After a year in the job, Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, is facing her sternest test yet. Responding to justified public concern about the way police forces and prosecutors up and down the country have been failing to deal with rape cases, she previously pledged to stop the drift and to impose an ethos that could win back public confidence. That task becomes much more difficult today.
The case of Eleanor de Freitas, who killed herself days before she was due to face trial accused of making up a rape allegation, appears to contain all of the components that make the issue of prosecutorial mishandling so explosive.
De Freitas reported the allegation to the police, who were unable to build a case sufficient to predict that it would be successful at trial. She was herself vulnerable, suffering from bipolar disorder.
But while that fact might have afforded her some legitimate measure of protection, the weight of the system appears to have been deployed against her. When the case against her attacker was dropped, he apparently spent £200,000 pursuing a private prosecution, which was then taken over – on the public’s behalf – by the crown prosecution service. That seems questionable but there are question marks too about the CPS’s stewardship of the case against De Freitas.
This morning her father David, struggling for composure on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, claimed the CPS failed to disclose in good time material that might have assuaged Eleanor’s fear about the ordeal she would face in court. She was a bright and clever young woman, he said. She had apparently been told by police that there was no evidence that her claim of rape had been fabricated. In the end, the pursuit of her “was soul destroying and it ground her down”, her father said.
Details may yet emerge that reasonably explain the conduct of the prosecuting authorities. Saunders, realising the gravity of the case, has promised to personally lead the investigation and to meet Eleanor’s relatives. She is right to lead from the front.
For the failure of the police and the prosecutorial bureaucracy to develop uniform, humane and effective systems for dealing with rape is an ongoing, increasingly visible scandal.
This summer we learned that that the number of successful rape prosecutions, had dropped after five successive years of increases. In 2007-08, 58% of cases brought to trial were successfully convicted. By 2011-12, that figure had risen to 63%. Since then, it has declined to 60. The number of cases referred to the CPS by the police also fell in 2012-13 despite the number of rapes being reported rising by 30%.
There are good practices, but they are not being evenly applied. With every wave of public anxiety there are improvements and then – when the pressure is off – there is regression. And the victims are women who claim the protection to which they are entitled from egregious assault.
Bureaucracies will always make mistakes. It can never be less than a challenge shaping the system so it is able to respond to the varying needs of individuals. Just today there is the example of the Home Office castigated by business secretary Vince Cable for its plan to deport a vulnerable man with Downs Syndrome to Lebanon.
Bureaucracies elevate the needs of the system above the needs of the individual. That is why those within them need to be constantly reminded that their systems cannot be left to fly on autopilot.
Humans must make humane decisions, and public prosecutors must prosecute reflecting the priorities and common sense of the public. Alison Saunders should reiterate those facts to her subordinates today.
