Balanced News: Police could be banned from making intrusive searches of rape victims’ phones

Police face new laws that will ban intrusive searches of rape victims’ personal records and phones under a government shake-up to reverse plummeting prosecution rates. Writing in The Telegraph, Sarah Dines, the safeguarding minister, announced that any police officer investigating rape will be breaking the law if they make “unnecessary” or “disproportionate” requests for a victim’s medical, school or counselling records. Rape victims will also get a new legal right to be told why and what is being requested, and how it will be used, in order to reduce the number who drop out of prosecutions because of intrusive requests by police.