My thoughts are, as always, focused on that percentage of women who report promptly, rather than wait too long.

I don't know what the 'best' PDs are doing to handle these cases but if you know of any please let me know, I'd love to know what they're doing right.

The justice system *shouldn't* assume every accusation is true; 'guilty until proven innocent'. But it also shouldn't assume it's not; as Bill Maher put it, we need to change from #BelieveAllWomen to #TakeAllegationsSeriously, and then investigate. That's how our system of justice is designed to work, and it's a good process. That's why we say 'alleged' anything until the accused is convicted; an exception might be someone like Trump who confessed publicly to several of his crimes (I'm not counting the ones on tape, the ones he spoke to the news media about, like the Mar-A-Lago documents case).

My own deep suspicion is that the police aren't all that motivated, frankly. They're famously misogynist and I feel quite comfortable making that blanket statement while noting #NotAllCops. They have a 40% higher domestic violence rate than other professions, including high-stress ones, and they've had to be dragged kicking and screaming to responding properly to domestic abuse calls. (Where they may well think the guy was justified in doing what he did; and also, if they arrest *this* abuser, what does that make the cop himself, who perhaps abuses his own wife? Self-image conflict there).

From what I've read (please correct me if you can refute this), they tend to wait on investigating rape reports, and then do it lackadaisically. Again, if you know of any that are handling it particularly well I would love to know about them. I probably could get an article or two out of them.

As for getting more convictions, if the women are reporting promptly, undergoing all the necessary physical examinations (can't get around that - has to happen if we want more convictions), and the police *are* handling it promptly and with a genuine goal to locate the truth, whatever it is - then I think we will see more success in the courts. True, proving consent is hard but that's outside the scope of this discussion, which is about what PDs can do more, or faster, to facilitate rape cases.

What feminists can do is provide better support to rape victims who do report, helping to guide them through the very difficult process of filing the report and potentially going to trial. If there are other weaknesses or holes in the system we haven't addressed, they'll become clearer with this process.

If you've got some good sources on this - books, documentaries, websites, news articles, etc. - I would love to see them.