‘I was violently attacked but my case was dropped because I had been drinking’
‘I was violently attacked but my case was dropped because I had been drinking’
After I was mugged, a suspect was arrested but the case was dropped because of ‘grave concerns’ about the credibility of my evidence. Can a new law protect thousands of women like me?
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Phoebe Greenwood … ‘I had had a few drinks, and so was not a credible witness.’ Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
It was late and, yes, I’d had quite a few cocktails. I was fumbling for my keys on the street outside my flat when a man stepped out of the darkness and punched me three times in the face – twice in the jaw, once in the mouth – and stole my bag. Two of my front teeth broke in half and the damage to my jaw meant I had to eat mush through a straw for the next month.
My neighbour called the police who were sympathetic. They said the assault was GBH and sent an artist round to produce a sketch of my attacker. Ten months later, I picked the police’s suspect out of a lineup and was called to give evidence against him in court. But shortly before the trial date, I received a brief email from the police saying I had been “de-warned”. I had no idea what that meant.
“Phobe [sic], De warning means the case is not going a head [sic]. No witnesses are required for trial. Case has been dropped,” my designated witness care officer wrote. I turned to the officer in charge of my case for a fuller explanation. He said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) didn’t think the artist’s sketch and the suspect looked alike. Moreover, “they have grave concerns about the fact that you had been drinking on the night”. The case had been dropped, he said, due to lack of evidence.
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Somewhere between 15% and 20% of physical and sexual offences against women and girls are reported to the police, of which 6% will result in conviction. In cases where the offender is charged, that figure rises to around 73%. Convictions in rape cases fell to 56.9% last year. The most common reason these cases fail or are dropped is attrition – victims are so worn down by the process that they decide to abandon the pursuit of justice altogether. When Keir Starmer was head of the CPS from 2008 to 2013, he saw a huge problem in these low reporting rates. Victims of violent crime overwhelmingly don’t trust the criminal justice system: “If you’ve got a system where most victims don’t come forward and most victims who do come forward say they wouldn’t do so again, then you’ve got a system that needs improving.”
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One former social worker, now working for Victim Support, told me about her own experience a few years ago: “My partner decided to try to kill me with an axe. The initial police officer was great, the Public Protection Unit was great, but I was called from the police station by the custody sergeant, who said they needed to release my then husband on bail and would I be able to receive him back into the house? I said: ‘Of course I can’t, he tried to kill me with an axe.’”
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http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/18/i-was-violently-attacked-but-my-case-was-dropped-been-drinking
