The director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders said that rape complainants who stay silent during an alleged attack are at risk of creating an assumption that they had given their consent to sex.
Saunders, who is the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has warned women that if they do not speak out, rape suspects could argue that they had reasonable belief that the woman had given her consent, and therefore, men would not be prosecuted.
Campaigners have warned that if a victim fails to cry out during an attack, that does not mean that they have given their consent. Rachel Krys, of End Violence Against Women, said that silence was known as a “very normal response to rape”. Krys also stated that Saunders has been trying to increase the rate of rape conviction for many years against a background of 85,000 complaints and “that should be the focus of attention”.
Alison Saunders reiterates that the CPS does not want to bring people wrongly to court. She said, “We are there not just to be able to prosecute cases where there has been an offence, but also not to prosecute cases where there isn't sufficient evidence.”
