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My
sex attack husband was free to terrify me again... how can the law allow
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It's
rape not race
What
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said I asked for it"
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My sex attack husband was free to
terrify me again... how can the law allow this?
The Express on Sunday, 13 December 1998, p. 35
A woman who suffered a violent sex attack by her
drunken husband told last night how a prosecutor’s courtroom bargain
allowed him to pursue her again…The 33–year-old woman was not even told of
the decision to drop an attempted rape charge in favour of a much less
serious count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm… The decision was
taken "in the middle of a very busy court list" on the grounds that the
case might be difficult to prove… She felt ignored by the process of law.
"I was at the bottom of their list of priorities. I was basically a
nonentity," she said… Charges were eventually reduced again because Sarah
(not her real name) could not face having to endure cross-examination
about her sex life with her ex-husband… Campaigners at Women Against Rape
want a total ban on questioning about a woman’s sexual relations with men
other than the defendant… The Government has pledged to save women from
effectively being put on trial in the witness box, but campaigners are
furious at the way a new Bill has been framed. They say it still leaves
the way wide open for defence lawyers to launch aggressive attacks over a
woman’s sexual history…
It's rape not race
The Voice letters, 7 December 1998
AS RAPE survivors, counsellors and campaigners we
protest against Channel 4's Dispatches programme on rape.
"Dispatches' "research" was statistically
indefensible. Its tiny sample came from areas with large Black populations.
Disproportionate prosecutions of Black boys for rape
reflect the racism of the justice system: Black men are eight, times more
likely to be imprisoned for any crime than their White counterparts; this
figure is probably even higher for rape.
Darcus Howe's later debate criticised Black people's
sexuality and "'culture", culminating in an attack on Black girls, as promiscuous
and on irresponsible mothers, but these are completely different issues.
Both programmes undermined the anti-racist anti-rape
movement, diverting public concern about rape into anger against Black
people. This is dangerous for all women,' beginning with Black women and
girls who are least likely to get sympathetic treatment when reporting
rape and bear the brunt of the racist and sexist attacks the programmes
incite.
Malika Thompson, Black Women's Rape Action Project
Lisa Longstaff, Women Against Rape, London NW5.
Press Release
What Black viewers think
The
Guardian
19
November 1998 Raekha
Prasad
It's Friday morning and you're on the tube. You saw Dispatches last
night and now there's a young Black boy sitting opposite you. Feel
uncomfortable? One thing's for certain: he does.
As one Black man told me yesterday: "I can imagine the
other passengers thinking I'm a rapist. This documentary is going to
demonise young Black men because it touches the ultimate taboo. This
is just one more stick to beat us with.'
This is not the first time Black men have been associated with
being sexually predatory and the hostile reactions to the documentary
have so far focused on the impact it will have on them. But Black
women also have much to lose. 'We are against hiding any rape -
whoever commits it," the Black Women's Rape Action Project (BWRAP)
says. "But targeting and stereotyping of Black men makes Black
women more vulnerable to rape because they are put off reporting it."
The BWRAP have demanded that Channel 4 withdraw the
programme. The police, they say, already use Black women's reports of
rape as an excuse to arrest innocent young Black men - men who could
be their brothers or sons. This programme, they argue, divides Black
women's loyalties, making them feel they have to choose between
supporting women who have been raped and supporting victims of racial
violence.
The recent debate about institutional racism also throws into
question any research which claims, as Dispatches does, to be "colour
blind" Statistics don't get made in a vacuum. The BWRAP says
that, given only 6 per cent of the population are Black, a
disproportionate number of Black men are imprisoned for rape.
"They said I asked for it"
Bella Special Report, 29 September 1998, Issue 39, p.36-37
...As the cross-examination began, the trial
became a nightmare. "Isn't it true, Mrs. Gregory, That you like
younger men?" the defense counsel began. "In fact you have a
toyboy, haven't you? And you've been married twice before."
Norma could hardly believe her ears.
"I'd already had to endure the knickers I'd been wearing on the night
being displayed for the whole court to see- and photos of my bruises and
injuries past around" she recalls. "But I didn't expect my past
to be dragged up as well.
"Yes, my boyfriend was younger than me. And yes, I'd been married
twice. But what that had to do with it was beyond me.
I suppose the defense thought that if they could show I liked younger men,
they could infer I led my 25-year-old attacker on. Fortunately, the jury
saw through it."
Her attacker was found guilty of attempted rape, buggery and assault
occasioning actual body harm and was jailed for 10 years.
"...I was raped again, mentally, in court. I'd
done nothing wrong- yet I was made to feel the guilty one."
Says Women Against Rape's Lisa Longstaff:
"Judges routinely allow women to be trashed in court. The whole gamut
of their personal life becomes fair game.
...Detective Inspector Sue Hills of the
metropolitan Police's serious sexual offence steering committee agrees.
"Women are frequently exposed to a barrage of questions totally
unrelated to the charge, the simple aim of which is to discredit them by
suggesting they are the type to consent freely to sex," she says.
Women are
regularly asked the most outrages questions including:
How many abortions they've had; if they were sexually active before 16;
who they've had sex with in the past; number and race of previous
boyfriends; what clothes and underwear they prefer; even about their
menstrual cycle.
On the other hand, the sexual history of the accused is never raised- even
if he has convictions for sexual offences.
Says Juliette: "I thought I'd just say what
happened and they'd be found guilty." But she claims that when she
took the witness stand, her accent was made fun of and she was humiliated
with legal jargon.
"They brought up things in my past. They made me look cheap,
available, an easy lay. I'd lost a baby two months before the rape but
they called it abortion. They said I'd been in a children's home and
inferred it was because of sexual abuse.
"I was in the witness box for four days and I was so upset that, at
one point, I wet myself.
"They wanted to know what position I liked to have sex in, whether I
liked it from behind and why I wasn't wearing any knickers at the time of
the attack.
"I kept telling them that when the men bursts into my flat, it was
eight in the morning and I had just got up."
The defense also made much of the fact that Juliette had had a previous
relationship with one of the attackers.
The men were acquitted of rape but admitted buggery. However the judge
decided the eight months they'd spent on remand was sufficient and freed
them immediately.
Women deserving refuge
The
Times
TUESDAY
JULY 14 1998 p 37 Law Section
Cristel Amiss, Black Women's Rape Action project, on the obstacles
rape survivors seeking asylum face in and increasingly hostile Britain
We don't
know how many refugees in the UK are women, but some estimates suggest that as
many as half are seeking refuge from rape and other for victims of sexual
torture. Lawyers ask us to assess whether women have suffered sexual
violence in their country of origin, and if so how this has affected them. Such
a process takes time. Reducing the time that rape survivors have to document
what they have suffered and in what circumstances would severely undermine
their claim for asylum. . . . Many
women raped by police or the military are very young, survivors of genocide
and mothers with young children (sometimes conceived as a result of rape). .
. .Rape victims need a safe environment, time and sensitive support before
they can speak about their ordeal. Yet without privacy and when their future
hangs on their every word, asylum-seekers are expected on arrival to detail
their torture to officials perhaps reminiscent of the police or military who
raped them. Translation may be inadequate or absent, interviewers careless,
insensitive or even hostile. Not surprisingly, the full horror of their
persecution never emerges. . . . Recently, after our eleventh-hour
intervention, a young woman, who had fled rape and the threat of genital
mutilation, was granted residence after spending almost a year in detention.
. . . We
find that discrimination based on sex, race, nationality or language makes
black women among those most vulnerable yet the least likely to gain
protection.
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