New York Rape Cases Remain Unaddressed and Untried
Despite #MeToo, sex crime cases in New York continue to be rejected as perpetrators regularly avoid convictions.
Landwebs
Despite hopes raised by the #MeToo movement, some experts believe that prosecutors are still unwilling to grapple with the inherent challenges of prosecuting sexual assault, particularly when the attacker is not a stranger and alcohol is involved, and that little has changed in the way the criminal justice system in New York City deals with rape accusations, reports the New York Times. Most New York City prosecutors’ offices rejected a greater share of sex crime cases in 2019, the last year for which reliable data is available, than they did roughly a decade earlier.
That’s particularly the case in Manhattan, where prosecutors dropped 49 percent of sexual assault cases in 2019 — an increase from 37 percent in 2017, state data shows. Conviction rates for sexual assault cases are typically much lower than for other violent crimes: 44 percent of those cases resulted in a conviction in Manhattan in 2019, compared with 79 percent of first-degree murder cases. Audrey Moore, a first assistant district attorney under Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said the office has sought to better train prosecutors about the effects of trauma on victims and how to approach cases of alcohol-facilitated rape. Alvin Bragg, the former federal prosecutor who won the Democratic primary in June in the race to succeed Vance, has promised to revamp the sex crimes bureau.
