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Can people with intellectual disabilities resist implications of fault when police question their allegations of sexual assault and rape?
journal contribution
posted on 2015-08-11, 08:23 authored by Charles Antaki, Elizabeth Stokoe, Emma Richardson, Sara WillottWhen people alleging sexual assault are interviewed by police, their accounts are
tested to see if they would 'stand up in court'. Some tests are in the form of
tendentious questions carrying implications (e.g. that the sex was consensual)
damaging to the complainant's allegation. In a qualitative analysis of 19 English
police interviews with people with a variety of intellectual disabilities, we show how
they deal with the pragmatic complexity of such tendentious questions. We give
examples in which the complainants detect and resist the questions' damaging
implications, but focus on occasions when they do not do so. We discuss the use of
tendentious questions in the light of national UK guidelines on the treatment of
vulnerable witnesses.
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