Juror attitudes and biases in sexual assault cases

• Media Release, no. 2007/11
• 12 October 2007

Juror judgements in rape trials are influenced more by the attitudes, beliefs and biases about rape which jurors bring with them into the courtroom than by the objective facts presented.

Stereotypical beliefs about rape and victims of it still exist within the community.

These are findings from two recent studies conducted by the Australian Institute of Criminology. The paper presenting these findings, 'Juror attitudes and biases in sexual assault cases', number 344 in the AIC's Trends and issues in crime and criminal justice series, was released today by the Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology, Dr Toni Makkai.

Increasing conviction rates for sexual assault is a key issue for the criminal justice system because more than 70 percent of sexual assault incidents are not reported to police and only about one in 10 reported incidents results in a guilty finding.

Sexual assault is one of the hardest offences to prosecute. Primarily this is because these offences are often committed in private, where there is little or no corroborating evidence and it is usually one person's word against another.

Whether a juror perceives a complainant as credible is not simply related to the consistency of her story or the manner in which the testimony is presented. A mock sexual assault trial study in which 210 members of the general public participated as jurors in 18 trials, jurors had different opinions about the complainant's credibility and the plausibility of her story.

• Less favourable attitudes towards rape victims in general were associated with being male, lower income, and political conservatism, and these were linked to believing that the defendant was probably not guilty.
• Stronger personal beliefs in guilt were associated with higher levels of education, personal knowledge of sexual assault victims, positive attitudes toward rape victims in general, higher perceptions of claimant credibility, and low empathy with the defendant.

In the other study a random sample of the general Victorian population it was found that:

• one in 10 respondents believed that women are more likely to be raped by strangers
• about a quarter disagreed that false claims of rape are rare
• 15 percent agreed that women often say 'no' when they mean 'yes'
• seven percent of males and four percent of females agreed that women who are raped often ask for it
• 44 percent of males and 32 percent of females believed that rape results from men not being able to control their need for sex (therefore they are not responsible).

'As jurors are members of the community and are randomly drawn in order to be representative of it, the two studies together indicate that successful prosecution of sexual assault will remain low until we acknowledge that jurors interpret what they see in light of their own beliefs, experience and expectations', Dr Makkai said.

Related links

• Download report: Juror attitudes and biases in sexual assault cases