TY - JOUR PY - 2013// TI - Rape, defendant anonymity and evidence-based policy making JO - Modern law review A1 - Rumney, Philip N. S. A1 - Fenton, Rachel Anne SP - 109 EP - 133 VL - 76 IS - 1 N2 - In 2010, the Coalition government announced in its Programme for Government, that: 'We will extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants.' The question of anonymity for defendants accused of rape and other sexual offences, has been repeatedly raised in parliamentary debates over several decades, and has also received frequent attention in newspapers and, to a lesser extent, in academic and professional literature. The debate includes an array of factual claims and arguments that rest on weak empirical foundations. In November 2010, the Ministry of Justice published a report entitled: Providing Anonymity to those Accused of Rape: An Assessment of Evidence, which was intended to provide an evaluation of evidence that would inform the debate over defendant anonymity. This article critically examines this report and its discussion of key issues such as false rape allegations, and considers whether its conclusions can be relied upon by policy makers.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 0026-7961 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12004 ID - ref1 ER -