Quote:
There are various factors at play, including reliance on myths and stereotypes to discourage the complainant from testifying in court and to attack the credibility of the complainant.
|
That sounds like a political statement more than a legal one. The reason prosecutions are statistically rare in sexual assault cases is because the alleged incidents almost always take place in private, and physical evidence is often lacking, leaving it to a case of he said versus she said. Our courts rarely prosecute on the basis of one person's testimony - and that goes for all crimes, not just sexual assaults.
In other words, even if we root out all sexism and victim-blaming from the system, we still won't see sexual assault charges successfully prosecuted nearly as often as other criminal charges. And as much as that's disheartening, I don't think anyone who's familiar with history or with how courts work in some other countries want us to move to a system where one person's allegations alone can get another person put in prison.