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Abstract

Sexual violence is an extremely pervasive and highly prevalent crime within both contemporary and historical society, encompassing numeral sexually motivated infringements including sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual molestation and rape. Rape is a crime of extreme power and dominance, catalysing a myriad of psychological and physical ailments for the victim. Within contemporary England the offence itself and correlated transgressions are a large social problem which is shrouded by silence, confusion and taboo. Through its scale, ravishment and deleterious nature, detrimental pressure is placed on not only our justice system but concurrently those universally to ensure that accusations of rape are handled in the most appropriate and effective manner.
This literature review summarises and critically evaluates existing academic research exploring the specific juridical complications faced by the justice system when referring to accusations of rape. This dissertation explores some pivotal complications where legal reforms, judicial processes and social constructions have rarely materialised into tangible benefits or success for the majority of rape complainants, focusing on the nature of rape crime, socially and institutionally ingrained rape myths, the treatment of complainants, smidgen of admissible evidence and consent. These are canvassed with specific reference to England and Wales, South Africa and Sweden demonstrating the global barriers to effective reporting, prosecution and conviction.
The key findings of this dissertation highlight that rape is an extremely complex and abysmally defined concept globally, imposing highly complicated challenges within the justice process and the traditional modes of criminal investigation, consequently ensuing a poorly synchronised result in terms of sentencing, attrition, conviction and reporting rates worldwide. It has concurrently recommended areas for improvement where increasing educative awareness, equalising the ratio of gendered police officers, restricting defence mechanisms as well as introducing new more stringent criminal offences, may all inclusively help in increasing rape conviction and decreasing the occurrence of rape within society

Course: Policing and Investigation - BSc (Hons)

Date Deposited: 2021-11-05

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13730.html