When the first account is not the true account: understanding false, partial and inconsistent explanations in exploitation cases

A very common mistake across the criminal justice system in exploitation cases is the assumption that the first account given is the most accurate.

If a victim tells police one thing, medical professionals another, says very little in an NRM referral and only later gives a fuller account to a solicitor or expert, that inconsistency is often seen as undermining credibility. Why did they change their story? Why didn’t they say that sooner? Why are they saying it now? They are not unreasonable questions, but they are often asked without nuance.

False, partial and inconsistent explanations in exploitation cases are commonplace. That is not because victims are necessarily inventing things after the fact. Often, it is because the earliest account is the safest account, not the most accurate.

Someone may give a false explanation for an injury in hospital because they are fearful of who hurt them. They may say “no comment” during police interviews because they have been told to keep quiet, because they fear reprisals or because they do not trust the police enough to explain what has really been happening. They may minimise what went into an NRM referral because they do not yet see themselves as exploited, because they are ashamed or because they are still too close to the people controlling them. Inconsistency, on its own, should not be mistaken for proof of dishonesty.

This is why Home Office, police and CPS guidance identifies inconsistent and partial accounts as potential indicators of exploitation, rather than evidence against it. Yet, in practice, those same public authorities too often fail to apply that guidance, relying instead on fragmented, incomplete or apparently inconsistent accounts to dispute whether exploitation occurred at all. In doing so, they treat as suspicious the very features that their own guidance recognises as common in victims of exploitation.

Why accounts change

In our casework, we have seen victims present with injuries and give explanations that do not sit comfortably with the later history they provide. We have seen victims describe violence as an accident or say almost nothing at all, only for a much fuller account to emerge once some time has passed and some trust has been established. Sometimes that later account includes threats, debt, coercion, substance dependence, fear for family members or a very real belief that speaking openly would make things worse.

Disclosure is shaped by context. If a person is frightened, ashamed, criminalised, traumatised or worried that telling the truth will put them or their family at risk, then what they say in the first hour, first interview or first referral may be heavily edited by fear.

In some cases, they may also be trying to avoid incriminating themselves. In others, they may be operating within a culture where “snitching” carries dangerous consequences. In others still, they may not fully understand what has happened to them until much later.

The role of exploitation dynamics

This is particularly important in criminal exploitation cases, where people are often judged against binary labels of victim or offender/perpetrator. They may have been coerced into drug supply, carrying weapons, handling money or travelling, while also being in debt, frightened, threatened or subject to coercive control. Those realities can sit together, even if professionals are often more comfortable pretending they do not.

The same applies to silence. A no comment interview is often read in a very flat way. Sometimes it is tactical and sometimes it follows legal advice, but sometimes it reflects fear, trauma, distrust or a belief that saying anything at all is dangerous. 

Understanding the barriers to disclosure

The problem is that inconsistency is too often treated as the end of the analysis, instead of the beginning of it. A changed account should prompt better questions. What was happening when the first account was given? What risks did the person think they were facing? Did they feel safe? Did they trust the person asking? Were they trying to protect themselves, someone else or both? What changed that made fuller disclosure possible later?

Those questions matter far more than the lazy assumption that if something was true, it would have been disclosed straight away. Exploitation rarely produces neat disclosures, ideal victims, accurate timelines or complete records. More often, it produces confusion, minimisation, contradiction and delay.

That does not remove the need for scrutiny. But it does require a more informed and careful interpretation than simply equating discrepancy with dishonesty. Sometimes the first account is true and sometimes it is the account that felt safest to give. In exploitation cases, that acknowledgement could be the difference between protection or prosecution.