Majority have confidence in courts

TWO thirds of people have ungrounded confidence in the justice system’s ability to convict rapists with just 15% of respondents correctly predicting, even in broad terms, the number of reports of rape dealt with by the gardaí annually.

These are the findings of an Irish Examiner/Red C survey which asked people how many allegations of rape are made to gardaí every year and what percentage of these lead to perpetrators being jailed. Across all age groups and demographics people believed 26% of men who are reported as rapists go on to be to be convicted. Official statistics for 2006 show less than 10% of Garda reports led to a somebody being declared guilty — one third of those surveyed by Red C guessed this correctly.

On average, adults believed 833 reports of rape were made to gardaí every year.