Women jurors appear to be more severe critics of alleged rape victims than their male counterparts, a senior member of the judiciary has said.
Mr Justice Paul Carney of the High Court also said that a "genuine complainant whose rapist is acquitted suffers more on that account than from whatever happened to her on the night of the rape".
Mr Justice Carney's comments are contained in the text of a speech to a seminar at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, last Friday. The text was issued at the weekend by the law school of Trinity College Dublin, joint organisers of the seminar.
In his speech Mr Justice Carney also raised the possibility that some alleged victims might be pressurised into continuing with complaints they were reluctant to pursue.
"Such pressure could come from parents, boyfriends, policemen, prosecutors, rape crisis centres and victim support counsellors," he said.
"I have no way of knowing whether such pressure exists but I would be very concerned if it does, particularly in relation to those cases which can be profiled as unlikely to result in a conviction."
The judge said he had noted a "marked reluctance to convict" in date-rape style cases.
"In these situations, the most horrific sexual acts have been described in evidence but there has frequently been a hostile reaction to the prosecutrix from the jury," he said. On average, he said, the juries were usually evenly mixed in terms of gender but women jurors were often harder on alleged victims than men.
"A study of the jury's demeanour in the jury box would suggest that the female members of juries are the prosecutrix's severest critics," he said.
In a wide-ranging speech entitled "The Central Criminal Court: A View From the Bench", Mr Justice Carney was critical of "the prosecuting authority" in relation to sexual crimes.
The majority of sexual attacks by strangers involved a threat to kill, leading the victim to believe that she was about to die. "The `threat to kill' provisions of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861 had recently been re-enacted, allowing for a penalty of ten years' imprisonment," he said, but this was rarely applied.
"In only one case that has come before me has this statutory provision been invoked. I cannot for my part understand how the prosecuting authority can feel free to ignore the recently expressed wishes of Parliament".
There was a high rate of acquittals in rape cases, Mr Justice Carney said, and it could be that in some cases juries would accept the "`threat to kill" dimension of the claim.
"We will not know until the prosecuting authority places the matter before juries for their determination," he said.