The first academic deep dive into CPS case files reveals bleak examples of prosecutors dismissing alleged crimes by younger suspects against younger victims, using victimblaming language and raising eyebrows about non-conventional sexual practices.
One opines that a victim would not have exchanged text messages with her alleged abuser "in a million years"; another thinks teenage girls alleging nonpenetrative sexual offences are "doing a disservice" to the cases that really needed looking into.
These kinds of views were meant to be a thing of the past. In 2020 the government commissioned its rape review to examine a collapse in rape prosecutions - which in 2016-17 stood at 5,190 and fell 60% in four years to 2,102 in 2019-20, even as the number of reports to police increased.
This story is from the March 11, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the March 11, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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