Abstract
The responses of criminal justice system agencies to women rape complainants have reflected patriarchal legacies of thinking and representation. Legal discourse has reinforced views of women as inherently deceitful, their word as typically flawed. For a raped woman to have her allegation believed inevitably meant having her very person put on trial along with the offence. This chapter begins by reviewing legal and court initiatives before focussing on police responses to women rape victims. Relevant international literature is presented along with the results of a New Zealand study which sought to evaluate the impacts of recent reforms on women’s experiences of reporting and trial processes.
The police were just wonderful to me. … It gave me a lot of confidence in my belief of myself as a person of worth.
The police are a big waste of time, and they haven’t really got the complainant’s interest and priority right. If only they knew how victims felt …
(Jordan, 1998a, p. 56)
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© 2004 Jan Jordan
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Jordan, J. (2004). ‘Have you really been raped?’ Criminal Justice System Responses. In: The Word of a Woman?. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511057_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511057_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-51552-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-51105-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)