I once heard my mother's husband complaining about how teenage girls "know the effect they're having" on older men. When I say teenage, I mean they were about 13, 14, 15 years old. This man made a pass at one of his stepdaughters when she was about 16, told her he was just being friendly, they were family now. I don't think he's a predatory peadophile, or even, really, a nonce. He's a creepy sexist prick who thinks all females have some kind of predatory sexual agenda, so they're up for it, asking for it, it's in their nature, they have it in for men, they use their sexuality cos it's all the power they have.
Vagina dentata and all that. While I was shocked at the time, I now think that he's really pretty run-of-the-mill.
This barrister is probably of the same type, I reckon. I imagine he does not conceive the heinous nature of his words; and I suppose that someone of that mindset would go on to point at the reaction and say "See! You're all oppressed and blinkered by the fear of insulting women and modern PC sensibilities! But they really are dangerous and predatory, and here's the proof! See how cowed and castrated you all are, how impotent you have become! You won't consider the slightest possibility that I'm right! I may be wrong in this instance, but anyone who knows the female knows how dangerous she can be, even the infants! Burn them! Burn them all!"
(He won't, of course: he'll be good and quiet and contrite and save his skin and stay the same and just be pissed off and self-righteous.)
I have been really non-plussed by this story today. I sat in the car this evening listening to the discussion on the 6 o'clock news on the radio. Some guy was saying how he'd seen a prosecution witness, a young lass, demolished in court by the defence, who had her read out every line of a previous - and subsequently retracted - statement she'd made about a sexual assault by her stepfather. The judge allowed the questions to continue even as the jury were clearly (albeit silently) in revolt. Someone else will recall more details about this. I was just appalled, but not surprised.
Manter, I don't know the details of the new guidelines, but the brief outline in that link looks okay, fairly sensible. I've not given it much thought yet, but it seems that while we must preserve the basic tenet of innocence until proven guilty, the law is so lumbered about and encumbered by complexities of interpretative argument that it ends up as a tool used to achieve the competative goal of a verdict of innocence or guilt, rather than a road to finding the truth. And witnesses are used as collateral and capital rather than signposts and wayfinders on that road.
Certainly it's time to look at how everyone in sexual assault cases are enabled to stand witness without being assaulted again by the system.
It's not just those who have been assaulted who end up traumatised by it: the families are often dragged through it aggressively too. If they are to help the victim to recover, they must not themselves be damaged by the process.
