A group of high-profile men, including singer Sir Cliff Richard and broadcaster Paul Gambaccini, have launched a campaign to change the law so that people accused of sex crimes would not be named unless they are charged. It is impossible to discuss such a campaign without setting it in the wider context of misconceptions about sexual violence and those who report it; misconceptions that have been particularly widely aired in the aftermath of the recent Ched Evans not-guilty verdict, which saw many make similar calls for anonymity on social media.
Entwined with such demands is the public perception that false rape allegations are common. While there are some allegations which prove false, there are misconceptions about the extent of them. There are widespread stereotypes: of “promiscuous” women who regret sexual activity and “cry rape”, or vindictive women who set out to ruin men’s lives with false accusations, either for money or revenge. Whether intentionally or not, any conversation about anonymity in the judicial process raises the spectre of these figures. In the wake of the Evans verdict, they could clearly be seen in tweets such as: “This confirms that 80% of rape ‘victims’ are just drunk sluts who regret being a whore on a night out,” as well as in the complainant repeatedly being branded a “money-grabbing whore” online.
This betrays a confusion about our legal system: a not-guilty verdict does not mean a complainant lied, but that the alleged offence could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
The waters are further muddied by calls for complainants to be stripped of their anonymity to “level the playing field”, an argument that saw the name of Evans’s accuser shared thousands of times on social media both in the aftermath of the initial case, and after the recent verdict.
Those who claim this is about the verdict should remember near identical abuse after previous trial found Ched Evans guilty #RapeCulture pic.twitter.com/0wSr1NF96Y
— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) October 14, 2016
But such responses completely misunderstand the nature of sexual violence. Since our society heaps shame, stigma and blame on victims, anonymity for complainants is vital to enable people to come forward and report – the most serious sexual offences are already only reported to police in 15% of cases.
When those accused of offences are named, it gives other previously silenced victims the opportunity to come forward. This is particularly pertinent in sexual offence cases, where survivors may often have been groomed, abused and coerced into believing that nobody would believe them – into feeling isolated or blaming themselves.
It would also set a strange precedent to extend anonymity to those accused of sexual offences, while no such anonymity exists for those accused of other crimes, such as murder. It could risk damaging open justice, as an open letter published by the End Violence Against Women Coalition (Evaw) has explained, and as other legal experts concluded after calls for anonymity were last rejected by the government in 2010.
A false allegation of rape is a terrible offence with a devastating impact. But those cases are few and far between. A Crown Prosecution Service review found that in a 17-month period, there were 5,651 prosecutions for rape and 111,891 for domestic violence. During the same period there were 35 prosecutions for making false allegations of rape. Even among that small number of cases, the complainants were often young and vulnerable, including some with mental health difficulties and, in some cases, the person alleged to have made the false report had – in the words of then-director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer – “undoubtedly been the victim of some kind of offence, even if not the one that he or she had reported”.
Now compare those numbers to the 85,000 women raped every year, according to government statistics, roughly 70,000 who don’t feel able to report, and a conviction rate of just 1,070 rapists. Simply put, the number of people whose lives are impacted by false allegations is dwarfed by the number who might be prevented from accessing justice if anonymity were granted to the accused (or denied to the accuser) in such cases.
This doesn’t mean we should shrug our shoulders and ignore the experiences of those such as Richard and Gambaccini. Rather, as Evaw urges, we should focus on the true cause of distress and harm in such cases, which is not our legal system, with its principle of innocent until proven guilty, but a sensationalist media producing deeply unsatisfactory reporting on sexual violence.
This sees those accused of sex offences painted as evil “monsters”; a response that does nothing to help the struggle against sexual violence. Coverage does victims no favours either, from the description of rape in inappropriate and mitigating terms to the portrayal of survivors as either perfect victims or flawed women who brought offences upon themselves. This should be thoroughly investigated and action should be taken to try to resolve these problems. But extending anonymity to those accused of sexual offences is not the answer, and could do great harm to survivors in an area where it is already very hard to achieve justice.
