The detectives

This was a series on BBC recently over three days, following the Manchester Police Sex crimes team. I was, in case you missed it, nothing to do with the Jasper Carrott spoof series.

There were a number of really interesting aspects of this show, not least the real challenges and difficulties these teams face. They have to deal with immensely traumatic situations, and they have to approach this with a different approach from most other detective work. It is not for everyone, and it is not easy work, even by comparison with other detective work.

There is another aspect that makes this work very difficult, which is the the high incidence of these crimes, and the low conviction rates achieved. They said that about one in ten investigations results in a conviction, which means that nine of the investigations they work on - and often put a lot of time into - will not result in a satisfactory result. This figure is, I believe, taking out those accusations that are not pursued by the officers at all.

There is often a complaint from women who say that they are not always believed. Alternatively, there is a complaint that the police do not always take complaints seriously. The truth is that often the police know that there is no chance of a conviction, for all sorts of reasons. Crucially, an inability to obtain a conviction does not mean that the complainant is lying. It means that formal legal processes are unlikely to produce a satisfactory result. For the officers involved, putting complainants through what is often a harrowing process without a chance of a positive conclusion is a bad idea.

The show also demonstrated the real challenges of performing these investigations.When there is an act of personal violence, there are usually signs. Even historically, there are likely to be medical reports, hospital admissions or doctors notes. When there is damage to property, this is normally visible; in cases of theft, often there is some evidence that a crime has been committed.

The problem with sexual crimes is that there may not always be clear evidence of an offence. In the immediate aftermath of an attack there may be evidence of sexual activity. The problem is that an offence in this case is about consent, something that can be one persons word against another. Proving that consent was not obtained can be complicated, in particular if drugs of any sort were involved.

I should point out at this juncture that I am NOT suggesting for one moment that significant numbers of women lie about being raped or assaulted. I will return to this later, but the issue in this program was about obtaining legal convictions. When I say that "proving consent was not obtained", this is not saying that the women making these claims are lying. It is saying that getting legal proof is complicated - and legal proof requires something more than one persons word against another.

I want to return to an important point made earlier, because there is another facet I want to explore. One woman who had testified about historical abuse found that the particular charge relating to her accusations resulted in an acquittal. Because this was one of a large number of charges, the accused would not have received any different sentence if her charge had been proven. And yet she found the acquittal hurt and disconcerted her. The weight of her attack, which had been reinvigorated by the investigation, was not lifted because he was acquitted. I do feel for her, because what she wanted was not so much the sentence, but the conviction, the proof that she was telling the truth.

And yet she almost certainly was telling the truth - I have no reason to doubt her story. Yet he was acquitted, one presumes because they were not convinced "beyond all reasonable doubt" that he was guilty. The reason here was lack of evidence.

There was another case of a women who claimed she had been raped outside a nightclub. The problems started because she was intoxicated, and could not clearly remember what had happened. Additionally, there was a witness who gave a different account of the events. Finally, they contacted the accused, who gave a different story again. There was also some CCTV footage that supported some aspects of some of the stories and negated others. In particular, the claim from the accused that he had left her happy and content was clearly mistaken.

This case demonstrates the real problem of this type of conviction: there is a lot of evidence that they had sex together, and both accept this. The problem is whether there was consent, and the woman could not be certain due to her intoxicated state. In this case, he was acquitted of the charge.

Here is the point. The legal process seeks an answer to a specific question: is this person guilty of this specific and defined charge beyond all reasonable doubt. In fact, there is a subtle variation on this, because we should add that this guilt or innocence is based on the broad weight of evidence. It is rare in these types of cases that the guilt or innocence is absolutely clear - there is often some conflicting evidence or testimony. Someone can be found guilty even if there seems to be evidence indicating their innocence, that nobody explains or refutes, if the broad weight of evidence is against the accused. The process is not scientific, in that there is no need to explain anomalous results or information.

A verdict of guilty means that the evidence is sufficient that the accused committed an offence. It doesn't mean that they are an evil person, a regular rapist or abuser. It may be that they lose control when they are drunk. It may be that they misunderstand the signals. This is not to dismiss the crime of rape, it is to say that the action is not necessarily premeditated, that the convicted person may not have realised that they were doing something wrong at the time. It is a simple statement that, all the evidence taken into account, that act constitutes rape (or abuse or whatever). Let me be clear: the simple message is "don't rape women", but maybe I would add "don't rape women, even accidentally".

A verdict of innocence - whether this goes to a court of law or not - does not mean that the person did not commit a crime. It means that there is insufficient weight of evidence that the accused committed that specific crime. It may be that the accused is lying about what happened, but it may also be that their memory and recollection of the events are flawed - memory is imperfect. Again, this is not to excuse the person, it is that there is insufficient evidence from a legal perspective to convict.

As a final comment, if a woman feels that they have been raped, then I am minded to accept that as fact. Rape is an act on the mind as much as anything else, and the sense of having been violated is sufficient for me to accept their perspective. However, this doesn't mean that somebody else is (legally) guilty of rape. It means that someone else has not listened or taken notice sufficiently. Somebody has done something wrong. But what they have done wrong may not constitute a legal definition of "rape".