I genuinely do not understand how police can know that someone is a genuine rape victim until after they have investigated.
Or do they think that false accusers simply don't exist?
That Carl Beech and Jemma Beale and others never existed?
That people don't want money (compensation, blackmail etc) or Revenge (rejection) or sympathy or any of the other dozen motives for inventing or exaggerating claims?
PLEASE - sensibly and intelligently, explain this to me.
Am I mad?

www.bbc.com/news/uk-61640054

I don't think you're mad. I can't see why any genuine rape victim who wanted their rapist prosecuted would have a problem having their mobile phone data examined. Calling it a "digital strip-search" seems over-the-top.

Sometimes the injuries and circumstance make what has happened very obvious, but a claim from forty years ago with no evidence isn't really the same thing.
I am glad that the Depp/Heard trial has brought false sexual and physical violence claims to the attention of everyone, and has exposed the reasons why.

Frighteningly even the obvious signs of, say, a recent rape can be self inflicted.
These days forensics are getting far better at spotting them which is one reason why so many false claims fail.
Another is when details given can be proven false; sadly police never attempt to examine them ("you will be believed") which is why it is VITAL for the wrongly accused to do so - or, rather, an expert on their behalf.
Without the abilities of my superb Private Investigator I'd never have been acquitted and would probably now be in jail for the rest of my life for crimes that never took place.
Thanks to my spotting flaws and pointing my PI in the right direction and him finding amazing evidence of not just accidental but deliberate lying, I was declared Not Guilty and the police work was described by the Judge as "a debacle".
I had the advantage of having been through it several times before, having learned from others what they had been through, and thus was able to know how to cope. But most are simply not able to do that and believe, wrongly, in the adage "you don't hire a dog and bark yourself".

Dozens of articles about this (one in today's Times) - every single one assuming those making claims are "victims". It appears that nobody in traditional media considers - let alone believes - that people lie. Extraordinary. If any reader of this thread is part of a newspaper and would like the alternative side of the story which, by the way, would NOT say every claimant is lying but would put forward the balanced view, do just ask. No fee required.