How come sexual assault is one of hardest crime to prosecute vs every other crime?
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So I have a perspective on this. I was recently on a jury for a child sexual abuse trial. Now this was different because it was children so the question of consent was out the window, but the defense was “no I didn’t” and the only witnesses were the two victims, now teenagers. These were crimes that, by design, happened in private.
Now, of 12 jurors, every single one of us thought that this abuse actually happened. But on our first vote 3 of the 12 were unsure or leaning toward reasonable doubt. Because, in their view, the only evidence was the testimony of two people who were children at the time. Could they be lying? Could they be being manipulated? Have misunderstood what happened?
In the end we did convict, because we didn’t think it was reasonable that those two girls would come up with the story and stick with it through a tortuous process of hearings and a trial if it wasn’t actually true. But it took 2 days of debate to get everyone to that conclusion. If there had been any way at all to cast doubt on their story, it would have been tough to convict.
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