Jane Doe, Unlocked
The Jane Doe Files, Part 5 of 6
When smartphones put a camera and a message log in every pocket, a reasonable person might have predicted that rape cases would get easier to resolve. There would be a record. False accusations would be exposed; true ones would be corroborated. In England and Wales, the phone did become central to rape cases, just not the way anyone expected. Instead of settling disputes, it became the thing many complainants were asked to surrender, and the government’s own review concluded the prospect was one of the principal reasons victims walked away.
The case that changed everything
In December 2017, the rape trial of a 22-year-old student named Liam Allan collapsed three days in. Police had downloaded more than 57,000 messages from the woman’s phone. The officer on the case decided nothing in them was relevant, so Allan’s lawyers never got them. When the messages finally surfaced mid-trial, they undercut her account, and prosecutors dropped the case (joint police and prosecution review).
Within days, two more London rape trials collapsed for similar reasons. In one, material on the complainant’s phone came to light late. In the other, the defendant’s lawyers found photos on his own phone that undercut the case (ITV). England’s prosecution service then reviewed 3,637 open rape and serious sexual assault cases nationwide. It dropped 47 in which evidence hadn’t been properly shared with the defense (CPS).
The lesson the system took was understandable: don’t miss what’s on the phone. In April 2019, police and prosecutors rolled out a standard consent form across all 43 forces in England and Wales. It asked complainants to authorize access to their messages, photos, emails and social media, and warned that if they refused, “it may not be possible for the investigation or prosecution to continue” (PublicTechnology).
“Digital strip search”
Campaigners gave the forms a name that stuck. Women reported feeling that they were the ones under investigation. One official review captured the complaint: victims described “the possible loss of their phones as the starting point for the investigation” (Operation Soteria). Phones that were taken were kept for an average of 89 days in one London sample, and in some cases more than a year.
The pushback came from every direction:
- June 2020: the Information Commissioner found police data extraction “excessive,” inconsistent and often on a shaky legal basis, and warned it could deter people from reporting (ICO).
- June 2020: the Court of Appeal ruled in Bater-James that there is no presumption a complainant’s phone should be examined. Police need a real reason, not “mere conjecture or speculation” (judgment).
- July 2020: facing a legal challenge by two rape complainants, police scrapped the forms (Big Brother Watch).
- 2022: Parliament wrote rules for this into law for the first time. Until then there was no statute at all, just police practice and that consent form. Under the new law, police can copy data from a victim’s phone only if she hands it over voluntarily and agrees, the search follows a real line of inquiry, and they take no more than the case actually needs. A code of practice spelling out the details took effect in November 2022.
- 2024–2026: Phones weren’t the only private records police routinely requested from rape complainants. They also asked for medical files, school records, social services files and therapy notes. The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 applied the same test to those requests: they must be necessary and proportionate, and counseling notes get extra protection. Detailed guidance for police followed in January 2026.
The collapse
Meanwhile, rape prosecutions in England and Wales cratered. The share of rape cases closed because the victim no longer supported action rose from 25% in 2015/16 to 41% in 2019/20, and 43% by the end of 2020 (Victims’ Commissioner). At the low point, only about 1.5% of recorded rapes led to a charge.
The government’s End-to-End Rape Review (2021) found that in 57% of adult rape cases the victim felt unable to continue, and it named the prospect of handing over personal data as “one of the principal reasons why they withdraw” (Rape Review). It promised that no victim would be left without a phone for more than 24 hours.
What the case files actually show
Here’s where the story gets more complicated than either side tends to admit.
London’s 2021 Rape Review coded 450 real rape allegations in detail (MOPAC):
- Police asked for a phone or device in 23% of cases, not the majority. In 87% of those, the request followed a specific reference to something on the device. The review found “no evidence of police blanket requests.”
- 65% of cases ended with the victim withdrawing. But when researchers modeled what predicted withdrawal, the phone request did not remain a significant factor once other things were accounted for.
- Where withdrawal reasons could be identified, only 5 victims were recorded as withdrawing because they didn’t want to hand over technology. The leading reasons were not having intended a formal report in the first place, and wanting to move on.
- Where phones were examined and the outcome was known (25 cases), the material helped the prosecution in 9 cases (36%) and the defense in 4 (16%).
So two things are true at once. Victims, support workers and the government’s own review all describe phone requests as a powerful deterrent. And the most detailed case-level data can’t find that effect in the numbers. Part of the gap may be measurement: “wants to move on” can contain a lot of dread about what’s coming. Part may be that the fear of the request did its work before anyone formally asked, or before anyone reported at all. That last possibility, that women never came forward because of what they’d heard about phones, is the one nobody has measured. Surveys of why victims don’t report list embarrassment, humiliation and doubt that police can help; phones aren’t a category.
The other side of the phone
None of this means phone evidence is a weapon used only against victims. Liam Allan was a real wrongful prosecution. In 2023, Eleanor Williams of Barrow-in-Furness was jailed for eight and a half years for fabricating rape and trafficking claims; phone records and CCTV exposed her, and three men she accused had attempted suicide (CPS). And in London’s data, a seized phone more often helped the prosecution than hurt it.
The phone didn’t make rape cases objective. It made them bigger: more material, more months, more intrusion, and more room for each side’s story. England has spent seven years arguing over phone evidence, and nobody disputes that it matters. The fight is over how much of her private life a rape victim should have to hand over so police can search for evidence.
US readers should note: American practice varies by jurisdiction, and the US has no national equivalent of England’s consent-form episode. But the tension is the same.
Next in the series, Part 6: Keeping John Doe on File.
Research and drafting assistance for this piece, including source verification, was provided by Claude (Anthropic). All claims are cited to primary or secondary sources linked inline throughout; the analysis and opinions are my own.