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

[RedToothBrush]

Both Independent and Times carrying story on their front page.

This is going to backfire spectacularly.

Blonde my concerns are about teaching them how to deal with all this madness. And what they have to teach their DC.
I find it so sad that my GC will have to be taught at quite a young age of the dangers of violent porn.

I am confused about how they can legally say they will not prosecute?!?

Without a phone, what sort of personal information do the police demand to know?

I think this must be contravention of some sort of human right? How is this legal?

It's not evidence, its inadmissible, unless the act was filmed, but then a rapist would make sure that was deleted. Nothing else is relevant

Badger I only said to my DH last week if I was raped I very much doubt I would report it.
Same for my kids, I would support them in what they decided to do.

Smotheroffive I can’t quite bear to link to it but a very recent case proved that even if it is filmed the rapist will get away with it

Women's equality seems to be in free fall, and crisis, as much as, or worse than ever.

Smother exactly

Katrina O'Hara was murdered after the police seized her phone when she reported her ex for harassment and she had no way to call for help:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/08/woman-was-killed-by-ex-lover-just-days-after-police-seized-her-phone

This is about stripping rape victims of their privacy and dignity. Like holding their underwear up in court or reading their diaries.

I hate that victims are treated so horribly. I’m probably talking out of my arse but for rape cases I think there ought to be some proper regulations. No jury, or if we have to have a jury then let’s have one who have received some training in rape myths. Same for judges. I read one judge’s comments recently in mounting horror as I saw them justify their decision that the victim was in fact too successful to be raped, as she had a career, and friends. I think he also said she wasn’t showing enough emotion. I’m in the dark in the toddlers room so can’t really search for links but it’s all so fucking horribly depressing.

The stories of ignored deaths is a crisis that never seems to go away and those in a position to change this don't seem to

What the ever living fuck?

Sorry, I had decided to try and swear less after Easter, but fucking, fucking what?

This is disgusting.

Dangerous (to leave recently raped person with lack of phone for god knows how long). Creates a hierarchy of who is an acceptable victim- by putting off any young girl or woman who is not perfectly law-abiding, from reporting so police won’t see from her phone that she or her friend or whoever else has drunk alcohol underage/taken or sold drugs/shoplifted/whatever it is.

Penalises polite young girls and women who are having to be humouring a boy or man who has their contact details and is after them for their own safety- often not safe to ignore, block, tell him to fuck off etc. Safer to reply politely.

Penalises anyone who said they fancied their attacker or whatever before he raped them.

It’s just awful.

I would be interested to know how this relates to how the police to proceed in terms of crimes in a more general sense. I find it difficult to comment otherwise. I would expect, for example, that if you have a house break in, you pretty much haveto let the police into your house in order to have them investigate. And even with rape, you realistically have to allow for medical examination. For financial crime they will need to see what may be private financial information.
So I would make a general statement that an unfortunate element of crime is that it renders the private public in a very unpleasant way. I think that is part of the reason crime is not just about offences against persons, but creates a kind of larger social breakdown. That breakdown of the barrier between the personal and public is a kind of social trespass that people have to endure because of the crime. It's bad for the victim, ad I think its also bad for the investigators and the public.

I can imagine why phones have become an element of proving certain crimes like rape, and in fact I think there are many violent crimes where people are asked to give access to their phones. I don't like the idea of it, but then I don't really know what not doing it would involve. It also raises questions I think about the way in which digital technology records so much of our lives - it opens a lot of doors to crime fighting - look at how police have used ancestry dna companiesor ctv - but the other side of that may always be lack of privacy. This seems like another instantiation of that - because the tech is there, it becomes a factor for the defence and proving the case.

Fucking awful. Simply so it can be said "oh look, she sent him all these friendly messages so what happened was obviously consensual. Throw the case out"
It makes my blood boil

Nope sorry. It has nothing to do with evidence gathering.

How does a phone prove anything?

It should be the rapists that have their phones taken for evidence! First and foremost, as they are more likely to find threats of violence and sexual assault.

Same with any criminals, but for the victimvictims?

What's the source of such a decision... where's this latest load of crazy come from, who decided it would be a good idea to further victimise the victim?

It seems its still based on who the victim is

Fucking disgraceful!

Any info relating to communications with the rapist if known will be on THEIR phone!

If the rapist isn't known to the victim there's absolutely no good reason for doing this.

Plus with modern tech they're easily able to access the victims sm accounts etc WITHOUT having the actual phone if they're trying to eg find a possible stalker/perpetrator.

I cannot think of one good reason to do this not one.

This is just crazy but nothing surprises me anymore. I've been the victim of multiple sexual crimes unfortunately and I've had to hand over clothing etc that I never got back.

I work for a company with a lot of protected data and they make us use our own phones so would this not present an issue of data protection and risk my job?

It's only where there's a reasonable line of enquiry.

It's not a speculative action, but where the phone is considered to hold vital evidence to a particular line of enquiry, and its all, not just rape victims
However, I cannot see any legitimate reason for rape victims to be under this ruling

I had to hand my phone over actually and that was 2.5 years ago.

Sorry for duplicate posts, the app never works properly!

A friend was sexually assaulted almost two years ago now, he was asked to hand in his phone to be examined. When it eventually went to court his phone location and the phone location of the accused proved they had been in the same place at the same time. There was no cctv so that couldn’t be relied on, the accused also had lied about where they were.

The locatiom data from their phones was the only proof beyond word of mouth they were together, without that there probably wouldn’t have been a conviction.

Has anyone asked the police why they need to do this?

The police need to spell out in detail exactly what information they seek to discover by searching through a victim's private material in this way.