How come sexual assault is one of hardest crime to prosecute vs every other crime?
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1. Victim’s desire to come forward due to the trauma and perceived embarrassment
2. Collection and preservation of evidence (often due to number one and the delay it often causes)
3. He said/she said
4. Society kind of sucks at handling this appropriately and delicately (too hard on the victim, too soft on perpetrator)
5. Double standards regarding Men and Women
6. Honestly, the list goes on ad nauseum
One of the biggest factors in a case like that is whether or not the victim consented, and that can be incredibly hard to prove without any physical evidence of resistance.
Sexual Assaults don’t generally happen in a public area with lots of witnesses who can say for sure the victim wasn’t interested in the perpetrator. Usually they happen behind closed doors, or in an out of the way place where no one would catch them in the act. But the same can also be said about consensual sex acts. While many victims can, and do, fight back leaving physical marks on their attacker, these heal over time and unless the suspect is caught before that happens, you’ll never know they were fought against.
This means a sexual assault case ends up being one persons word against another. As a rule, courts tend to avoid throwing a potentially innocent person into jail even if that means a criminal goes free, so the case gets dismissed.
It all comes down to proof. You have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that So-and-so is the person that assaulted the other person and if there’s no DNA evidence from fingernails (defensive) or rape kit, or there’s no video evidence then you have no concrete proof and it devolves into a circumstantial case of “he said; she said”
Then you factor in the social and cultural stigmatisms that exist and you get victims not always willing to fight the fight.
There are also a not insignificant amount of sexual assault allegations that have been false so there’s little trust in the system.
Your assumption that sexual assault are harder to prosecute is hard to back with certainty. That’s what a lot of people think, but depending on how you look at the numbers you can get different answers.
If we take this [website](https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system) for example, we could say that out of 1000 sexual assault only 25 goes to jail, but only 20 out of 1000 robberies goes to jail and 33 out of assault and battery goes to jail. The rate are similar.
But on the same site they present that a lot less people are reporting sexual assault to the police than other crimes. Meaning that 5.2% of reported assault goes to jail, while 3.2% of robberies and 8% of sexual assault.
I’m sure we can find other data that would contradict these, meaning that making a conclusion is not an easy thing to do and that people will disagree no matter what. From what I can see, most crimes are very hard to prosecute.
That said, you can make the conversation even more complex. We can talk about severity of the crime, what percentage of sexual assault are a clap on the ass vs a rape, and how many robberies are a kid stealing a candy bar vs an armed robbery. What are the % of false report, is there more of those in sexual assault or robberies? It’s a very complicated subject.
Because you don’t just have to prove that an action occurred (i.e. the two parties had sex or one party touched another party breasts) but also have to prove that the other party did not consent.
Sex and sexual contact are normal parts of society. Its not like robbery where you can simply prove that one party has a stolen watch from a stranger or assault where you simply have to prove that one party hit the other party. You have to prove that the action occurred and the alleged victim did not consent to it.
A common defense will be the defendant claiming that it was consensual. Unless it was recorded or witnessed by a third party, it can be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt which version of events is accurate. Sure, in cases of a home invasion where theres a front door that’s been kicked in, lack of consent can be reasonably inferred. It’s more challenging to prove when two parties go out on a date and go back to one of their places and the next morning one party is saying they had consensual sex that was rough because that’s what the other party said they liked and the other party is claiming they said no and it was rape. If there’s no recording of the sexual act and no independent witness to corroborate one person’s account, its hard to prove who is telling the truth.
And remember that our judicial systems checks and balances are designed to keep innocent people out of jail, not to put guilty people in jail. Which is why in order to get a criminal conviction, you have to unanimously convince a jury of your peers beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty. If even one out of the twelve jurors isn’t convinced that it happened the way you claim it happened, you get q mistrial.
Lets ELI5 this shit:
Me and you are in the house playing monopoly. I take your Blue buildings from you. You didn’t want to give me these buildings. You go and tell mom that I stole from you. I tell her that I didn’t steal, you gave them to me.
We know that the transaction happened (I got the Blue Buildings), but we don’t know if you gave me the buildings or I took them.
Because Mom (the court) only gives out punishments if she is 99.9% sure a crime actually happened, she won’t give me a punishment, even though it is likely you aren’t lying.
