Rape: Trials

(asked on 29th January 2018) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate his Department has made of the proportion of rape cases in which the complainant's sexual history was referenced by the defence in each of the last three years for which data is available.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 1st February 2018

The information requested is not held centrally.

We asked the CPS to analyse a sample of rape cases finalised in 2016 to assess the frequency and outcome of applications to introduce evidence of a complainant’s sexual history under s 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999.

A section 41 application was made by the defence in 13% of the 309 cases looked at. In 8% of the 309 cases, an application to permit such evidence was granted by the court.

These are not official published statistics. For further details of this study, see our report published in December: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/limiting-the-use-of-complainants-sexual-history-in-sexual-offence-cases

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