Douglas Cusine writes that there is “no evidence” that jurors subscribe to rape myths. He states that the “only way one could get ‘evidence’ would be to sit in during a jury’s deliberations, or interview jurors afterwards” and rightly points out that this would – in Scotland – be a criminal offence.

I was one of the researchers who undertook the Scottish jury research, one of the sources of evidence that the Dorrian Review and the Scottish government drew on to evidence the false beliefs that jurors hold about rape and rape victims. It is true that we relied on mock juries, although in response to that I would say that all of our jurors were eligible for (compulsory) jury service. If research with mock jurors demonstrates that a significant number of those participants express false beliefs about rape and rape victims, those participants do not suddenly change those beliefs by virtue of being summoned for jury service.

However, it is also worth pointing out that the exact research that Mr Cusine desires, in fact, exists. It was undertaken in New Zealand, a legal system not too dissimilar to our own. This research did involve examining actual deliberations in real sexual offence cases (which is permitted in that jurisdiction in certain circumstances). The researchers conducted a series of detailed post-verdict interviews with jurors following their deliberations in sexual offence cases (having also observed the unfolding of some of those trials as part of the research) and found plenty of evidence that false beliefs about sexual violence were present in jurors’ discussions.

The jurors they interviewed often drew on ‘real rape’ stereotypes, including the extent of a complainant’s physical resistance, in determining credibility, and placed undue weight on delayed reporting, despite having been directed otherwise. Complainants who did not display an appropriate degree of emotion when giving evidence were judged not to be credible and defendants who had been intoxicated at the time of the events in question were judged leniently as having made ‘drunken mistakes’. By contrast, jurors endorsed victim-blaming attitudes relating to the complainant’s clothing, flirtatious behaviour, lifestyle, intoxication and prior sexual history.

We discuss this and other sources of evidence that jurors hold false beliefs about rape and rape victims in more detail here. Whatever one’s view of the pilot of single judge trials for rape and attempted rape cases, it is absolutely not the case that the evidence of a problem does not exist.

Professor Fiona Leverick (University of Glasgow)