Improve the conviction rates of sex offenders

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The UK’s criminal justice system is failing the victims (adult or child) of rape and other sexual assaults by its blatant inability to hold to account those who commit these very serious crimes. If any six women gather together then, statistically, one of them will have survived rape. Yet it would require a meeting of 62 rapists, 10 times as many, to find one who had been convicted of this very serious crime. Such is the current imbalance between victim and rapist.

We-Together is a new charity formed to secure a significant increase in the conviction rate of sexual offenders by harnessing a unique technological solution, a new encrypted database to encourage more victims to report rape or sexual assault; increase the chance of identifying and prosecuting serial sexual abusers by spotting ‘clusters’ of incidents of abuse; and lead to far more convictions.

To bring more sexual abusers to justice, we must make it easier and safer to report an attack. Many victims stay silent through misplaced shame, fear of the consquences, or of not being believed. Nearly four times as many offences are committed (according to British Crime Survey data) than the numbers of attacks reported to the police.

To increase conviction rates the police need more help to investigate reported offences effectively so they can present more convincing evidence to convince the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to prosecute.

Our encrypted database will allow victims to self-report, in confidence and independently from the police, overcoming the extreme reluctance which many victims feel about going to the police. Our aim is to identify possible clusters of multiple victims with the same potential abuser, which will then be passed to the police so they can contact victims identified as being part of a cluster with common features of abuse: eg. time, place, method of grooming, role of the abuser. With a cluster of victims, a successful investigation and prosecution is more likely.

Meetings with both the Metropolitan Police and the Victims’ Commissioner, Vera Baird, have been very encouraging. Both recognise the potential benefits of the system proposed by We-Together and both have indicated that they believe such a system could have a significant role in improving the conviction rates of serial sexual offenders.

For more information on We Together please visit our web site:

www.we-together.co.uk