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Thread: 4 Chinese women among dead in US shooting
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[quote=JCNILE123,363427]GREAT BRITAIN.....'This crime ruins people's lives' The case of Kirk Reid - yesterday convicted of assaulting 25 women - has exposed severe failings in rape investigations. Rachel Williams talks to a teenager whose own allegation was so badly handled that it led to a damning internal police inquiry • The Guardian, Friday 27 March 2009 • Article history Rebecca suffers distressing flashbacks, both of her rape and cross-examination. Photograph: Teri Pengilley/Guardian In spring 2005, Sally noticed that there was something wrong with her daughter Rebecca. The 15-year-old was constantly crying, taking two or three baths a day, and was unable to sleep, being plagued with nightmares. Sally pleaded with Rebecca to explain what was upsetting her, but to no avail until her daughter finally woke her one night at 4am. She said that six weeks earlier she had met a man who had seemed friendly, but the next day he had raped her. Sally and Rebecca went straight to the police and were initially impressed by the response. A specially trained officer took Rebecca's statement; she was treated with sensitivity and felt she was being taken seriously. She handed over her mobile phone for testing and a few days later made an official video statement. But as time went on mother and daughter became increasingly concerned that no arrest had been made. This was despite the fact that officers had been given a mobile phone number, address and car registration details for the alleged attacker. Unknown to them, this was not the only failure. No attempt was made to obtain forensic evidence from the flat where Rebecca claimed she had been raped. No one went to the local shop where she had gone in a distressed state afterwards, and although both her mobile phone and the man's were sent away for examination, the wrong tests were carried out. By the time this mistake was recognised it was too late to obtain the correct information. When the case came to court, the defendant was found not guilty. Sally's voice grows soft as she remembers the moment that she told Rebecca the verdict. "She was crying and she just kept looking at me, saying, 'They didn't believe me, mum, they didn't believe me.' I said, 'It's not that they didn't believe you, it's just that if you haven't got the evidence you can't find someone guilty.'" Earlier this month it became clear just why the case had floundered. Having made a complaint about the police handling of the investigation, a damning internal inquiry revealed a string of mistakes that had been made by the inadequately supervised, overburdened and untrained police constable who was left - in breach of the Metropolitan police's own rules - to handle it. This showed that there weren't enough detectives in the elite Sapphire sex crimes unit; in fact, the unit's then manager was pleading with her superiors for more staff, pointing out that the car crime, burglary and robbery teams all had more detectives. Another senior officer in the Sapphire[/quote]
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