Law Enforcement and Prosecutions

last updated 9 February 2009

Sexual assaults are not only underreported, they are also under-investigated and under-prosecuted. Around the world, victims encounter resistance and obstacles in reporting assaults to the police; police and prosecutors often fail to pursue or otherwise further investigate sexual assaults; even when investigated, prosecutors may decide not to pursue criminal sanctions. As one report explains:

The barriers are too numerous to count. Victims of sexual assault seldom report the crime to police; when they do, the police often "unfound" the cases, due to their own social biases and beliefs; prosecutors often drop the cases because they are too difficult to win; victims often don't press charges, because, if a case actually makes it to court, the cross-examination and blaming of the victim can be brutal.

Many of the obstacles encountered by victims are tied to the myths surrounding sexual assault. For example, law enforcement officers may believe that a woman who had "really" been raped would immediately report the assault to the police. Police and prosecutors alike may believe that if a woman was not physically injured in the assault, she must not have resisted, and she therefore is likely to have consented to the sexual contact. Finally, as is the case with domestic violence, "[w]hen the victim knows the perpetrator, there is a tendency to consider the crime a product of a private relationship." From Sharon Hunter, Gail Burns-Smith, & Carol Walsh, Equal Justice? Not Yet for Victims of Sexual Assault (2000).

In CEE/FSU, the United States, and around the world, women who have been sexually assaulted too often find little to no assistance from police and prosecutors. In fact, women may themselves be further harmed in seeking assistance through the criminal justice system. In Russia, for example, Human Rights Watch noted that not only did the police often fail to protect victims from retaliation by the accused, the victim's safety was often compromised by the acts of criminal justice personnel themselves. For example, a prosecutor said that "her office does not release men arrested for sexual violence on bail, except in cases of marital rape." From Human Rights Watch, Too Little, Too Late: State Response to Violence Against Women, Vol. 9, No. 13(D) (December 1997).

Women all over the world have encountered difficulties in reporting sexual assault to the police. In its report on violence against women in Russian, Human Rights Watch noted that "police, forensic doctors, prosecutors, and judges view victims of sexual violence skeptically and tend to believe that they brought the attack upon themselves." Police, for example, "overwhelmingly fail to respond to sexual assault as a crime unless the victim is a virgin, the offender is a stranger, and the violation entails the infliction of visible injury." When the police believe that the victim of sexual violence was in some way "responsible" for the assault—perhaps because she was out at night, or dressed a certain way—they may not accept the report:

The police often justify their rejection of complaints of sexual violence by suggesting that the complaints are fabricated, especially in cases where the victim knew her attacker. Russian law does not distinguish between sexual assault by an acquaintance and the same act by a stranger, but in practice the assaults are treated quite differently. With regard to assaults by acquaintances, nearly ever law enforcement official with whom we spoke pointed to cases that they believed were motivated by blackmail, revenge, or the desire to marry the alleged assailant. False and malicious allegations were quite common, they recounted.

From Human Rights Watch, Too Little, Too Late: State Response to Violence Against Women, Vol. 9, No. 13(D) (December 1997).

In many countries, victims are required to undergo repeated questioning. In Poland, for example, "[d]espite the quite common understanding that multiple hearings may cause psychological harm to the victim, they are usually questioned more than once: representatives of the police force usually note two to four hearings involve the victims." Women are rarely questioned by a female officer, and may be forced to identify the perpetrator without the protection of a one-way mirror. In addition, "[i]nterrogations are very often humiliating for victims also because of a lack of well-prepared, isolated rooms and interrogations conducted in the presence of other policemen are very common practice." Officers also "tend to differentiate 'clear rape' (unknown perpetrator, the victim was not dressed provocatively, no alcohol involved, etc.) from 'other rapes'." From International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, Women 2000: An Investigation into the Status of Women's Rights in Central and South-Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States 337 (9 November 2000).

Reports on police response to sexual violence in the United States contained similar evaluations. Noting that in most jurisdictions, law enforcement officers could decide to declare a complaint of criminal activity "unfounded," one report noted:

Cases can be declared unfounded after a routine cursory investigation. In so doing, police are often influenced by extralegal considerations and biases and thus evaluate victim credibility within the context of rape myths. A belief in rape myths raises the number of unfounded reports. Even in cases where victims sustained bruises, black eyes, cigarette burns, and bitten nipples, police have declared cases unfounded if there was a previous sexual relationship between the parties.

From Sharon Hunter, Gail Burns-Smith, & Carol Walsh, Equal Justice? Not Yet for Victims of Sexual Assault (2000).

In Russia, Human Rights Watch found that the police were particularly unwilling to register complains when women had been sexually active or had delayed reporting the assault. According to Human Rights Watch, victims were able to convince the police to accept reports or register complaints of sexual assault only after considerable effort and persistence. Further, the police tended to themselves mistreat the victim, subjecting her to grueling interviews.

Investigations themselves were invasive processes. Investigators would interview the victim's family, friends and colleagues, "in order to prepare a psychological profile of the complainant or to surmise whether and to what degree she may have resisted the attack." From Human Rights Watch, Too Little, Too Late: State Response to Violence Against Women, Vol. 9, No. 13(D) (December 1997). Similarly, in Ukraine, "[t]he victim's family members, neighbours, or colleagues are questioned in order to determine the 'psychological image' of the victim and thus decide whether she was in fact capable of resisting the assailant." From International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, Women 2000: An Investigation into the Status of Women's Rights in Central and South-Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States 32, 59, 77, 262, 336, 487 (9 November 2000).

Even when a report is accepted, prosecutors may decide not to proceed with the prosecution. A prosecutor in Moscow, for example, said that "the main problems in rape investigations are that victims behave inappropriately during attacks and that women do not seem sufficiently distraught in police interviews." As one prosecutor explained, "she will not usually begin an investigation unless there is sufficient evidence that an assault took place. Cases that usually lack such evidence, she explained, include acquaintance rape and those without obvious signs of violence." In fact, at least one prosecutor reported that when a victim changes her testimony, "she brings charges against the complainants for false testimony."

From Human Rights Watch, Too Little, Too Late: State Response to Violence Against Women, Vol. 9, No. 13(D) (December 1997).

For a collection of research and reports on law enforcement and prosecutions, click here.  Also, see the recommendation on police action in domestic violence and sexual assault cases in the 2008 United Nations expert group report entitled “Good practices in legislation on violence against women". For the Russian version of the report recommendations, click here.