/or domestic violence were being given the added nightmare of a prison sentence on top of their other ordeals.

The point Sue and I were making is that it's a shame it has turned out to be so necessary to make this really rather obvious point clear in order to prevent that kind of prosecution from being undertaken.

You're welcome!

Thanks Forkful & Immaculada for putting this on.

Following Merle's comment, I was thinking further about the necessity for the paragraph quoted above and felt more angry about it (the necessity, not the comment).

Because in order for the CPS to take a prosecution further, the case has to first pass the evidential test (as it were) then it has to pass the public interest test.

So even if a case has abundant evidence to suggest an offence has been committed, it may not be taken to court if the CPS decides it would not serve the public interest to do so. (And this is the general approach that existed before this interim guidance on rape retractions was thought up).

So who the hell thought it was ever in the public interest to send a raped/beaten woman to prison, perjury or no? Especially one who would then have to leave her children in the care of her violent husband? It beggars belief.

So yes, it is REALLY sad that it has to be spelled out so clearly given that the existing CPS guidelines should have been sufficient to rule out this type of prosecution in the first place.

The consultation ends tomorrow, if you want to take a look...