The Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, has said she is not satisfied with the low rate of rape allegations that currently result in convictions. She believes it is a priority for her personally and for the criminal justice system to influence how juries see alleged rape victims. A Whitehall source added that ‘the conviction rates should be higher and we are working to make them higher’.

In response to a Europe-wide study of rape convictions in which Britain came bottom of 33 countries, it revealed the conviction rate for rape had dropped to 6.5 per cent compared with 25 per cent in France (although France with the same size population has twice the number of rape offenders. And nine other EU countries all have higher numbers of rape offenders per 100,000 of the population.)

The number of rape accusations has increased nearly three-fold in the period between 1995 and 2006. But this, the Bar Association says, is partly a result of the widening of the definition of rape to include oral sex, in the 2003 Sexual Offences Act - making international comparisons more difficult.

It has also been noted on more than one occasion that rape cases are often distinctly weak, most involving friends and acquaintances and a lack of visible injuries coupled with a late complaint involving a blank memory of crucial events, very many involving drugs or drink. So it’s not so much a question of lack of sympathy or disbelieving the complainant, it is a question of proof or rather lack of it.

And while it is probably right that the majority who report rape ordeals to the police are in fact real victims, there is a small but significant proportion who undoubtedly complain falsely and maliciously. This is reflected in not infrequent reports of prosecutions of false rape complainants for offences of wasting police time and perverting the cause of justice when their lies are - often by chance - uncovered.

Rape is a deeply vile crime and every effort should be made to ensure that real victims achieve justice through the convictions of the guilty, but this ambition will not be helped by treating rape as a special case and lowering the standard of proof for conviction.