Christine Thomas: Rape on Trial

[Socialism Today, No 14, December 1996, p. 31-32]

Carnal Knowledge – Rape on Trial, by Sue Lees. Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1996, £20hbk. Reviewed by Christine Thomas.

In August this year Julia Mason endured six days of cross-examination in court by the man who had raped her. Waiving anonymity in order to speak out she said ‚The filth and degradation of my ordeal was replayed in violent and vivid detail. He was reliving the rape‘.

Julia’s case provoked calls for a review of the legal system and the way that rape trials are conducted. Author Sue Lees attended several trials when researching this book. Reading it, it is clear that cross-examination by on trial defendants is just one of the many injustices that rape victims have to face. Lees concludes that the judicial system is heavily weighted in favour of the defendant and suggests many reforms she feels could help redress the balance.

Between 1985 and 1993 the number of women reporting rape doubled. In the same period the conviction rate fell from 24% to 10%, despite advances in DNA techniques which meant that more rapists were being identified. Since many cases don’t enter Home Office Statistics because they are ’no crimed‘ by the police, the official conviction rate is nearer 6%.

Does this mean that 94% of men accused of rape are completely innocent and that women in their thousands are making false allegations? That’s the impression that some newspapers give in their coverage of high profile acquittals like that of the student Austen Donnellan and Red Dwarf actor Craig Charles. After a succession of such acquittals some voices were calling for anonymity to be extended to the accused to protect them against women who falsely cry rape.

In 1993 during the trial of Matthew Kydd, a student at the University of East Anglia, even The Guardian had the headline ‚Student cleared of raping ’slut of the year‘.‘ In his summing up judge Michael Hyam said, ‚experience has shown that complainants make-up such allegations for various reasons and sometimes for no reason at all‘. But experience has shown no such thing. A study by the New York sex crimes Analysis Unit found that just 2% of reported rapes are false allegations, the same percentage as for any other criminal offence. Yet it’s still a widely held view that women lie about rape, because they feel guilty or ashamed about haying sex or are out to get revenge. It has even been suggested that women cry rape in order to cover up coming home late! As long as such misconceptions and prejudices exist (reinforced by judges and the media) rape victims are unlikely to get justice in the courts.

Lees explains how common rape myths can influence juries in rape trials. The idea, for example, that a woman must have been asking for it, or contributes in some way to the attack; that ’no‘ really means ‚yes‘ or that rape is due to the irresistible urges of male sexuality rather than an act of sexual power and violence. The incorrect notion that the typical rapist is a stranger (and a psychopathic one), and that rape by a stranger is more serious than by someone known to the victim, holds great sway. In fact the majority of women are raped by someone they know. Phrases like ‚date rape‘ trivialise acquaintance rape. In Carnal Knowledge victims explain the trauma of being raped by someone they knew and trusted.

Sue Lees proposes the training and accountability of judges and the wider use of expert witnesses in court in order to dispel dangerous myths about rape and rapists.

Many women have described the ordeal of going into court as being raped for a second time. Because the victim is also a witness she has no access to a lawyer before or during the trial. The prosecution counsel represents the state and is therefore supposed to be impartial. From her experience of rape trials Lees shows how the prosecution often fails to ask probing and relevant questions when cross examining defendants.

The Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976 was supposed to limit evidence about a woman’s sexual history being brought up in court. In reality it is left to the judges‘ discretion and according to Lees judges regularly permit a woman’s sexual past to be questioned by the defence. It’s in the interest of the defence to destroy the ‚credibility‘ of the victim/witness and irrelevant sexual history is one way of doing so. The defence also has access to the complainants medical records and can bring up things like past abortions to try and undermine her character and credibility in court.

As Lees explains, questions about the sexual history of the accused are rarely asked; his attitude towards women, for example, is unlikely to be questioned, despite it being extremely relevant to rape trials.

The prospect of a gruelling ordeal in court (and little prospect of conviction) is one of the reasons why so few rapes are reported in the first place.

The prospect of a gruelling ordeal in court (and little prospect of conviction) is one of the reasons why so few rapes are reported in the first place. One US study carried out in 1992 found that only 16% of rapes were actually reported. This means that a conviction rate of 6% grossly overestimates the number of rapists who are eventually found guilty. Most disturbing of all, Lees shows how attitudes about rape and the current legal system are allowing serial rapists to escape justice time and time again.

Overall, Carnal Knowledge is rather disorganised, leaping from one subject to another and then back again. This makes it a bit repetitive and as is often the case with books like this you feel the author could have said what she had to say in half as many words.

Nevertheless, Lees provides very useful up to date information about rape and rape trials and the concluding chapter contains a comprehensive list of proposed reforms of the criminal justice system. She also shows how backward attitudes in society regarding female and male behaviour underpin rape and make it extremely difficult for the victims of rape to secure justice under the current system.