EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In today society female rape victims are often blamed for the accident because of the way they were dressed or the way there were acting towards their molesters. A 2012 report conducted by Mumsnet, a survey conducted on more than 1,609 females found out that almost 83 percent of women do not report to have been sexually assaulted to the police.
The victims did not report the incident because did not have trust in the legal system or that they felt to ashamed to talk about the incident with relatives or friend out of fear to be judge because of the way they were dressed or how much they were drinking when the rape occurred. Most victims have no trust in the police and in juridical system. This proposal aim is to create social awareness in the community, its aim is to reassure women that if they do report the crime they will be assisted in each step and won’t be judge or criticize for what happened.
The aim of the study is improve the way police deal with rape cases with a particular focus on female victims. Having specialised police training which target is to implement the knowledge of sexual offending is very big importance in helping reducing the high attrition rates of sexual offences performance in almost every professional domain (Nickerson, 1998). This proposal aim is to prove that police investigation and sense of confidence and attribution of the victim responsibility can be improved with an intensive class/online training.
Like proven in a previous Australian study conducted by “Improving police officers’ perceptions of sexual offending through Intensive training”. The aim of the proposal is to create more social awareness about rape topic and help in braking myths about why people do get raped. Although there are programmes already in place which are meant to help the policing of rape cases, more emphasis should be applied to female rape cases and aim to have a workshop/session based solely on the approach of female rape cases.
Programme already in place, fails to have a specific workshop focused on policing of female rape victims, this proposal addresses this. The aim of this proposal is to build on this, and improve the policing on rape cases whilst the government gives access to vital help. BACKGROUND TO THIS ISSUE Legal and medical definitions of rape tends to varies, rape is defined as an oral, anal, or vaginal penetration that involves threats or are forced against someone unwilling.
Penetration, whether wanted or not, is anyway considered rape if victims are younger than the age of consent. Psychological symptoms of rape tend to be more potentially prominent than physical. Many rape female victims often encounter a feeling of fear, nightmares, anger, frustration, they feel embarrassed, guilty and shameful about what happened to them, and fearful of people judgment. In today society, women are undergoing a series of sexual assaults and humiliations, but rarely seek for help.
Victims often feel ashamed, and try to hide the incident from loved family members or from friend. Society held a high range of misconception and myths about the reason why women get raped. Society has been though to think that women who get sexual assaulted often lie about it to hide the fact that they consented wilily to have sex. There is also this big misconception that sexual assaulted are often committed by strangers and never by loved ones and that women are to be blamed for the assault because of the way were dressed or their act.
Many women expressed a lack of faith in the police system and having the fear of re-victimisation by the criminal justice system and the emotional stress of going through a prosecution It is only by bringing these issues out into the open and discussing them, that we can hope to change society’s attitudes so that male rape is seen as the same violent crime as female rape. Rape and Sexual Assault are not about sex or a sexual relationship. Often offenders aim is to have power, control and manipulate their victims. Figures from a 2012 and 2013 on the National Statistic UK revealed that more than 1. million women suffered domestic abuse and that more than over 330,000 women were sexually assaulted that year. IMPLEMENTED The government has allocated ? 40 million in funding until the year 2015(GOV. UK) to support national helpline and support services dealing with rape.
The government also lunch an Abuse campaign on MTV and important television programmes like Hollyoaks to create social awareness about rape. The government also founds 87 independent sexual advisors to ensure that sexual offender’s victims have the proper access to specialist care. Pledging ? 1. million for 3 years from 2012 to improve services for young people suffering sexual violence in major urban areas. Yet the police. Although police figures released National statistic reveals that the number of rapes cases reported has increased by 29% and police keep encouraging victims to come states that forward and report the rape yet the still low convictions after reporting crimes put off most victims to go and report the crime. Lydia Smith from the International business times reports (2014) that statics shows that UK rapes convictions are among the lowest in the Europe.
The statics showed that only 1,700 rapist were convicted for the crime despite the fact that more than 12,000 men and women are been raped each year in around UK and Scotland (statics reported by the ministry of justice). Katie Russel who works for rape crisis although the government efforts to improve and create awareness to improve and help rape victims, more need to be done. Katie Russel believes that the main problem is the number of victims who drop out from their claims. Russel affirms that the problem is that victims often do not report the ffence afraid of police officers judgment and of fear of not being believed.
Another problem Russel reports is the amount of time the criminal justice system takes to give a sentence. PROPOSAL FOR CHANGE This proposal of change is to help the way police deal with rape victims, the programme will be implemented during work hours and will be flexible to the officers. Police officers will be able to deal with sensitive cases more efficiently and will therefore face less criticism, especially in terms of the criticisms they face towards how they deal with female rape (which is often affected by myth).
The programme will be valued and will be seen as a positive within the police force. The programme will also allow the victim to feel more comfortable around officers, and feel less judge. Victims will also be given the option of choosing the gender of police officer dealing with their case. This proposal also aim in creating public awareness by using social media such as Facebook, twitter and Instagram and create account to discuss the topic and educating the population and having qualified operators replying to public enquiries.
This proposal base most of it ideas on an Australian article written by Elli Darwinkel and Martine Powel: “Improving police officers perceptions of sexual offending through Intensive training”. The aim of their research was to demonstrate that with an intensive class-room based training is was possible to change the dynamic with which police officers deal with rape victims. The research was conducted on a group of 77 participants who were all Australian police officers.
The training was mandatory and participants in order to become special investigators in sexual offending, needed to complete the training programme. While the course was mandatory, participation in the research evaluation component was voluntary (all professionals agreed to be involved. The study used a pre-post training design, all participants had to engaged in a 4 weeks training programme and be able to complete a questionnaire which assessed the participant before and after the training programme was completed. Questionnaire included a total of 125 mock rape scenario.
After reading each mock scenario, participants were asked to answer a series of four standard questions and instructed that there were no right or wrong answers, judgments were subjective. The details of the training and assessment tasks are described below. This is the first study to demonstrate that police investigators’ confidence in case authorizations and attributions of victim responsibility can be shifted as a result of intensive classroom-based training in the dynamics of sexual offending. The training was associated with changes in both attribution of victim responsibility and case authorization.
Specifically, attributions of victim responsibility were lower, and perceptions of likely case authorization were higher post training, particularly in those cases where evidence in relation to the crime was ambiguous. Overall, the factors listed to support the case authorization decisions reflected a better understanding of the dynamics of sexual offending post training. Officers showed a greater consideration of the offending relationship and grooming processes, and they made fewer negative comments in relation to the victims’ behaviour and the lack of corroborative evidence.
This programme also aims in creating public awareness about the topic. Each year the government spend huge amount of money in educating the population about, drugs, illegal activities, sexual abuse and sexual assault. Some of the problem that this proposal face is to give a solution in how to change gender role, in order to be able to help more females in asking for help and in understanding that just because they had to endure a sexual assaults does not make them responsible The training will be conducted within a large group of officers and they can whether hose if to attend classes or either to do an online training programme.
Officers will be accessed with a mock rape scenario text before the starting of the training in other to be able to judge their level of competence, they will also be accessed after the training programme and they have to pass a mock rape scenario text in other to be able assist rape victims. It’s important to keep in mind that with this training programme officers who fail their text will not be allowed to deal with rape victims. The training will be mandatory and officers will have t
