Things have changed since 1957

The Sexual Offences Act of 1957 is old, outdated and has been amended. Preliminary findings of a research project presented at the National Working Group on Sexual Offences this week show that the police are blissfully and dangerously unaware of their new roles in relation to the Sexual Offences Act 32 of 2007. The new act (though it’s nearly three years old, so it’s not really that new) requires police officers to perform positive duties with respect to the victims of crime. In this study, few police officers knew that they needed to do anything of the sort, and even fewer knew about the new crimes under the act.

Why is this worrying? Firstly it is worrying because police are often the first people a survivor sees to talk about the sexual offences committed against them. If the first person you see doesn’t share information with you about your rights to access services and where you can get those services, it is hard to know what to do next. This means that many victims of crime face secondary traumatisation because they don’t feel like they have any control.

It shouldn’t be hard for them to do this. The information that they need to share exists in a number of directives (instructions with the aim of standardising policing), policies (guidelines and recommendations for how services are delivered) and pieces of legislation. These can be printed, and stored, under the statement desk or in a special victim support room so that you can work through it together. They should be available so that a police officer need not feel like they don’t know what to say — because they can have a look at these things. They need not feel that this is a mystery, because it isn’t.

In addition, every victim should receive their full attention, and should not face their own criteria about whether the case will be successful. You have the right to report, and nobody in a police station can tell you that you don’t have a case. A scary trend that has been reported by service providers working with the police, is that they are doing their best to record cases slowly, so that fewer cases are reported. Why? Because they have a goal of reducing the number of reported rapes, so that they look good. So when you get to a desk, and the officer is deliberately slow, ask her/him why.

So what are their roles? Their most important role is to provide information to the victim of crime about her or his rights. One piece of information is that the victim may request the compulsory testing of the perpetrator for HIV. While this may be a controversial clause in the Act, it is nevertheless a requirement that the survivor is informed that they have this opportunity. Another incredibly important role is to take a statement that gives clear and comprehensive details about the event according to the survivor. If the statement is flawed, then the evidence seems weaker, and the case is less likely to proceed successfully.

This is the front-line of our fight against sexual violence. If the police are informed, and compassionate, they can create informed and well-supported victims, who might go on with their case and get a conviction. If they’re not, it becomes the blind leading the blind while those with a will and opportunity for violence sit back and enjoy it.