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Criminal Law; Prosecution; Rape; Sexual Assault; Sexual Assault Victims; Rape Victims; Sex Crimes; False Reporting; Police Investigations; Rape Complaint; Discrimination; Discriminatory Treatment; Under-Resourced Police Investigations; Human Rights; Secondary Victimization; British Crown Prosecution Service
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The Chilling Effect: The Politics Of Charging Rape Complainants With False Reporting, Lisa Avalos
The Chilling Effect: The Politics Of Charging Rape Complainants With False Reporting, Lisa Avalos
Brooklyn Law Review
Although legal scholars have addressed the persistent failure to effectively investigate and prosecute rape despite decades of attempts at reform, the issue of prosecutors going so far as to bring false reporting charges against disbelieved sexual assault victims has received scant scholarly attention. This article calls attention to this particularly disturbing externality of the mishandling of rape cases. First contextualizing false reporting prosecutions of rape victims, the article demonstrates that such prosecutions are a direct outgrowth of poor quality, under-resourced police rape investigations. These prosecutions move forward as a result of several systemic problems: procedural irregularities and informal policies that …