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Originally posted by CutiePie4eva:
if a girl is raped, but doesnt tell anyone until a few months later can she still persecute her rapist in court (if she knows who he is) even if there is no longer any evidence to prove it (bcause it has been several months since she has told anyone)?

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Persecution is never a good thing, but prosecution can be helpful. In this case, if there is no hard evidence to go on, it can be difficult to obtain any meaningful results. This is why it is so vitally important to go immediately to the police (or, at the very least, the hospital) if you are ever unfortunate enough to be the victim of sexual assault. It really cannot be stressed enough.

Statutes of Limitations vary from state to state and from crime to crime, but most states have either a 5 or 10 year SOL for rape and sexual battery cases. This means that you have that long to file charges and have the court accept them. However, if you've gone 9 years without taking any action, and never had a "rape kit" taken after the incident, you may be up a creek as far as the law is concerned. Witnesses disappear or die, memories fade, other evidence deteriorates to the point where you may have nothing left to go on at that point.

Which would be a real tragedy indeed. It's never too late to give your local police agency a call, but it may be too late to have anything criminally done about it. In this case, I would recommend talking to your local authorities about it and asking to speak to their Assaults Bureau (or Sex Crimes Detail, if they have one), so you can at least get detailed information about how best to proceed.

But in the future, please remember to get things taken care of immediately if you are victimized. Not only will it benefit you to get the help you so deserve, it will serve the dual purpose of getting hard evidence collected that can one day convict and imprison your attacker. Good luck!

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BruinDan, "Number Three," PSOM

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Originally posted by BruinDan:

Persecution is never a good thing, but prosecution can be helpful.

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