Consenting Adults
| Author | David Kirk |
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.2009.73.4.574 |
| Published date | 01 August 2009 |
| Date | 01 August 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Opinion |
OPINION
Consenting Adults
David Kirk*
Director, Fraud Prosecution Service
Walking over the Millennium Bridge the other day I overheard a snippet
of conversation between two young women. One had obviously been
recounting a recent nocturnal tryst which seemed to have ended badly.
The other counselled: ‘You must be careful. Men are so strong, you can’t
stop them’, thus neatly summarising the age-old problem of date rape.
Any man rightly approaches writing about the topic of rape in gen-
eral, and date rape in particular, with a degree of care. It is all too easy to
say something that will either offend, or be misinterpreted, or lead to
career-threatening media reporting, or all of the above. Reasoned debate
gets lost in recriminations about male attitudes towards women, police
indifference to rape complaints, prosecutorial incompetence, and judi-
cial insensitivity. The debate has, however, also been informed by a mass
of recent research, media comment, and by two searching joint reports
by HM Inspectorates of Constabulary and of the CPS, in September 2002
(The Investigation and Prosecution of Cases involving Allegations of Rape in
England and Wales1), and in February 2007 (Without Consent2). One
pressing question which emerges is: why do juries so often acquit in date
rape cases?
The statistics portray a desperately depressing story—it is estimated
that somewhere between 5 per cent and 25 per cent of rapes are
reported to the police, and of those cases where complaints of rape
are made only about 5 per cent end in the conviction of the accused.
That figure has not changed much over the years, although there was an
increase of 41 per cent in the reporting of rape between 2002 and 2005,
and therefore the number of convictions has risen. Only about half of
the cases that reach court result in conviction. About a quarter are
acquitted at the direction of the judge, and a quarter are acquitted by the
jury. Germaine Greer recently complained of the anecdotal evidence
that women jurors were as bad as men in being unimpressed by rape
allegations, and were contributing to the appalling figures.
The measures taken to improve the situation are impressive. The
Sexual Offences Act 2003 provided a clearer definition of consent,
including evidential and conclusive facts to support a presumption of
lack of consent; the police have introduced STOs (specially trained
officers) and EEKs (early evidence kits); SARCs (sexual assault referral
* The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Crown Prosecution Service or the Journal of Criminal Law.
1 Available at http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/sexualoffences/sexual05.htm,
accessed 6 June 2009.
2 Available at http://inspectorates.homeoffice.gov.uk/hmic/inspections/thematic/wc-thematic/,
accessed 6 June 2009.
281The Journal of Criminal Law (2009) 73 JCL 281–283
doi:1350/jcla.2009.73.4.574
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