Posted without comment, because it doesn’t need one.
The London News reports:
‘Rape’ girl grateful for sex, says lawyer
A teenage girl who claims she was gang raped by three 13-year-old schoolboys was overweight and would have been “glad of the attention”, a barrister told a jury.
The 16-year-old and her friend told a court the boys mugged them for their phones then raped them repeatedly in a park while filming the ordeal on a mobile.
But lawyer Sheilagh Davies, acting for one of the defendants, said the girls consented to sex “maybe to gain attention, maybe to gain affection”. She told the jury one of the girls, who testified via video link, had “slimmed down a lot” since the incident in southeast London last November. The barrister added: “She was 12st 6lb ““ not quite the swan she may turn into. She may well have been glad of the attention.”
More at the link, including a comments section.
There’s a longer article here that includes even more blather from the lawyer, including lots of nastiness about what sluts young girls are nowadays.
Oh, and the lawyer in question used to be a sex-crimes prosecutor. Lovely.
Lawyers defend their clients. The comments are obviously odious, but that’s par for the course. It’s not easy, though often lucrative, to defend the indefensible.
If the jury buys the argument, well, there’s your outrage.
No notgruntled there is a need for change in the legal system. This is not something we just have to suck up. No other victims of crime get such appalling treatment on the stand- only rape victims. A situation where committal proceedings are used to intimidate the victim so that she is unable to continue to trial and where, if she does have the necessary emotional strength to continue, she will spend more time under cross examination than the victim of any other kind of crime is not just unfortunate it is a travesty. This kind of inbuilt misogyny enables rapists to continue raping women.
Yup. “Par for the course” is really not a great defence for hate speech, and “But I was paid for it/just following orders” doesn’t work for me either.
I certainly agree that it’s a vile argument, but how do you stop it? How much can you restrict the case a lawyer can make in defending his client?
I put the onus back on the jury; the best way to make sure this kind of tactic isn’t more common is to make sure it doesn’t work.
I do see your point, notgruntled. Lawyers make odious arguments on behalf of their clients all the time in adversarial justice systems, which is one reason that the profession itself is held to be somewhat odious. Juries are far more emotional than is generally held to be the case, and if the juror pool is better acquainted with the case for anti-sexist attitudes then they will punish sexist advocates.
I wonder if it’s any different in inquisitorial justice systems like the French have, or whether their advocates still engage in odious lines of argument in order to discredit opposing testimony?
I’ve sat on only one criminal jury panel in my lifetime, so perhaps I’m not best qualified to make generalisations. However I recall that the victim gave his evidence in a fairly straightforward manner and the crossexamination was about matters of fact (time, place, the type of weapon and so on) and was fairly civilised. Crossexamination of the defendant was much the same and no comment on his character was permitted. It was only after being found guilty that evidence of his character and criminal record was allowed, in order to determine an appropriate sentence. And quite rightly so – we were meant to find him guilty or not on the basis of evidence, not his character.
Why is it, then, that what I read of rape trials suggests that there is lot more discussion about character, and particularly that of the victim. Why is it that in prosecuting or defending a charge of rape “character” becomes significant admissable evidence. Enlighten me, someone, please.
Further proof, if proof were needed, that women can be Tools of the Patriarchy as much as men. Or, just tools.
Wow, there goes Jenny Craig then, right down the bankruptcy tube. How to ‘slim down a lot’: get yourself raped by three 13-year-olds and watch the kilos just melt away.
Alternatively, you could think about this story every evening at nine o’clock and throw up your dinner. Which would also work.
[...] posted a bit about the mangy asshats who think that certain women and girls deserve to be raped – fat women, for example, or preteen girls who wear particular types of [...]