Sick! Festival (Manchester): Innocent Until Proven Guilty

‘Only 1,070 rapists are convicted every year despite up to 95,000 people – the vast majority of them women – suffering the trauma of rape – according to the new research by the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and the Office for National Statistics.’ The Independent, 27th November 2014

In a supposedly progressive society which aims to protect the individual how can this be? Do our other values, such as the assumption of innocence until proven guilty have a role to play? Should this assumption be questioned for situations in which hard evidence beyond individual testimony is notoriously hard to come by? Or are there other ways in which the system needs to change to protect people from the most traumatic and often life-threatening crimes.