Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
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.
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This simply is not true. In Canada, the Crown frequently prosecutes sexual assaults based purely on the statement of a complainant (which, as you correctly note, is the only Crown evidence in the majority of sexual assault cases). Further, courts frequently convict an accused person solely or primarily on the basis of a complainant's evidence so long as, after being subjected to cross-examination etc., the complainant's evidence is credible and the evidence of the accused (if he or she testifies) is not credible enough to raise a reasonable doubt.