LABOUR’S Claire Baker has called for more support for rape victims after it emerged many are not getting the help promised.
The party’s justice spokeswoman pressed the first minister on the issue yesterday after a report found many women subjected to sex attacks continue to be examined by male doctors – despite recommendations giving them the right to choose the gender of the medic.
It also found victims regularly have to wait up to 24 hours before being examined, due to the lack of available doctors, and are urged not to bathe until they are seen, adding to their trauma. The study by Glasgow Caledonian University Master of Philosophy student Georgia Scott-Brien, published last week, looked at the views of both police and victims and showed officers often face conflict over their duty to investigate serious crime and consideration of victims’ welfare.
Baker picked up on the findings at First Minister’s Questions yesterday, pointing out that Police Scotland officers had described to the researcher some victims’ treatment as “despicable” and “horrendous”.
Sturgeon responded: “I recognise the difficulties that Claire Baker has outlined. Some of the difficulties in implementing what is now in statute around allowing people to choose the gender of their examiner come down to a lack of female specialists. We are considering that matter. There are also issues around forensic examinations and we have allocated funding to deal specifically with that area.
“The objective here is clear, and I know that it is one that Claire Baker will support. Victims should be offered an examination by someone of the gender of their choice at an appropriate location and within an appropriate timescale. I accept that that does not always happen right now for victims of rape.”
She added: “Victims of rape have undergone horror and trauma that nobody should ever have to undergo. We must make sure that the justice system does not – however inadvertently – add to that trauma and horror through the way in which investigations are carried out.”
Scott-Brien’s research, the first of its kind published in Scotland since 1983, was based on records of 110 rapes of adult women reported to a police area in a year.
Interviews were carried out with 27 police officers, seven of them sexual offences liaison officers, as well as seven complainers.
Many officers condemned the justice system for further victimising rape complainers, while some accepted “albeit uncomfortably, that an adverse impact was an unfortunate but an inevitable aspect of the process”.
One detective said: “It is horrendous. It is a long, horribly drawn-out process. It is despicable frankly.”
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