‘START by Believing’ Backfired in the U.K. Some US Senators Want to Impose it Here.
You may associate the “Start by Believing” movement with campus Title IX offices, but it was actually the underlying assumption in criminal prosecutions by the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales until recently. Four rape cases collapsed in two months because police failed to disclose evidence, and they sound an awful lot like the botched Title IX proceedings we come across regularly in U.S. litigation. This matters in the U.S. because our government is already moving in this direction with the upcoming reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, with scrutiny of the law’s more questionable assumptions and results being largely ignored on a bipartisan basis. One of the law’s biggest critics, the Coalition to End Domestic Violence, was blocked from testifying by Republican Chairman Chuck Grassley. “[T]here was no mention, even in passing, of the fundamental concepts of due process, constitutional protections, or the presumption of innocence, on campus or beyond.” Objections and questions about the act are met with a backlash that demonizes the source as anti-victim or rape apologists.
thecollegefix.com By Greg Piper
