Speakers
Patrick Tidmarsh
Dr Patrick Tidmarsh is a leading authority on sexual offending, the investigation of sexual crime, and forensic interviewing. He trains and lectures all over the world, helping police and other professionals to understand sexual offending, develop effective investigative and forensic interviewing practices, and improve responses for both victims and offenders.
He has worked in the field of sexual crime for over thirty years. For twenty of those years he worked in sex offender treatment, in prisons and in the community, with both adults and adolescents. He worked in policing for twelve years, training detectives, and developing the specialism of sexual crime investigation. Patrick developed the ‘Whole Story’ method of investigating sex crimes, a ground-breaking initiative designed to combat victim blaming, teach detectives how to understand the dynamics of sexual crime, and improve the gathering of evidence in sexual offence cases.
Patrick has just published a book about sexual offending and investigations, entitled “The Whole Story. Investigating sexual crime: Truth, lies, and the path to justice”, published by Jonathan Cape.
He is currently working on Operation Soteria Bluestone, a UK national initiative improving the investigation of rape and serious sexual offences, as well as working with numerous police forces around the world.
Title: Improving investigations of sexual crime: developing
victim-centred and suspect-focused practice
This paper will draw on the chequered history of sexual crime investigation to propose pathways, processes, and practices that will improve both therapeutic and forensic outcomes in sexual offence investigations. It will address the twin challenges of maintaining a victim-centred approach, while focusing investigations on suspect behaviour, and highlight the knowledge, attitudes, and skills required of effective sexual and relationship-based crime investigators. Structural challenges will also be addressed, including: understandings of consent, community myths and misconceptions of sexual crime, the forensic measure of “beyond reasonable doubt”, and the phenomenon of ‘downstream orientation’ in investigative and prosecutorial decision-making. Finally, it will outline the principles of effective investigations, using Whole Story methodology, highlighting understandings of offender behaviour, victim reaction, and eliciting relevant contextual evidence.