IN DEPTH: Expert Warns Right to Fair Trial in Rape Cases Being ‘Slowly and Gradually Eroded’

'Feminist mafia' pushing so-called rape myths, says researcher

A model poses as a complainant waiting to seen by a doctor at a specialist rape clinic in Kent, England, on Jan. 31, 2007. Gareth Fuller/PA

An expert on miscarriages of justice has claimed changes to the law risk undermining the right to a fair trial for men accused of rape and other sexual offences.

The Law Commission is conducting a review of the trial process for prosecutions of rape and other sexual offences in England and Wales—with submissions due by the end of September—while the Scottish government has already proposed piloting juryless trials for rape north of the border.

On Monday, speaking to the House of Commons Justice Committee, Professor Penney Lewis from the Law Commission said they had been asked to conduct a review by the government but had added their own “radical options,” one of which was looking at juryless trials in England and Wales.

She also floated the idea of rape complainants prerecording their evidence-in-chief and their cross-examination by defence counsel ahead of trials.

Such an approach would prevent the judge or the jurors from asking questions to the complainant, as would be the case with a live witness.

Michael Naughton, a professor at the University of Bristol Law School, told The Epoch Times, “For the past 30 years there has been this slow but gradual erosion of all the safeguards that protect against wrongful convictions.”

Naughton, an expert on false allegations and wrongful convictions who has won numerous awards and prizes for his work, said: “Historically, all alleged criminal offences are treated the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re accused of murder, or shoplifting, or theft.”

‘Erosion of the Presumption of Innocence’

He said: “The person who’s making the allegation—the claim that you’ve committed this alleged offence—has to have some evidence to prove that, because you’re presumed innocent. But because of the moral panic around paedophilia, rape, and child sexual abuse, it’s almost like there’s been no pushback on the erosion of the presumption of innocence.”

In October 2016 footballer Ched Evans was found not guilty of rape after a retrial and over the next two years three more men were acquitted amid great publicity—Liam Allan, Samson Makele, and Isaac Itiary.

Footballer Ched Evans—who was acquitted of rape following a retrial—playing for Preston North End in Preston, England on April 15, 2022. Lewis Storey/Getty Images

Allan walked free after a computer disk containing 40,000 phone messages emerged and showed the alleged victim had fantasised about rape and pestered him for “casual sex.”

When Sir Keir Starmer—now leader of the Labour Party—was director of public prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service, he introduced a new “merits-based approach” to rape cases.

Prosecutors were told to judge a case on the “merits” of the evidence, rather than thinking about what chance, in percentage terms, there was of it leading to a conviction.

CPS Introduces ‘Believing the Victim’ Policy

But Starmer also introduced a policy of always “believing the victim,” which Naughton said could lead to wrongful convictions.

He said a good analogy was the recent Post Office scandal, in which 700 branch managers were wrongly accused of false accounting between 2000 and 2014 owing to a glitch in computer software called Horizon.

Naughton said, “People committed suicide, marriages broke up, people went to prison, and all of those things were because there was no open-mindedness, no objectivity to think, hold on there are thousands of people saying we haven’t done anything wrong.”

An undated image of Eleanor Williams, who was jailed for eight-and-a-half years at Preston Crown Court in England on March 14, 2023. Cumbria Police/PA

It is extremely rare for a woman to be prosecuted for lying about rape.

In March, 22-year-old Eleanor Williams was jailed for eight-and-a-half years after she went onto Facebook and claimed she had been groomed and sexually abused by a gang.

A month earlier Sophie James, 26, was jailed for 14 months after she falsely claimed a food delivery driver had forced his way into her home in Swindon and raped her.

But Naughton said the fact so many rape complaints did not end up being prosecuted did not mean all those women were lying but that their version of events was not up to the standard of proof, for a number of reasons.

Naughton said a lobby had been pushing a certain narrative—that too many guilty men were not being charged, and that, of those who were taken to trial, too many were being acquitted because juries believed in the so-called rape myths.

In June 2022, the shadow justice minister Ellie Reeves accused the government of “decriminalising rape” after it emerged prosecutions were at a record low level.

In 2021 police in England and Wales recorded 67,125 allegations of rape—the highest since records began in 1856—but between Oct. 1, 2020 and Sept. 30, 2021 only 1.3 percent of rape allegations resulted in a suspect being charged.

‘Giving Rapists the Green Light’

But Paula Wright, an evolutionary psychologist and independent researcher, said feminists and other ideologues were misrepresenting the statistics about rape convictions in the UK.

In a blog on the subject, Wright wrote: “The actual rape conviction rate in the UK is not 2 percent but 62 percent ... Feminists reach the shockingly low figure by conflating all complaints made to the police with all eventual convictions. If other crimes were calculated this way, the overall conviction rate for all crimes would hover around 6 percent. Yet, only rape is calculated this way.”

Cheryl Thomas, a professor of judicial studies at University College London, told the Justice Committee on Monday: “It’s widely reported that the conviction rate cases is 1.6 percent. Now, I think if I was to be a witness, I would be very reluctant to proceed with the case. But that’s not actually the conviction rate.”

“If someone goes to trial and gives evidence in the case, if it’s an adult, female, it’s up to 67 percent, and if it’s children, it’s up in the high 70s,” she added.

Liam Allan—who was acquitted of rape in December 2017 after 40,000 text messages emerged to prove his innocence—pictured in London on Jan. 30, 2018. David Mirzoeff/PA Images

Wright said the pattern of exaggerating the number of women who were raped and misrepresenting the numbers who were convicted was a deliberate tactic by the feminist lobby.

