I work in the legal field and I have heard many times that it’s difficult to prosecute these cases, but it’s a different story when it comes with defense attorneys. Defense attorneys always say that it’s nearly impossible to win these kinds of cases. Why is it like that?
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Rape Shield Laws make it more difficult to defend one’s self against sexual assault charges than to defend against other crimes. We spent a long time treating sexual assault the same as any other crimes where the defendant can enter evidence about the victims character and behavior that was suggestive of them having consented; basically the defendant could say she was wearing such and such clothes, saying/doing such and such promiscuous behavior, and generally try and portray the victim as a whore so that the jury would conclude that she’s the type of girl that fools around a lot and so she probably did this time too and the defense would win.
The added trauma of being made out to be slutty in court prevented women from coming forward in SA cases so perpetrators went free. Then many states passed laws making that kind of evidence inadmissible so now it’s very difficult to make a defense given very little evidence being allowed into court for the defense.
I’m not sure, but I’d guess the difficulty prosecuting has to do with the very long history of misogyny/patriarchy in the U.S. (globally really) which causes people not to trust women and not to take SA seriously enough generally (hence why we passed Rape Shield Laws to try and balance it out).
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