“The different between the culpability of the individual who instigates a false complaint against an innocent man and the complainant who retracts a truthful allegation against a guilty man will often be very marked. Experience shows that the withdrawal of a truthful complaint of crime committed in a domestic environment usually stems from pressures, sometimes direct, sometimes indirect, sometimes immensely subtle, which are consequent on the nature of the individual relationship and the characters of the people who are involved in it. Where a woman has been raped, and raped more than once by her husband or partner, the father of her children, the man in whom she is entitled to repose her trust, those very actions reflect, and are often meant to reflect, manifestations of dominance, power and control over her. When these features of a relationship between a man and a woman are established, it is an inevitable consequence that the woman who has been so ill-treated becomes extremely vulnerable. Of course it is better for a truthful complaint to be pursued, but if the proposal that it should be withdrawn is not accepted, leading to a positive retraction and admission that the original truthful complaint was untrue, and the complainant is then prosecuted to conviction, the sentencing court, when assessing culpability, should recognise and allow for the pressures to which the truthful complainant in such a relationship has been exposed, and should be guided by a broad measure of compassion for a woman who has already been victimised.”
“When Terry’s sister came up to the house, whose idea, who first started sort of suggesting things to try and help with the situation, because as you admitted, you weren’t sort of coping …”
“So you say, “our thinking”,… ”
“Sorry, me and Terry would sit down and discuss this and I remember saying to him “look, Mummy disappearing for 2 or 3 months is better than Daddy disappearing for 5 or 6 years”
“All I can say now is that I would have said anything at that time to make it all go away. I know it makes me sound quite calculating but I was really saying whatever I could to produce the result I wanted”
“I have done the one thing that you said not to do. I told you I would make it all go away and I will by doing what you said not to do. I want you home babe, we all miss you so much. I cry every night and every morning coz your not here”
“Leaving aside for the moment the contentious issue of whether an abused woman, even one suffering from BWS, remains a reasonable person or not, the problem of the law is how to translate the medical language of “learned helplessness, passivity and paralysis” into the legal discourse of duress. It is not simply that there is automatic equivalence between “learned helplessness” and “overpowerment of will”; the two are not the same”
“She became very upset and told Mr A’s sister that she couldn’t cope without Mr A and the family needed him back. She states that at this point they planned to say the allegations were a lie.”
“… I would rule that absent dishonesty or mala fides or an exceptional circumstance the decision … to consent to the prosecution of the applicants is not amenable to judicial review. Whilst the passing of the Human Rights Act marked a great advance for our criminal justice system it is in my view vitally important that, so far as the courts concerned, its application in our law should take place in an orderly manner which recognises the desirability of all challenges taking place in the criminal trial or on appeal”