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PRESS RELEASE
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On 16 February 2008, women from all over the UK will testify about their experiences of dealing with sexual, domestic and other violence, and will say who is guilty of standing in the way of justice or protection.
For
information or interview: Tel. 020 7482 2496 (voice & minicom) No photos, recording or filming allowed without the express permission of the organisers. Times have changed. Most people now support women and children’s right to say NO under any circumstance and at any point, and to get our attackers punished when that NO is ignored. But the criminal justice system continues to deny most victims the protection and justice we are all entitled to. The conviction rate for recorded rape is down to 5.7%. Women and children are still put on trial or blamed for our own rape, discouraged from reporting, disbelieved, and even accused of lying and imprisoned. Thirty years after WAR held its first Public Trial in Trafalgar Square, we will be turning the tables again and putting the authorities on trial for: aiding and abetting rapists, perverting the course of justice, withholding evidence, criminal negligence, sex discrimination, failing in their duty of care, misappropriation of public funds. Women will shame police officers, Crown Prosecutors, judges and immigration adjudicators who are never held to account, and the government ministers responsible, who keep pretending things are getting better while doing nothing to effect real change. Summonses are going out to those who will be tried. Governments have repeatedly used rape and sexual assault to advance law-and-order agendas which have nothing to do with women’s safety. Time after time biased and careless investigations and prosecutions result in rapists and other violent men being protected from prosecution, found not guilty or given go-ahead sentences. While talking tough on crime, politicians and those who run the criminal justice system have refused to commit resources and skills, and to hold their colleagues to account when they let rapists off the hook. This collaboration* between rapists and those who run the criminal justice system has to stop. It is making us all vulnerable – every time a violent man gets away with rape he is encouraged to rape again. That’s why we are putting the police, CPS, judges and politicians on trial. We can arrange interviews with participants and organisers, before and after the event. The following women are among those who will testify.
+ Ms T’s case made legal history. She was raped at knifepoint while working as an escort. Unable to get the police and CPS to prosecute, even after he had raped a second escort in similar circumstances, she came to WAR, the English Collective of Prostitutes and Legal Action for Women for help. In 1995, the two women brought their cases to court and made history by securing a conviction in the first private prosecution for rape in England and Wales. The serial rapist was sentenced to 14 years, using the same evidence the CPS had dismissed as “insufficient”. Ms T will put on trial 1) the CPS for refusing to prosecute; 2) Solicitor General Vera Baird (who as a barrister originally dissed her) and other spokeswomen for the government who instead of responding to sex workers’ demands for protection from rape and murder, are leading a crusade against prostitution, denying women the right to decide when sex is consenting and when it is not. See http://www.womenagainstrape.net/PressCoverage/GuardianRuthHToni08.htm + Ms L has sent a Summons to the police, the prosecutor and the judge whose incompetence and sexism were responsible for her 15-year-old daughter’s rapist, a local man twice her age, being found Not Guilty. The police did not arrest the man for three months. Evidence went missing. The CPS decided not to charge the man with sex with a minor, only charging him with rape. The judge “told the jury to disregard my child’s age as it was not relevant to the case” and “in his summing up, came down on the side of the accused in relation to every piece of evidence, making those present wonder if he was personally related to the defendant”. + Ms A will put the police and CPS on trial for arresting and threatening to prosecute her rather than her attackers. She was raped for years as a child by her own father. She reported him when she reached adulthood, but became too ill to proceed. Years later, in her 30s, she tried to get the police to act against a friend who assaulted her in her own home. They accused her of making a false allegation and arrested her. She was never prosecuted, but charges against her attacker were also dropped. She is now afraid to go near men, as she feels there is no protection for her were she to be the victim of any more violence. + Ms J will put the CPS and judge on trial for destroying her case. A student, she was raped by a stranger. The man was then arrested for another very similar offence – attempted rape and kidnap of another girl who managed to jump out of a moving car. The two cases were to have been heard together but they were separated. “In court, they claimed I was bringing the case for attention. His barrister was forceful, mine didn’t seem to care. I was devastated when he was found not guilty.” + Ms H will put the police on trial for negligence. She was raped by a stranger in East London in 1988 – he was never caught. In December 1999, she saw a newspaper photo of a man on trial for murder who she thought might be her attacker. She asked the police to check the DNA sample. After months the police told her they had checked it and it wasn’t him, but eventually admitted they had lost the DNA. Recent publicity about the successful re-investigation of 1980s cases based on DNA samples from that time, makes their negligence even harder to bear. She has had no resolution of her case. She tried to sue the police but was told there is no legal duty of care to victims.
+ Ms P will put immigration adjudicators and lawyers on trial for
not treating rape as a form of torture. She was raped in a refugee
camp in Uganda. She managed to escape. With help from WAR she
recently won the right to stay in the UK. She spent years trying to
get her lawyer to represent her properly: he had told her to keep
quiet about the rape as it was “not relevant” and may even undermine
her asylum claim. * “My first lesson about sex-crimes prosecution was that the perpetrators were not the only enemy. There is a large, more or less hidden population of what I later came to call collaborators within the criminal justice system. Whether it comes from a police officer, or a defence attorney, a judge, or a court clerk or a prosecutor, there seems to be a residuum of empathy for rapists that crosses all gender, class, and professional barriers…too often it results in giving the rapist a break.” Alice Vachss in Sex Crimes, prosecutor and former head of the Special Victims Bureau in Queens County, New York. She could just as well be speaking about the UK. What is the point of recommendations, complaints and appeals procedures, specialist police, prosecutors and judges, inspectorates, women in government, and more laws if those in charge of implementing them refuse over and over to do their job? In any other job they would be disciplined or sacked. Why not here?
Background information on Women Against Rape
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