Hoping to encourage rape victims to overcome their fear of reporting the heinous but embarrassing crime, the police is to step up training of individuals who can handle the matter with the required sensitivity.

Against that background, Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of crime, Mark Shields has appealed to rape victims to come forward to report the offence.

“I have heard horror stories of how some rape victims are being treated by some of our police officers, and I emphasise ‘some’,” Shields conceded in an interview with the Observer.

“But we are conducting a fundamental review of how rape victims and sexual offence victims are being treated and what training our officers have in terms of when they first come into contact with the rape victims,” he said.

The crime of rape has been removed from under the supervision of the Police Community Relations Department and added to the crime chief’s portfolio, on grounds that a change in the attitude towards rape victims would result in an increase in the amount of reported cases.

Shields said he had heard of numerous cases of women who had gone to police stations to report their ordeal and were “treated in ways that have been less than adequate and in some cases insensitive”.

Yet, it was still in the best interest of the victims to come forward and report their cases, he insisted.

“I encourage women that whatever they have heard about reporting cases of rape to the police I would still encourage them to come forward to seek help, because if they do not report, there is no doubt that the rapist will strike again.

“And it’s my experience that in terms of rape, the levels of violence escalate so what may be a rape today, might be a rape and murder tomorrow,” Shields cautioned.

Moreover, “it’s in every woman’s interest to ensure that they actually do come forward to cooperate with the police in order that we can investigate properly. There is help, there is support, there is counselling, there are support mechanisms that we can put them in touch with.”

DCP Shields said an ongoing review of the situation had included an assessment of the Centre for Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA), which he believed was “antiquated” and did not offer sufficient privacy for victims, among other shortcomings.

“We have looked at the main CISOCA office in Kingston… it needs a thorough facelift and I understand that the private sector is going to assist with that. At the moment it is not at the standard that I would expect in that there is not sufficient privacy for victims and it is not particularly comfortable or user-friendly,” Shields stressed.

Further, there was a lack of sufficient female doctors to provide examinations for rape victims.

With improvements, Shields predicted that more women would report rape cases. “…Rape is probably the most awful ordeal apart from murder where women are concerned and I think that if we improve the way in which we deal with victims, we improve our investigations, then the number of rapes reported should go up,” he noted.

In the meantime, he said, the issue of intimidation of the victims by the perpetrators continued to be a major deterrent.

“It is a serious problem in that sometimes mothers perhaps do not even accept that their female child has been abused by their partner or somebody else she knows so that’s the first hurdle; secondly, more often than not, in cases of carnal abuse, it’s somebody that’s relatively close to the family and there is that added ordeal of possible intimidation to the victim once it has been reported,” the crime chief said.

While noting that the obstacles being faced were not peculiar to Jamaica, Shields said it would be wise to secure international best practices to overcome the challenges.

He added that the police were liaising with other agencies in highlighting the high level of carnal abuse in the island to support children and educate persons as to the devastating effects of carnal abuse.

Shields was looking forward with anticipation to the government’s promised national crime survey next year to provide “a far truer picture of the extent of crime overall than we are getting at the moment”.

“I think the only statistics we can safely say is accurate is murder and probably shootings but other crime statistics I think there is a problem,” Shields admitted, adding that the problem was not restricted to Jamaica.

Police statistics for major crimes from January to July 1 this year, show that there were 238 reported cases of carnal abuse, a 38 per cent jump over the 173 cases reported during the corresponding period last year.

For August there were 56 cases of rape reported, down from 69 during the same period in 2005 while eleven cases of carnal abuse were reported to the police during the month, below the 41 reported in August 2005.

Explaining the shift in responsibility for rape cases, Shields noted that while officers from CISOCA had the competency to take good witness statements, the fact that it sat outside the crime portfolio meant that there was not a close enough link between CISOCA and investigators.

“Furthermore it is a fact that many of the men who are committing rape are also committing shootings, murder and other serious criminal Offences and therefore if it is dealt with within separate parts of the organisation, there is a danger that we will lose some of the investigative opportunities where a man can be convicted of rape, if we can’t catch him for shooting or for murder. I think it’s important that we bring all of that together,” DCP Shields added.

This view is shared by Assistant Commissioner of Police and head of the Criminal Investigation Bureau Denver Frater.

“What we have found is that a number of the sexual Offences are committed along with robbery, murder, shooting and kidnapping and require more investigative work,” Frater stated.

While not able to supply figures he said there had been a “number of arrests, a number of cases before the court and quite a number of convictions” since that approach was taken.