Victims of sexual assault who were intoxicated during the crime can still report accurate information from the events when interviewed by the police, a new study has found.
People are often concerned about the accuracy of testimony given by victims who were intoxicated during a sexual assault but researchers have found that while alcohol intoxicated participants report fewer pieces of information about an assault, the information that they do provide is just as accurate as sober participants.
The study is one of the first to use a placebo controlled trial that investigates the effects of alcohol on memory within the context of sexual assault.
The team examined the influence of alcohol on remembering an interactive hypothetical sexual assault scenario in a laboratory setting using a balanced placebo design.
Female participants completed a memory test 24 hours and four months later.
Participants reported less information if they were under the influence of alcohol during the scenario than those who were not.
However, the accuracy of the information intoxicated participants reported did not differ compared to sober participants, suggesting intoxicated participants could accurately retain information from the event.
"When a victim is intoxicated during the crime, questions about the accuracy of testimony are raised in the minds of criminal investigators," said Heather Flowe from the University of Leicester's Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, who led the study.
"Out of these concerns, the police might forgo interviewing victims who were intoxicated during the offence," Flowe said.
"Consequently, it is not likely that a crime will be solved without victim testimony. Bearing this in mind, we wondered whether intoxicated victims take their mental state during the crime into account when rendering their testimony to investigators," said Flowe.
"If they take into account that their memory has been impaired by alcohol, they should report information only when they believe it is likely to be accurate," Flowe said.
"Accordingly, intoxicated victims should report less information overall, but the accuracy of the information they do report might not be different from sober victims," Flowe said.
"It has been a long held misconception that victims and witnesses who are intoxicated are not able to give as good an account as they would when they are sober," said Detective Inspector Reme Gibson from Leicestershire Police's Rape Investigation Unit.
"I hope these findings better support future investigations, particularly in the sexual violence arena which is already often complex and not without challenges," Gibson said.
The study was published in the journal Memory.
