Gethin Rees

‘It is Not for Me to Say Whether Consent Was Given or Not’: Forensic Medical Examiners’ Construction of ‘Neutral Reports’ in Rape Cases

Attrition rate studies have outlined the role the ‘real rape’ stereotype plays in prosecutor decisions concerning the progression of rape cases through the criminal justice system. According to the ‘real rape’ stereotype, the victim should attend the medical examination with significant physical injury, and therefore police, prosecutors and jurors take injury evidence into consideration when deciding the veracity of the complainant’s allegation. However, forensic medical studies have shown injuries to be rare, and even when present, consent cannot be dismissed. To this end, in nearly all cases Forensic Medical Examiners (FMEs) produce ‘neutral reports’; reports that neither confirm nor deny the complainant’s allegation. In this article I explore FMEs’ justifications for neutral reports, and find that their production reinforces FMEs’ expertise. FMEs construct boundaries, distancing themselves from contentious issues. While such boundaries ensure authority, they limit evidential significance, which in turn provides a space for the prosecution to dismiss evidence that does not conform to the popular understanding of rape. Such a ‘vicious cycle’ of prosecutorial decision-making removes the opportunity for FMEs to explain the limits of injury evidence to the police, prosecutors and the jury and reinforces the belief that injuries are a necessary outcome of rape assaults.

Making a space for medical expertise: medical knowledge of sexual assault and the construction of boundaries between forensic medicine and the law in late nineteenth-century England

This article looks at the boundary work performed by Victorian doctors in order to position themselves as beneficial to the court in helping to determine whether a woman had been raped. These doctors provided tangible physical evidence to support already widely-held beliefs about the nature of the rape victim. Such physical evidence could then be used to support, or undermine, the complainant’s allegation. The article concludes that the reliance upon forensic evidence, the result of such boundary construction, is one of the major factors maintaining the current international “justice gap” in rape cases.

Morphology is a witness which doesn't lie: Diagnosis by similarity relation and analogical inference in clinical forensic medicine

In this paper, I utilise semi-structured interviews with Forensic Medical Examiners (FMEs) in Scotland in order to investigate their diagnostic work. Drawing upon classic medical sociological work on diagnosis (for instance, the work of Paul Atkinson and Michael Bloor), my understanding of diagnosis is as a subjective, but socially-constructed activity whereby medical practitioners are taught to identify (in this case) injury types, initially by ostension, then also by examination. I then extend the analysis postulated within the classic studies by outlining a mechanistic method for the actual cognitive process of diagnosis, drawn from a sociologically informed reading of the historian of science, Thomas Kuhn. It is argued that diagnosis is achieved by similarity relation (comparing new cases to those previously observed), and analogical reasoning (drawing inferences based on the analogy with previous cases). Given that new cases subtly alter the individual FMEs classificatory schema, resulting in potential differences in diagnoses, the FME community are required to conduct much reparative work in order to construct their evidence as consensual and factual, as is required by law. The paper will conclude with some brief comments on the future of forensic medical examinations, particularly concerning the fact/opinion distinction.

Self-Defense or Undermining the Self? Exploring the Possibilities and Limitations of a Novel Anti-Rape Technology

Despite decades of feminist-inspired law reforms, rape remains highly prevalent. While many continue to fight for broad cultural and institutional changes, some argue that more immediate interventions are required. Self-defense techniques represent a key strategy of resistance to rape, and empirical evidence suggests that women’s active resistance may hold a number of positive benefits. In this essay, we compare the aims and objectives of a novel anti-rape technology, known as the Rape-aXe, with traditional self-defense techniques, focusing upon the potential for both to resist individual acts of sexual aggression and, more broadly, end gendered sexual violence.