This is beside the point. What evidence are you expecting to find on someone's phone to tell you whether sex was consensual or not?

This article is part of a series investigating why the proportion of rape allegations that make it to trial is going down in the UK. Austerity is affecting the police investigating reported rapes and this is a regression for men and women who experience rape and abuse. Police and prosecutors are looking for excuses not to investigate because they're limited for funding, time, skilled staff; because rapes can be hard to investigate and try; because it's stigmatized as a women's issue.

They're treating people who report rapes as if they're guilty of lying until proven innocent. Unless the victim allows them to invade their digital privacy when they've already been raped and had an invasive examination to get physical evidence. The point of GDPR and warrants being required before being searched and all that is to say it's not suspicious to want to protect your privacy.

Some of the victims being demanded to hand their phones over or else have their cases dropped were children, the article said. That's statutory rape. You can't tell me you need to see a child's phone to know that.

Whenever articles like this get posted there are always comments from men, scared any progress will mean an increase in cases of women blackmailing men for money by threatening they'll tell the police they were raped. I wish they'd go and read about how common real rapes are and what they're like. If a man was blackmailed like that surely he'd save the evidence. Why would searching the phone of the person making the allegation tell you anything useful there?

We need to teach consent properly as part of sex ed. We need to end toxic masculinity and empower people of all genders to recognise abuse, consent, coercion, and to require enthusiastic consent. We need to fund better training for the professionals who investigate and try reported rapes and give them the resources they need to do their job fully.

This is not a story about Person A vs Person B, it's a story about a systemic problem that is getting worse instead of better due to a decade of austerity from a party of neoliberal conservatives who don't care how much their policies discriminate against vulnerable and marginalised people.