Interesting long blog on "The Gillen Report" on sexual offences (2018). Makes many timeless points relevant to "rape politics" worldwide on: how the focus in policing can be about getting more convictions; issues about disclosure; “Rape Myths”; Pre-Recorded Cross-Examination; Educating Jurors; etc.

wntk · 2021-02-07T03:09:41+00:00

Extract:

"I dare say that if Max Hill or Sir John Gillen were themselves in the dock (and who knows, they may be one day) they would not be so keen to save their accuser’s blushes at the expense of spending ten years in prison. And Sir John does appear motivated by the same chivalrous sentiment, as in para 10.79,

“Whatever the extent of the information that has to be processed, disclosure should not involve an open-ended trawl of unused material. There are reports in England of unfettered access to highly personal records and data being sought by the police from complainants under threat of the case being dropped. There is no need for a trawl through everything in the life of the complainant. As Dame Vera Baird QC said recently, ‘A criminal case is about what happened, not whether the complainant qualifies for sainthood.’”

Ah, there we have it. The veto on “highly personal records” – the sort of thing which might discuss private issues – like sex, for example. The sort of thing where Ms A might reveal to Ms B in a text that “it wasn’t unconsensual or anything”. Just the sort of thing, in fact, that the shiny new legal representative acting for the accuser might become involved to “advise on whether police were unreasonably seeking complainants to declare excessive amounts of personal data” (para 41). The “unfettered access” which Sir John derides is exactly what prevented innocent men going to prison. And quoting Vera Baird doesn’t help with credibility."

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