Florida State University: Burden of Rape Falls on Accusers Says NYT
There appears to be “a pattern to the handling of sexual assault complaints by Florida State [University] students”—namely, that unless an accuser directly asks police to continue the investigation (even after she has already filed a police report and been examined by medical personnel), the police will stop looking into the allegations, even deeming the alleged victim “uncooperative” in some cases, claims the New York Times.
The report says the burden for proving the crime lies squarely on the accuser, even though victims who feel no one will believe them are especially likely to back down when questioned whether they want to continue, the Times notes. “In the guise of seeking the victim’s consent to the investigation, she’s actually being bullied out of it,” says the executive director of a local nonprofit.
Procedures for looking into the university’s sexual assault incidents have come under increasing scrutiny after star quarterback Jameis Winston was accused of raping a fellow student in 2012; she says that investigators “abandoned” her case, CBS reports. The Times found that investigation was riddled with errors.
The new Times report indicates that other women’s cases have been similarly disregarded after they expressed uncertainty to police about prosecuting or how to proceed next. “If a victim comes in and reports a violent crime, I don’t think it’s appropriate to then say … ‘Are you sure you want to go forward with this?'” says one of Florida’s chief assistant attorneys. “The appropriate thing to do is to assume by her being there, making the report, that she does want an investigation and to proceed with it accordingly.” (Read the entire Times article here.)
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If someone is raped they have been cynically and horrifically abused in a way that few of us can even begin to contemplate.
I am slightly concerned that the ‘accused’ is often named whilst the ‘accuser’ is rarely named but, ultimately, it is a crime of such heinous proportions that protecting the ‘accuser’ has to be paramount.
Perhaps not naming the accused until or unless found guilty would be a sensible course of action too?
Our system of justice in Blighty has been found horrendously wanting lately in places like Rotherham where Asian men have been raping under age white girls with seeming impunity for many years.
Perhaps some of those ‘in power’ haven’t quite grasped the concept yet that rape is not a good thing?