Generally, it’s the burden of proof. I live in the UK, in the UK the criminal burden of proof is reasonable doubt. So if a reasonable person could doubt the assault occurred when considering the evidence, then they need to acquit.
Generally, by the nature of the crime, there’s often little evidence. Usually these things happen in private, and often involve substance use (usually alcohol). Its very difficult to prove something beyond doubt when it’s one person’s word against that of another.
Looking at rape specifically, you’d need to prove that penetrative sex occurred, and that there was no consentat that time. That two things that can be difficult to prove, because often there’s no actual evidence one way or another. Mix in substance use and time between the event and the case, and there’s plenty of room for doubt.
But it’s also important to remember that not guilty isn’t the same as innocent; rarely does a case prove someone innocent. (But this is also why false allegations can be so damaging)
It involves sex which everybody does all the time. So, basically the ‘criminal’ version of the act is identical to the ‘non-criminal’ version of the act (minus the consent of one party) which takes place a gazillion times every day. Also, the non-criminal version of the act is not just fun, but it is one of the most important forces driving the evolution and continuation of human beings.
It usually takes place between two people in private, with no witnesses.
It usually comes down to a disagreement on whether it happened or not, so as a judge or a jury, there is no way to know which of the parties to believe and it is very difficult to put someone in jail or otherwise punished for something that cannot be proven with any degree of certainty.
It is usually between two people that know each other. And people that know each other are also the ones that have sex with each other. It is much easier to convict the very rare ‘stranger who jumps out of the bushes’ and assaults someone.
It’s hard to prove. Hard to get evidence that’ll hold up in court. There’s so much gray area.
Consent is the variable. Consent is often not explicitly communicated; nor is much else, actually. Much of the communication in sexual encounters is body language. Not opining on whether that should be the case, that just is the case most of the time.
Also, consent is not a one-time contractual agreement that fits nicely into a legal framework. It’s a continuous act. Consent is upheld until it is withdrawn. A person could withdraw their consent mid-coitus, and then what? Is the other person to blame for keeping going if that is not communicated? What if it’s communicated but not very clearly?
Furthermore, a person could consent to one type of sexual act, but not another. How is that boundary defined? Can one honestly expect the majority of people to actually do this, to know how to do this, when most people’s communication skills around intimacy are already so poor? I do a bit of this at age 29 with prospective partners, but I have a lot of experience… What about eighteen year olds hooking up at a party?
Finally, most sexual encounters happen in private. Nobody’s recording anything, there are no witnesses, so it’s he said she said. #MeToo asks to “believe women,” which is great for the public because often times people wrongly default to disbelieving women’s stories. However, a court of law can’t just “believe” someone without evidence.
So anecdotal evidence from individual testimonies is often the best thing the court has to go on. And it’s just not enough. Similar testimonies from different people of repeat offenses can make a more compelling case, but even then, it’s all anecdotal.
This becomes especially problematic with high profile cases. For any random man, it’s ridiculous to think that 6 women from his past would team up to make up sexual assault stories to frame him. But for a public official with shady opponents who have multimillion dollar budgets, or for a celebrity… it’s actually quite reasonable to think there could be a conspiracy.
So… I don’t think we’re going to have a world where people record their sex acts in case they need legal protection. I don’t think we’ll have “consent forms” or something you can tap on your phone to say you’re okay with fucking missionary but not doggystyle and no oral. I could see dating apps doing something like that for hookups, but I think that would be a huge, dystopian overreach into people’s private lives and frankly they probably wouldn’t want to take on the liability anyway.
I do think we should continue to normalize asking for consent, reaffirming consent, communicating about boundaries and expectations. That’s not a legal solution, but I think it will go a LONG WAY.
It’s down to the fact that the only defining characteristic differentiating “rape” and “rough sex” is consent. Consent leaves no physical evidence, and most people aren’t raping others in public.
This means most rape cases are “He said, she said” cases, with little to no way of telling whether this was a crime, or someone trying to get back at someone else. Not to mention that whatever few pieces of evidence could exist are typically quick to expire.
When courts are given a choice between letting a rapist walk, and ruining an innocent person’s life, they choose the latter. This makes rape an incredibly difficult thing to prove outside of certain circumstances
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