The Associated Press recently reported on a bizarre rape prosecution in Virginia. An unidentified man is currently jailed and charged with two counts of rape and one account of aggravated sexual assault against his 12-year-old daughter. The accused maintains he is innocent, but a judge recently denied his efforts to preserve DNA material that would conclusively prove whether or not he committed the crime of which he is accused.

That DNA evidence is contained in the fetus that his now-pregnant daughter is carrying. The man’s defense lawyer, Alene Grabauskas, learned that the girl was considering having an abortion. Grabauskas asked the court to order that DNA material from the fetus be preserved if the girl goes through with the abortion.

Fairfax County Juvenile Court Chief Judge David S. Schell denied that request saying, “I do not think I have the authority to order the Commonwealth to obtain evidence which does not exist at this time.”

The attorney for the Commonwealth, Raymond Morrogh, said he would like to obtain DNA evidence from the fetus as well, but that may not be possible if the alleged — who lives with the accused’s ex-wife — is intent on not preserving such evidence,

We’re going to do everything within our power to get any evidence we can. Are we supposed to follow them 24 hours a day? We are prepared to take a (DNA) sample, but I think these people have an absolute right to their privacy. We’re not going to urge them to take any action.

The judge who ruled that he could not compel the girl to preserve DNA evidence from the fetus also noted, however, that if such evidence is destroyed the defense could argue that it was denied a fair trial.

Source:

Girl, 12, can abort without saving DNA for father’s rape trial. ssociated Press, January 17, 2002.

The Virginia Supreme Court recently ordered a retrial for a convicted rapist in a decision that affirmed that Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners are qualified to testify in such cases, but at the same time limited the topics that such nurses can testify about.

The case before the court involved Eduardo Velazquez who was accused of raping a 15-year-old girl. The Girl went to a hospital where she was examined by a SANE nurse. At the Velaquez’s trial the nurse testified that the girl’s injuries were “consistent with non-consensual intercourse.”

Velaquez appealed his conviction arguing that the SANE nurse should not have been allowed to testify because she was not a licensed physician. The Virginia Supreme Court rejected that argument, but agreed with Velaquez’s claim that the nurse should not have been allowed to testify that the injuries were the result of a sexual assault which, after all, is what the jury is supposed to be deciding.

Velaquez’s lawyer, James G. Connell III told The Washington Post, “FOr them to say that what they observe was caused by sex without consent has an enormous impact on the jury. I’m glad the court has reeled in SANE nurses and let them testify on the facts only. It puts the power back in the hands of the jury.”

Source:

Nurses’ testimony limited in rape cases. Carol Morello, The Washington Post, January 13, 2002.

One of the hot-button issues related to rape is just how many reported rapes are in fact false allegations. It is difficult to get a handle on this in the United States, since the closest statistic that is recorded is unfounded reports of rape, but an unfounded crime can be a number of things aside from simply a false allegation. Ontario, Canada, is one of the few places, to my knowledge, that is actively tracking the incidence of false rape allegations.

The National Post‘s Christie Blatchford recently described how police forces in Canada use a computerized system called the Violent Criminal Linkage Analysis System (VICLAS). More than four years ago, Ontario passed a law mandating extensive recording of violent crime in the province (police forces in other provinces use the system, but only Ontario mandates it suse by law).

As such, Ontario tracks not just unfounded rape cases, but also tracks outright false sexual assault allegations. Province-wide, the system reports that about 5.7 percent of all such allegations are false. A very small percentage, but in the four years of using the system, that accounts for 2,235 sexual assault allegations that later turned out to be false.

In British Columbia, which has been keeping similar statistical track of violent crime, 6.7 percent of sexual assault allegations have turned out to be false. Again a small percentage, but still enough to generate 986 false reports.

Meanwhile, analyses of incidents involving a Toronto police squad that restricts itself to handling major rape cases where the assailant is unknown to the victim, a whopping 30 percent of cases — 69 out of 232 cases — turned out to be false.

The system has managed to capture a number of people who have made numerous false allegations of sexual assault. The National Post, for example, described the plight of 34-year-old chef Jamie Nelson. Nelson was accused of sexually assaulting a woman and spent almost 3 years in jail. His accuser’s name, however, was later retried and acquitted after the database revealed that his accuser had a habit of making false allegations of assault.

As Nelson’s lawyer, Todd Ducharme, said, “This is a cautionary tale for anyone who suggests that people who make allegations of sexual assault must be telling the truth because why else would they go through the process?”

It would be an interesting experiment to deploy a computerized system like this in several U.S. states and see if rates of false allegations are similar to those in Canada. At the very least, it would be good to have solid numbers rather than just speculation on the false sexual assault allegations in the United States.

Source:

Crying wolf. Christie Blatchford, The National Post, September 8, 2001.