Directory of Research and Expertise

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Research Summary and Profile

Research interests:

Law

Project summary relevant to Fellowship:

My project involves substantially completing a book titled She Must Be Lying to Us!  When Reporting Rape Becomes a Crime. I will complete the remaining research for the book as well as the actual writing during my proposed residency at IALS.  

The central purpose of the book is to change laws and policies with respect to a very harmful practice that pervades the criminal justice system in both the UK and America—the prosecution of sexual assault survivors who are disbelieved by police after grossly deficient police investigations into their cases. The book will offer a detailed analysis of how these cases are allowed to occur and will make recommendations for reform.   

My path to writing this book began in 2012, when a grassroots anti-rape advocacy organization in London alerted me to the widespread mistreatment of rape victims by the criminal justice system. They asked me to gather comparative data from America. That request started me on a journey that put me in touch with dozens of sexual assault survivors across both the UK and America who had gone to police for help after being raped, only to have the added trauma of being disbelieved and charged with false reporting.   

In three law review articles published between 2015 and 2018, I demonstrated that deficient police practices and an absence of accountability were common in such cases and led to wrongful prosecutions of actual victims. The officers involved often had little, if any, training in sexual assault investigation and were failing to follow best practices for the field. I argued that legislative and policy reform was essential—a system of safeguards was sorely needed to ensure that innocent victims would not face prosecution.    

The time devoted to my project will be divided between working on the actual writing (two-thirds) and completing research that requires me to be in the UK (one third). During the project period I plan to write approximately three to four days per week while allowing one or two days per week for meetings as circumstances require.  

I plan to write the book in London because the project is a comparative analysis of a phenomenon that occurs in both the UK and in America, and I require further information from my British sources as I prepare the manuscript. In contrast, my data collection on American cases is largely complete.  Additionally, analyzing the police treatment of disbelieved rape complainants in the UK is a central feature of the project.  The book will largely be structured around an in-depth analysis of five British cases that are representative of a much larger group of rape complainants–over 200—who have been prosecuted in Britain in recent years.  

My prior work in this field has inspired leaders at End Violence Against Women International (EVAWI) to produce police training bulletins and related materials that draw heavily on my work. I hope that this project will also make a difference for those who report sexual violence to the police. 

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