Carnal Knowledge: Rape on Trial

Rape has received unprecedented media attention over the past five years. The 'date rape' trials of Mike Tyson and William Kennedy Smith and the cases of two students at prestigious British universities made front-page news. Press coverage gave the impression that, in a climate of political correctness, women were increasingly crying rape when they simply regretted what had happened the night before.
Based on first-hand monitoring of the judicial process from the time a woman reports rape to the police to the decision of the jury, this controversial book uncovers the fraudulence of this view. Rather than women making false allegations, Sue Lees finds that serial rapists are getting away with rape and being set free to rape again. After attending trials at English Crown Courts and examining the transcripts, she investigates why jurors acquit guilty men, some of whom have been acquitted again and again. She reveals the stark sexism embedded in the assumed neutrality of the law, from the criteria used to establish character credibility to the presentation in defence evidence of all the age-old fallacies about mendacious and promiscuous women.
Carnal Knowledge documents the way women are encouraged to report rape, only to be stereotyped as sexually provocative and to be blamed by the judiciary and the press. Reforms introduced in the 1970s and 1980s have not been implemented and the conviction rate has fallen dramatically. The low conviction rate has fallen dramatically. The low conviction rate for rape in different countries implies that this bias is reflected in many legal systems.

Sue Lees is a professor at the University of North London.