She said: “Feminist studies show that by emphasising women’s vulnerability, and men’s aggression, and upping women’s fear in society actually increases feminist identity. So by lying about rape statistics, and college rape, and rape culture and all of these kinds of things, it actually increases feminist uptake.”

Wright told The Epoch Times: “Another side effect that feminists seem to be ignorant about ... is the fact that not only are you telling women they’re not going to get justice 99 percent of the time, but you’re telling rapists ‘you’re going to get away with it 99 percent of the time.’ They’re giving rapists the green light.”

Are Rape Myths a Myth?

So what of the so-called rape myths?

Outlining the terms of their review, the Law Commission states, “Academic research shows that some individuals hold misconceptions about sexual harm ('rape myths’) in relation to the credibility, behaviour and experience of complainants in cases involving a sexual offence.”

It goes on to say, “It is unclear how extensive such misconceptions might be amongst the public and how much impact they can have on the juror’s task of evaluating the evidence.”

The so-called rape myths include:

• Rapes are mainly perpetrated by strangers
• Rapes always involve physical force
• Rape will always be physically or verbally resisted
• Victims always report their rape immediately
• That allegations of rape are “commonly false”

In 2018 a petition, signed by 16,445 people, demanded the government introduce “compulsory training about rape myths” for jurors.

But Thomas later published research based on the questioning of 1,175 jurors at six courts in four different parts of the country between January 2017 and October 2019.

‘Hardly Any Jurors Believe [Rape] Myths’

In her 2020 study (pdf), Thomas wrote: “Hardly any jurors believe what are often referred to as widespread myths and stereotypes about rape and sexual assault. The overwhelming majority of jurors do not believe that rape must leave bruises or marks, that a person will always fight back when being raped, that dressing or acting provocatively or going out alone at night is inviting rape, that men cannot be raped or that rapes will always be reported immediately.”

Thomas also pointed out the 2018 petition had “provided no references that corroborated any of the statistics cited.”

She said: “The petition simply provided links to a Rape Crisis webpage describing different rape myths, a general Wikipedia page about rape myths, and a BBC news story about a Scottish public information campaign about sexual violence. None of these sources cited any of the statistics or claims made in the petition.”

But during Monday’s hearing before the Justice Committee, the Law Commission’s Penney Lewis told MPs, “I think the evidence that there are rape myths is fairly incontrovertible.”

Wright said a “feminist mafia” within the establishment is pushing the rape myths narrative.

She said, “They didn’t get the answer they wanted from Thomas’s report so now they are pushing for no-jury trials where the judge has had specialist training in feminist theory.”

The Trauma of Giving Evidence

Wright said it was often stated that rape complainants should not be put through the trauma of having to testify live in court.

But she said, “Murder trials are going to be traumatic for the witnesses, you cannot stop that kind of trauma in these kinds of life-changing crimes.”

Naughton now runs the False Allegations Forum, an umbrella organisation which speaks up for people who believe they were wrongly accused or convicted.

An undated image of Sean Parker—who was convicted of rape in March 2018 but maintains his innocence—in Sussex, England. Sean Parker

One of those is Sean Parker, 47, the former director of a music venue in West Sussex, who was jailed for eight-and-a-half years for rape and sexual assault, although he is appealing against his conviction.

Parker said the rape allegation stemmed from a drunken one-night stand and he remains adamant about his innocence.

Empathy Versus Objectivity

He said that in recent years there has been a mainstream narrative which has prioritised empathy for rape victims over objectivity and he feels it has harmed the criminal justice system.

In a summary of the Law Commission’s consultation document (pdf) it insists defendants have a fundamental right to a fair trial.

It goes on to say, “However, the right is not protected by a scepticism underpinned by myths and misconceptions about rape that have no evidential foundation.”

“Rather, the right to a fair trial is protected by rigorous, substantive and procedural safeguards that enable a defendant to present and test evidence that is relevant to the facts in issue, without unnecessary trauma to the complainant,” it adds.

Parker told The Epoch Times: “If you’re going to make a serious allegation, because rape is obviously serious, it’s the worst one out there, it’s terrible. So if you’re going to make that allegation then you have to be prepared for a little analysis of the situation.”

He added: “If you’re going to use bad character evidence against the defendant, then you need to check what the private life of the complainant is, otherwise it’s half a story. You can’t you can’t expect the jury to judge on half the story.”

New Offence of ‘Deceit Sex’ Proposed

Another organisation, the Criminal Law Reform Now Network (CLRNN), wants to go further than the Law Commission proposals and create a new offence (pdf) of “deceit sex.”

A person would be guilty of the offence in cases where they were “inducing a person to engage in sexual activity by deception.”

It follows the case of Jason Lawrance, who was convicted in July 2019 of raping a woman twice—although she had consented to sex—because he had lied about having had a vasectomy. In July 2020 the Court of Appeal quashed his convictions and said lying about being infertile before sex was not rape.

Paul Jarvis, a London barrister and the CLRNN’s committee project lead, said: “The need for legislative reform is pressing. The current law is failing victims and creating unnecessary confusion in the courts. Our recommendation provides a clear solution to the problem, providing a bespoke offence to target a bespoke criminal wrong, whilst leaving the other provisions of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 unaffected.”

But Naughton said: “Whatever good intentions may lie behind the proposal to create a new offence of deceit sex, the proposal is contentious in that it looks at the issue from a one-sided perspective. I have no doubt that cases could be cherry-picked where women have been deceitful to men who only learn about the deceit post-sexual relations.”

“As it stands, the proposal for a new crime of deceit sex follows the general trend over the last 25–30 years to erode a raft of historical and longstanding safeguards aimed at protecting innocent victims, mainly men, from false allegations and wrongful convictions,” Naughton added.