Poor Investigation Leads to Few Rape Convictions

By Ian Harte
JRN-100 Staff Writer

Very few sexual assault cases lead to conviction, in part because law enforcement continues to doubt the credibility of victims, a recent study found.

The trend will continue until the law is changed to encourage objective data-based investigations, said April Pattavina, a criminology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and one of the authors of the study Decision Making in Sexual Assault Cases: Replication Research on Sexual Violence Case Attrition in the U.S.

She also believes that there would be fewer credibility issues if investigators spent more time working with victims.

“We need to understand more about victim cooperation and determine if we can ultimately reduce the rate of case attrition [or, failure of arrests to come to trial] by engaging victims in the criminal justice system and encouraging them to be receptive to following through with prosecution of their assailants,” the study’s researchers concluded.

Only 20% of sexual assault cases lead to arrest, and only 2% lead to conviction, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). Yet the statistics for assault and battery cases are 50% higher.

Pattavina’s study found that investigators are frequently dismissive of women who report being raped, while they take assault and battery victims more seriously.

The study found that law enforcement often does not understand how trauma affects victims, and many victims are subject to so-called “rape myths.” This term refers to the way that society transforms commonplace assumptions about rape victims into objective truths, according to Joanna Bourke, author of the book Rape: Sex, Violence, History. In her book, she describes the prevalence of these myths.

 “Many people still believe women are prone to lie about being raped,” Bourke wrote. “This mistaken belief […] influences the way the legal system processes cases and prejudices perceptions of victims from the moment they report being raped.”

Pattavina’s study found that police are often skeptical when taking down rape victims’ accounts, even before officers have investigated the claims.

“I mean you want to hold them all as credible victims at that point,” an investigator is quoted as saying in the study. “And it’s hard because after you do them a long time you know that the majority of the stories are going to change.”

When victims act oddly or cannot give specifics, police often believe that they have some reason to fabricate the incident, Pattavina said.

“And so, victims can be inconsistent,” she said. “[Some] might even laugh, because that’s just their bodily response to the trauma.”

Police often mistrust victims if they feel they are not upset enough.

“[If] I don’t see tears […] that’s kind of a red flag,” one officer told study researchers.

Pattavina said that victims accounts sometimes change when they remember details later, or their stories might seem evasive because they are ashamed to recount the details.

“It may be because of shame; it may be because of fear,” Pattavina said. “That might be the case for [an] intimate partner [case, which] may be part of some kind of ongoing abuse.”

Another investigator in Pattavina’s study encountered a victim that he suspected lied in order to bolster her account because she feared police would not take her claim seriously.

“She said [that he] had the gun with him during the sex assault, it was on the bed,” he said. “We have never been able to establish that he has ever possessed a firearm. […] I have a feeling that she felt she wouldn’t be believed, and so she—she enhanced things […] to seem more credible.”

Bourke points out that rape myths also perpetuate the idea that women involved in behavior that is considered “immoral” cannot be victims.

“For instance, investigators may have a bias against women employed as sex workers or women who have been drinking alcohol,” said Pattavina.

She said a case in Minnesota was overturned based on the victim’s behavior unrelated to the assault.

“The man who assaulted the woman was not responsible because she got drunk willingly,” Pattavina said. “I can’t believe, in this day and age, that that was a unanimous overturn of that conviction, that that is something for [prosecutors] to be looking at.”

Bourke said investigators often dissuade victims from pursuing cases.

“Showering before reporting the rape [or] delaying reportage […] are just some of the factors that make police likely to encourage the [victim] to withdraw her accusation,” Bourke noted.

The study’s researchers said law enforcement needs to counter bias and ignorance, and treat victims fairly and with an understanding of the trauma they have endured.

“[To that end] comprehensive training and development of models of on-the-job training for patrol officers, detectives and prosecutors is critical,” the study recommended. “We should understand more about the relationship between the level of victim cooperation and the response the victim receives from the system.”

Pattavina believes that legislation must come up with objective tools to help victims and investigators navigate the reporting process. She believes there must be an improvement in forensic evidence, such as rape kits, which is a set of items used by medical personnel to gather DNA from the bodies and clothes of victims. Pattavina supports legislation requiring that all rape kits be tested. Many of these kits have been backlogged in the system and the evidence has never processed.

“The investigation and accumulation of evidence really will make a difference,” she said, and will help push cases forward toward conviction.