Victims raped by strangers will have their identities protected from their attackers under a move to change the law on sexual assaults.
Campaigners claim victims of serious sexual crimes by strangers are frequently put in unnecessary danger by police officers disclosing the name of the accuser to the accused.
The draft amendment to the policing and crime bill, which is now before the House of Lords, would apply to stranger rape cases where there is currently no legislation on how and when a victim’s name is given to the accused by police.
One victim has told the Guardian that the manner in which the police disclosed her identity was “the most extreme and lasting violation” of the sexual violence she suffered.
The move comes at the same time as concern for victim’s rights mounts following the retrial of the footballer Ched Evans, who was acquitted of rape. The sexual history of Evans’s accuser was submitted as evidence during the retrial.
“There is no specific policy or legislation which covers the issue of providing the name of a victim of rape to the suspect,” Neil Smith of the Metropolitan police sexual offences, exploitation and child abuse command said. “Instead, it is an operational decision taken by the officer in the case on a case-by-case basis.”As the proportion of rapes committed by strangers is small – one in 10 according to Rape Crisis – campaigners say measures should cover all sexual assault cases to protect victims.
The proposals could be challenged on the basis that they contravene a defendant’s right to know who is accusing them, a key legal principle. Yet campaigners argue that a defendant could still identify their accuser by photographs and other details that do not include their name.
At present, police protocol allows officers to give a victim’s name to a suspect, often at the very beginning of an investigation at the point of arrest, and before it is known if a case will go to court. It has been argued this information allows an alleged assailant to subsequently discover where the victim lives and works.
One woman, who was followed by a man in 2014 who attempted to rape her in a bush before being caught at the scene by off-duty police, said that when she heard her name had been given to the man on the same night as the attack, she initially thought it was a mistake.
“[The police] read me the charge and it had his name in it. I said that I didn’t want to know his name, and thank God he didn’t get to know mine,” said the woman, named only as Melanie H.
Officers then told her he already knew her name. “In the police interview he did not say he knew me, or that I was lying,” she said. “The relevance of my name was zilch. There was no reason. No one explained why he had my name.”
She became concerned about how easily she could be found on the internet. “When you typed my name into Google, it was everywhere,” she said. “Telling you where I was and what I was doing. It really freaked me out.”
She changed her name on social media and tried to delete mentions of herself on websites. She also changed her name at work, which she found the most difficult. “It was awful because it was what I was proud of. It’s my career,” she said. “One of the hardest things was having to [tell] my dad. Everything I achieve isn’t going to be in my family name. I’m now using this name that means nothing to me.”
Despite erasing her online presence and moving house since the attack, she still worries about how easy it is for her attacker to find her, especially as he is shortly up for parole. “I’ve only been told his name a few times, but I will remember it forever. We are now linked for the rest of our lives,” she said.
“Whenever he gets out I just don’t trust that he won’t try to find me. Why would he not?”
Under the draft amendment, police may not disclose the identity of a victim or witness of a serious sexual or violent offence to the person accused of the offence if it is reasonable to assume that such a disclosure would put the victim or witness at risk of further harm. Officers must take account of previous convictions, mental health and access to new technology or social media of the person accused of the offence, whether or not the accused has been charged.
The amendment, drafted by Voice4victims and put down by Plaid Cymru’s Dafydd Wigley, is due to be debated in the House of Lords early next month and is expected to go to vote in late November.
The Voice4victims director, Harry Fletcher, said: “It is of deep concern that there is neither policy nor legislation covering the disclosure of a victim’s identity to an alleged perpetrator of a serious sexual offence. It is astonishing that it is left to the discretion of individual police officers. Disclosure is extremely traumatic and leaves victims feeling terrified that they are put at further risk.”
A Metropolitan police spokesman said that in the case of a stranger rape, it would be very rare for the suspect to be informed at the point of arrest. The next point at which it could be disclosed was during interview. While this is uncommon, again, this would be a case-by-case decision, and the interviewing officer might have to disclose the name of the victim to prevent any defence of consent.
Melanie said many victims she had spoken to had just assumed their names had not been used. Of her own case, she said: “He didn’t get off the bus to attack me. He got off the bus to attack a woman.”
She said the fact that he knew her identity “made an attack that was by its very intention completely impersonal into a very, very personal thing”.
She said of her ordeal: “By far the most extreme and lasting violation was the handing over of my identity to the one person in the world I would do anything to remain a stranger to.”