Rape Squad?

This story has been buzzing about for a few days now I just can;t seem to get my head round it.

I can't see how setting up a special 'rape' squad can make the detection / conviction rate any better. My force takes the matter seriously, as it should, and we tend to gather as much evidence as quickly as possible which is as good as you could expect.

The problem with the offence and reason we don't get the conviction rate is the 'permission' element of the offence itself.

So what is rape then? It is basically sexual intercourse without the permission element. We can usually prove the intercourse happened, DNA evidence proves it clearly, but you try proving if one person had given permission or not... much harder if not impossible.

Violent incidents often provide some evidence to back up the victim's claims, bruising, broken bones and such isn't in the normal course of reproduction. But again this occurs in the more public and violent incidents - which is just where the majority of the offences aren't made out. The majority of cases I have attended, and I am well aware that I am 'just' a response officer, are cases where the suspect is already a long term partner and has gone too far. Evidence is gathered and people quickly arrested and the usual perspective of the investigating DC is that they pray the suspect will admit to it as the job is going nowhere.

Unless the weight of proof shifts almost entirely towards supporting the victim then I don't see how anything can improve. I have seen honest victims been torn to pieces in the box by a half decent solicitor with the outcome being that the magistrates and judge believe that the complainant is a jibbering wreck in real life and the job gets binned. How on earth can the rape victim ever have a chance if the courts have the attitude that we can't believe what people are saying no matter how good a standing they are within the community?

So my conclusion is that the reason the conviction level will never rise is that, with the court system as it is (archaic, stiff and unrepresentative of any justice) there is no hope.