Report Summary
Issued 16 April 2024, this FOI response provides information on rape cases submitted to SPA Forensic Services which involved sanitary pads.
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Response
Question 1: The number of rape cases submitted to SPA in 2023.
Reply: 2023 saw circa 815 Rape crimes submitted for laboratory examination in Forensic Services.
Question 2: The number of cases which involved sanitary pads (specifically pads, not tampons)?
Reply: Forensic Services can only report on cases submitted to them by Police Scotland or the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service where a ‘sanitary pad’ was submitted as a production and then analysed. Response to Question 5 & 6 provide further detail of these.
Question 3: How many of these sanitary pads were submitted to SPA for examination?
Reply: Through a key term search, we have identified 19 cases where a sanitary towel/pad was lodged as a production for examination by Forensic Services (this is an estimate as the production labels used to search for these cases are entered by free text and are reliant on the naming conventions used for each individual submission). Five of these 19 cases referred to sexual crimes other than rape.
Question 4: How many of these sanitary pads were actually examined by SPA?
Reply: A manual review of the 19 case files established that nine sanitary pads (in 7 cases) were examined by Forensic Services in 2023.
Question 5: How many of these sanitary pads tested positive with AP?
Question 6: How many of these sanitary pads it was possible to then extract spermatozoa from?
Reply to Question 5 & 6: A manual review of the 19 casefiles established that of the 9 sanitary pads examined, 4 were tested for AP, 1 of which was positive for AP. Of that 1 sanitary pad, no spermatozoa were detected.
