Prosecutorial Decision-Making in Crimes Against Women and Children: Evidentiary Thresholds, Victim Protection, and Access to Justice

Abstract

Background: Prosecutors occupy a pivotal gatekeeping position in cases involving sexual violence, intimate-partner abuse, and child sexual abuse. Their evidentiary decisions must preserve the presumption of innocence and trial fairness, yet the empirical literature repeatedly shows that legally relevant evidence can become entangled with expectations about victim cooperation, prompt reporting, consistency, resistance, or “ideal victim” behaviour. At the same time, child- and victim-protection measures are often treated as welfare accommodations rather than as conditions that can improve the quality and continuity of evidence.

Objective: To compare prosecutorial evidentiary thresholds and victim-protection architecture across selected common-law and mixed systems, identify empirically documented determinants of charging and attrition, and develop an integrated framework for evidence-based, rights-consistent prosecutorial decision-making in crimes against women and children.

Methods: A comparative doctrinal analysis was integrated with a structured evidence synthesis restricted to legal, policy, and scholarly materials published, enacted, or operative by 2023. International standards and four national comparators-England and Wales, Canada (with British Columbia as the principal charge-assessment comparator), South Africa, and India-were analysed alongside 16 empirical or synthesis studies of prosecution, charging, or justice-system attrition. Sources were coded for threshold design, evidentiary appraisal, credibility reasoning, corroboration, victim participation, child-sensitive procedure, access barriers, and accountability.

Results: Formal thresholds differ in wording but converge on objective appraisal of admissible and reliable evidence followed by a public-interest assessment. Across the empirical corpus, independent corroborative evidence and victim engagement were the most recurrent correlates of case advancement; however, prompt reporting, physical resistance, perceived inconsistency, and other extra-legal expectations also affected decisions in several settings. Child sexual-abuse studies emphasized the importance of corroborative evidence, caregiver support, forensic interviewing, and developmental context. Comparative law showed that special measures, rape-shield rules, intermediaries, video evidence, in-camera procedures, and child-specific courts can reduce evidentiary distortion and participation costs without lowering the prosecution threshold.

Conclusion: The central reform problem is not whether evidentiary thresholds should be relaxed, but whether prosecutors receive and appraise evidence through processes sufficiently insulated from stereotype, avoidable trauma, and participation barriers. The study introduces the Prosecutorial Evidence–Protection–Access Framework (PEPAF), which links threshold integrity, contextualized evidence appraisal, independent corroboration, protection planning, access continuity, and reasoned re-review.

Publication history: Originally published in print on 15 June 2024. Online abstract record added on 16 September 2026. Full-text PDF will be added when the digital galley is ready.