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.

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.

Sorry - prosecution's interest - not defence.

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

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?

"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.

It really is rape myth bingo night here on MN

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

@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!

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

Victim blaming codified.

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

Just for clarification I was being sarcastic!

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?

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?

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

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?