Rejected petition Remove provision in Sect 41 of YJ&CE Act 1999 allowing previous sexual history

The appeal of Chedwyn Evans v R (2016) and the subsequent retrial of R v Chedwyn Evans (2016) allowed evidence into court of a complainant's sexual history. This was subject to judicial scrutiny because of the concern over how it was obtained. It traumatised a woman in court and women out of it.

More details

Information revealed post-trial criticised the reward offered for such witness testimony. This is concerning for all complainants. The fact that such tenuous "coincidence" as the words used during consensual sexual activity can be admitted as valid evidence that a victim is lying is deeply worrying and open to severe abuse by defence teams. Media amplification means the application of this could now increase and convictions decrease accordingly. It must end.

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/169433

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.

Date submitted 18 October 2016
Get petition data (json format)

About petition data

The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of Parliament. This data is available for all petitions on the site. It is not a list of people who have signed the petition. The only name that is shared on the site is that of the petition creator.