Ched Evans rape trial sets a dangerous precedent and law must be changed, Attorney General told
More than 40 female Labour MPs including Jess Phillips, Harriet Harman and Angela Eagle, have written a letter stressing the need for change
MORE than 40 female Labour MPs have written to the attorney general warning the retrial of Ched Evans has set a “dangerous precedent” for rape cases.
They want a change in the law that would stop the use of a complainant’s sexual history becoming routine practice.
The politicians’ plea comes after the judge hearing the footballer’s retrial allowed his alleged victim’s sexual history to be read out in court.
After Evans was acquitted of raping the teenage girl, her dad – who can not be named for legal reasons – slammed the courts for treating his daughter “like a piece of meat” and allowing evidence about her sexual history to be revealed in court.
He said it was like she was the one on trial and he felt lawyers who rifled through his daughter’s sexual past “raped” her.
Members of the women’s parliamentary Labour party, including its chair, Jess Phillips, Harriet Harman and Angela Eagle, are urging attorney general Jeremy Wright to support the law change.
In their letter they said if the sexual history of complainants was brought up in court it would “act to make the prosecution of rape cases in the future harder and reporting of these crimes less likely”.
They wrote: “The verdict and events in this case set a dangerous precedent that how a victim of rape, usually a woman, has behaved in the past can be taken as evidence of the way she behaved at the time of the alleged rape.
“This will deter victims from disclosing their abuse and will reduce the number of victims presenting their cases to the police for fear of having their private lives investigated and scrutinised.”
reports the women added there was also the risk of victims becoming prey to private investigations and the crowdsourcing of information about their previous sexual partners.
They said: “The ruling will act to encourage defence lawyers in rape trials to effectively apply for an individual’s completely legal and private sexual history to be admissible as evidence.”
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During the retrial of the Chesterfield striker details about the complainant’s sexual history were used after a ruling by appeal judges.
The appeal judges ruled the accounts about what had happened in the complainant’s past were so similar to what had allegedly happened with the footballer that it could not just be thought of as being a coincidence.
Evidence of a complainant’s sexual history had only previously been used once in the past 16 years – and that was in a case where the similarity of the sexual conduct was bizarre and unusual.
The MPs say the ruling in the Ched Evans case would create a precedent for such evidence to be used in all rape trials.
They want Wright and the Justice Secretary, Liz Truss, to change the law so evidence of someone’s sexual history can only be used when the similar conduct is out of the ordinary and unusual.
The group of MPs want a meeting with Wright and the Ministry of Justice to talk about their demands.
They said: “We must act to cease the return to a culture of ‘victim blaming’.
“We believe that the use of a complainants’ sexual history should never be used in our courts as evidence of consent.
“We are calling on the government to act.
“The women’s parliamentary Labour party ask that you and the minister of justice meet with a delegation from our group to discuss how the government will progress on this issue.
“We offer you our support in working towards a solution and promise our full scrutiny should this not be resolved.”
Phillips also is planning to raise the issue in the House of Commons and call for a debate.