This enables police officers to react with sensitivity to their delicate physical and emotional state (Moloney 1992, p 401). The enquiry as to the true facts reveals two scenarios; either the perpetration of the most degrading, humiliating and soul destroying crime that can be committed against another human being, or a false report motivated by fear greed or pressure from those within the complainant's environment. In either case the responsibility of the police is to achieve its objectives with the least amount of trauma inflicted on the complainants as they progress through the judicial process. However, according to Byrnes (1992, p62), problems may occur where there are no IROC trained officers or female police available because of unforseen circumstances.
A study by Gregory and Lees (1996) of attrition rates in two different London police boroughs found a high attrition rate appeared to be attributable to the police practice of "no-criming", where a proportion of recorded cases were categorised as no crimes committed, thus they were not recorded as offences (p2). Cases were found to be frequently not proceeded with somewhere between the filing of the report, and the committal process (Chambers and Miller 1987) In fact, according to Edwards (1989, cited Gregory and Lees, 1996, p3) out of 773 reported cases a crime report was made in only 93 assaults, and an incident report in a further 73 cases. It may be concluded from these figures that police were "losing" cases from records that they deemed unlikely to proceed to court, or dealt with in some other way. The inherent dangers of these practises leads to a distortion of the true figures relating to incidences involving sexual assault. The distortion effect may then be manifested in the official and community perception of the prevalence of sexual assault, the belief that it is not a major concern of the community in general.
