Rape: Deprioritised by Southwark police yet again

Posted on June 25, 2009
Filed Under Legal Police, London, Opinion Comment, Rape and Sexual Assault, Women's Group | Comments Off

Two more women have now come forward with complaints about Southwark police force handling of rape cases – the same Sapphire unit that only this March was the subject of a damning report (http://www.womenagainstrape.net/Press%20Releases/IPCCReportMarch2088.htm) by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The report exposed the scandalous and negligent way the police investigated the rape of a 15-year-old in 2005. Basic evidence was not gathered or went missing. The man was acquitted, the girl lives in terror of seeing him again, and other women are in danger as a result – we know of at least one who was attacked by the same man.

The report found that hundreds of rapes and sexual assaults in the Sapphire unit were turned over to untrained, unqualified officers; uncaring supervisors failed to advise, check or monitor them; and while the rape unit was systematically deprioritised and starved of resources, resources were found instead for motor crimes and robbery.

As AmerdeepSomal the commissioner of the IPCC said, “The report into this investigation highlights that significant errors were made that compromised the quality of the investigation into a very serious offence. This was not a complex investigation but basic lines of enquiry were not pursued. Sadly the police investigation into this matter fell far short of what the victim had a basic right to expect.”

Yet Southwark’s response to two more reported rapes just two months after this report, has led another two women to complain.

Sally Freeman, the mother of the young girl who made the first complaint, is now a campaigner with Women Against Rape. She says, “What do we have to do to get Southwark police to do their jobs? I was really shocked and distressed to see Southwark are in the news again for not treating rape victims appropriately. We are four years down the line and nothing has changed. What is the point of my whole family going through the process and anguish of making a complaint if nothing ever changes? We made the complaint in order to change things for future victims and it is really distressing to think that victims are still being failed. What is the IPCC there for, is it just a con, to waste our time?”

As a result of her daughter’s complaint, one officer was “disciplined” with “words of advice”and three received written warnings for their failures. That’s all! And this was not even the first time these same officers had been complained about: two of them had only a month earlier received “words of advice” for their failures in the rape case of another young person. Yet they went on immediately to do the same thing again in the 15-year-old’s case.

Now, four years later, the Met say Southwark Sapphire is appropriately staffed, “lessons have been learned” from this case and from the Worboys and Reid fiascos. But the two new complaints indicate that, yet again, nothing has changed.

Sally Freeman says, “This proves what we have been saying. Words of advice and written warnings are water off a duck’s back, just public relations. The man in charge, the Deputy Borough Commander, was allowed to dodge his IPCC interview and to swiftly move elsewhere – to a Centre of Policing Excellence! Officers have to be sacked when they sabotage rape cases, especially the ones at the top who are deprioritising rape. Otherwise, nothing will ever change.”

As WAR’s petition says, “Police officers, prosecutors and judges who have shown themselves to be sexist, racist or otherwise prejudiced against victims of sexual violence, or to be negligent and incompetent in the prosecution of rape cases, should be publicly disciplined, moved off rape cases or sacked, depending on the nature of their offence. We believe that’s the only way those responsible for the criminal justice system will be held to account, so women, children and men are finally protected from the violent crime of rape.”

Women Against Rape Press Release

Website: http://www.womenagainstrape.net
Email: war@womenagainstrape.net
Tel: 020 7482 2496

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See: Rape prosecutions remain the same for a decade

Claims that two rape victims were treated dismissively by specially trained officers from a sex assault inquiry unit are being investigated by the police complaints watchdog.

The misconduct allegations were made last month, only weeks after the Metropolitan Police announced a wholesale reform of rape investigation in the wake of serious failures in its inquiries into two serial attackers, John Worboys and Kirk Reid.

The new allegations concern the Met’s Sapphire Unit in Southwark, South London, and are being examined by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Alleged lapses in the Worboys case, which left the black-cab driver free to attack many more victims, are already under investigation by the IPCC.

The new claims coincide with the release of a wide-ranging analysis of criminal justice data on rape which shows that, despite a significant increase in the number of assaults reported by women to the police, the number of cases going to trial has been at a standstill for a decade.

Continues at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6557110.ece

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