Why women who report rape fall foul of a harsh criminal justice system
Afua Hirsch, legal affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 26 November 2010 21.00 GMT
The criminal justice system is flawed, and is failing to protect the victims of rape adequately.
It's hard to believe that the views of a 17th-century jurist could have any place in the modern law on rape. Sir Matthew Hale was not enlightened even for his time, with his view that "[a] husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract".
But Hale's rule remained the law until 1991, when the House of Lords at last acknowledged it was "no longer acceptable". Twenty years from now we may well look back on the way today's courts approach rape victims with similar disbelief.
