Stop believing all accusers, top QC warns
THE police policy of ‘believing’ every rape complainant may be fuelling the disclosure scandal, a top QC has said.
Alison Levitt yesterday warned this ‘rigid mindset’ could lead them to miss or even disregard significant material that could clear defendants.
The senior barrister, a former adviser to the Director of Public Prosecutions, said chief officers have been repeatedly warned about this potential bias.
‘It is their duty to investigate anything that leads towards the suspect or leads away from the suspect,’ she said.
‘There are individuals here, both complainants and suspects, who deserve these cases to be given the careful scrutiny they require.’
The policy of believing alleged victims was first introduced in 2014 as part of a report into tackling poor standards of crime recording by Sir Tom Winsor, the chief inspector of constabulary.
He ordered that the ‘presumption that the complainer should always be believed should be institutionalised’.
The policy has become enshrined in procedure, but it was criticised after the disastrous inquiries into the supposed Westminster paedophile ring.
Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe and retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques, who reviewed the investigations, said the stance should be dropped to ensure police are neutral.
Mrs Levitt warned yesterday that police may not ‘realise the significance’ of evidence if it assists the defence, and ‘at worst’ may disregard it ‘because it doesn’t fit in with their case theory’.
She said: ‘In recent years the police have revised their policy and made it clear that their starting point for their investigation in these sort of cases is that they believe the victim.
‘The criminal justice community has a lot of concerns about that.’
Her comments came after Isaac Itiary, 25, became the second man in a week to have rape charges against him dropped due to police blunders.
The father of two has spent four months on remand accused of sexual activity with a child under 16. But on Tuesday the police disclosed texts that showed the alleged victim routinely pretended to be 19 – two months after the evidence was first requested. Angela Rafferty QC, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, has suggested ‘unconscious bias’ stops police and prosecutors ‘impartially and thoroughly investigating and scrutinising complaints in sex offence cases’ – adding that it is not the job of the police or CPS to judge the truth of allegations. Miss Rafferty said a proper filtering system was needed for spurious cases, as well as improvements to disclosure.