Rape is an appalling and gross violation and must be dealt with to the severest extent of the law. It is also to be hoped that we as a culture have dispensed with the notion that girls in short skirts are asking for it, that ambiguous signals may be taken as ‘yes’, and that the outlay for drinks and dinner entitles a chap to droit de seigneur. It is therefore reasonable to expect gasps of editorial outrage that only something like 5% of rape allegations result in convictions.

In my working life, I’ve had some experience of investigating and prosecuting rape cases. The perennial responses from press and government to this 5% issue therefore strike me as being uniformly craven. There is much talk of sloppy, old school investigators trying to downplay, downgrade and undermine complaints. There are unworkable notions about tinkering with standards of evidence for this criminal offence and no other, as if society’s sexual mores can be reverse-engineered from the Old Bailey.

Rarely are the issues of personal responsibility and sexual emancipation fully aired. There is never any mention of the staggering number of spurious allegations. Furthermore, as fear of masked sexual predators roaming the land adds spice, it is rarely made clear that stranger rape is not at issue here: the statistical spike is overwhelmingly the result of rape allegations where the suspect is a partner or a named acquaintance.

Perhaps it is to be expected that the criminal justice agencies should pay for the sins of their fathers. There are still serving officers who remember the days when all but the most ardent rape victims were bullied out of the station, and giving evidence in court has barely evolved from trial by ordeal. Yet it is my recent experience that most rape allegations now result in lengthy, thorough and expensive investigations, regardless of any misgivings the reporting officer might have.

As a young investigator with what I took to be thoroughly modern and enlightened views, I approached rape enquiries with an open mind. I became jaded very quickly. In two years, I dealt with one case that was both genuine and provable and resulted in a conviction. I was involved in a dozen others which followed a depressing pattern.

An inebriated young woman would meet an inebriated young man in a pub or club, they would return to one of their homes and there would be some haphazard activity ranging from fully-clothed fumbling to full penetration. In the cold, hung-over light of day, perhaps in conversation with friends, the young woman would decide that she couldn’t really have wanted the tawdry encounter and that it must therefore have happened without her consent. After a gruelling intimate examination, she would spend a day being interviewed by a specialist police officer.

In the meantime, the young man, generally without any kind of criminal record, would be arrested, subjected to an equally gruelling process and made a rape suspect. He would typically admit sexual contact, particularly if he had legal advice, and insist it was consensual. Provability would then become crucial. In circumstances like these, it becomes logically impossible to prove rape to the standard of criminal evidence without independent witnesses or clear evidence of force.

Within weeks, the young woman will generally withdraw the complaint for a variety of reasons. She might spontaneously decide she wants to put the episode behind her without the ordeal of a crown court trial. She may decide retraction is the right thing to do without feeling the need to explain. It might be pointed out to her that the prosecuting authority won’t run the case because it simply can’t be proved.

Such drunken, town-centre liaisons can and do result in rape; they are rightly investigated as fully as possible and, where there is good circumstantial and forensic evidence, there are convictions. Yet such clear and genuine cases are in the minority, and to tinker with the law so that evidentially ambiguous and arguably false cases result in jail-time would be to invite gross miscarriages of justice.

It has been suggested that the law should be amended so that only sober consent can be true consent; anything else would make intercourse rape. But how could this be enforceable? Wouldn’t this entail an equally tricky debate on a suspect’s ability to gauge a victim’s state of mind while drunk himself? Would the legislature be sending out the message that in the 21st century, adults shouldn’t be allowed to make their own decisions unless they’re demonstrably sober?

I am mystified and genuinely in need of enlightenment. I have dealt with decent, articulate, self-possessed young women who have made false rape allegations for the most banal reasons. Incredibly, some women would rather tell their partners, and then the police, that they were raped by an acquaintance rather than admit an infidelity. Some women would rather see a one-night stand arrested for rape simply because they were too drunk to remember what happened, much less whether they consented to anything. On one occasion, a two-day rape investigation ensued from two people having dosed off on the floor fully clothed and zipped and without so much as a goodnight kiss.

I should emphasise that I’m not basing my confusion on intuition alone. I’ve often believed the victim whole-heartedly, having seen no reason not to. All too often, I’ve then seen CCTV or forensic evidence which starkly contradicted their stories. The question I’ve never satisfactorily been able to answer is why any rational person would so deceive themselves that having someone arrested for rape would seem preferable to confession or introspection.

False allegations still register in the statistics. They waste time and resources that could be used on genuine crime of every kind. They make criminal justice practitioners sceptical to the detriment of future victims. It would be useful to prosecute those responsible but here’s the rub; by the same standards of criminal evidence, it can be every bit as hard to disprove as to prove rape.

Ours is a schizoid culture when it comes to sex; prurient and prudish in equal measure. Young people are sexualised at an earlier and earlier age, often without access to informed guidance outside their peer group. Young women appear to subscribe to the ladette culture by matching the boys drink for drunk and insisting on the right to be predators as well as prey. Yet come the morning after, they are once more their mother’s daughters, grappling with shame and regret.

Rather than lazily reducing the problem to a set of statistical imperatives held together by legal gaffer-tape, wouldn’t it be more beneficial to admit that confused sexual morality permeates our culture, and that personal responsibility is at least as important as enforcement of the law?