text: Thanks for that, it fully confirms how I imagine the system works. Or doesn't as the case may be.
  
  So there are three tiers of subjective opinion beneath that of the court in a sexual assault case. First there's the complainant, then there's the police, and finally there's the prosecutor. Any or all of them could conclude that whatever happened is too minor to bother with. Yet whatever happened will still be recorded as a sexual assault statistic. That statistic is then mentioned by anyone who wants to dramatize the low number of convictions, as a means to coerce new rules around how a criminal trial should be conducted.