A Women’s Safety Survey taken in 1996 claimed that sexual assault was one of the least reported crimes in this country. The survey revealed that only 15% of women who had experienced sexual assault over the previous 12 months had reported it to police. What are the reasons for people remaining silent, for not filing a report? Their silence and the high attrition rate in sexual assault cases may be attributable to several factors, including; police response, the ordeal of the trial, cross examination, and judicial attitude towards the complainants. A phone-in survey of women taken in Victoria (ABS, 1993) asked several questions of the respondents in relation to the reasons why they remained silent.

Law has been perceived as a male dominated domain, with its language and practice reflecting the gender bias. Although laws and language have slowly begun to change, the attitudes and biases of some officials administering the laws have not. Judges are a good example of this; with newspapers and law books full of their judicial words of wisdom when presiding over sexual assault cases. To be fair, not all judges appear to hold identical views; some are far more enlightened than others. In recognition of the need for judges to undergo ‘anti-bias training’ the Federal Labour Government granted funding to set up training schemes to assist judges in shedding their racist and sexist biases. Some said they believed judicial education was necessary and important. However, according to Scutt (1998,p170), given the endemic nature of sexism and racism within the judiciary it would be very surprising if the small steps taken so far would result in any real shift of attitude. In 1997, a !

criminal justice system; a complete rethink of the way society

In answer to the question of whether it is the rhetoric of law or its practice by state

“ He threatened to kill me if I told anyone about the assault. He

officials that cause such high attrition rates in sexual assault cases, let us look at it in the context of a complainant’s courtroom experience. She faces an adversarial system of justice where the outcome is a verdict of either guilty or innocent. A guilty verdict means she has been validated, an innocent verdict means she then becomes the guilty one; labelled as a liar. To reach this conclusion she has to endure almost unbearable questioning, she becomes reduced to nothing more than a set of genitalia and a pair of breasts, her body is sexualised in a courtroom full of strangers. She then has to describe in intimate detail what was done to her with the defendant sitting there listening to every word, possibly even gaining enjoyment from the recreation of his ‘power’ over her. If there are multiple defendants and each has a separate legal counsel, each one will question her and she will have to tell and re-tell every last little detail. As one victim stated, “ It was the m!

women during sexual intercourse, it does happen to the

Some topics in this essay:
Labour Government, Gregory Lees, Modesty Victorian, According Mack, Officers Course, Henning Bonitt, Victoria ABS, Judge Bland, History Evidence, Safety Survey, sexual assault, sexual history, attrition rate, assault trials, sexual assault trials, legal system, consent freely voluntarily, sexual experience, 1992 p97, survivors sexual, relation sexual assault, filing report, survivors sexual assault, criminal justice system, rights complainant,