Rape victims should still have faith in our system

IT’S a Sunday morning. Your teenage daughter came home so late last night that you don’t expect her to surface much before noon, but then she knocks on your bedroom door first thing. She’s still dressed in last night’s clothes and her face is streaked with mascara and tears. She struggles to speak, and you know what she’s going to say before she blurts it out. She was raped. She had too much to drink, she ended up at a party, she didn’t know the lad, she tried to say no, she couldn’t fight him off. She’s shaking, she’s hysterical, she just wants to jump in the shower and scrub her skin till it bleeds but she needs your advice – what should she do?

So what do you tell her? For nine weeks, you’ve closely followed the course of the Belfast rape trial, and so you know what faces a rape complainant. In that high-profile case, the girl spent eight days in the witness box, being questioned on the most intimate details by five male barristers, while a jury watched and a packed gallery of spectators gaped.

A rape complainant is not a party to the proceedings, she’s just a witness. In reality, she’s just a collection of forensic evidence to be harvested from her clothes, her skin, her genitals, to be analysed and discussed and disputed. And, after all that, after putting herself and her privacy on the line to accuse the man she says attacked her, the nature of the allegation – one person’s word against another’s – means there’s a strong chance, given the requirement on the jury to have no reasonable doubts as to what happened, that he’ll go free. In the aftermath of the Belfast trial, is anyone ever going to advise their daughter to pursue a rape accusation in those kind of circumstances in future?

‘No woman will ever make a complaint of rape again’: I lost count of the number of times I have heard that said in recent days. But now that it has ended, in the not-unexpected acquittal of all four accused, I’m not so sure it’s true anymore. In reality, given the conflicts and the inconsistencies in all the testimonies, it was inevitable that the jury would be left with a reasonable doubt about the events of that night, and therefore that those four young men would be acquitted.

But the way in which the entire process was carried out seems to have prompted a fresh awakening of indignation around the treatment of women in rape cases. And, ironically, by highlighting the shortcomings in the British approach, the comparative humanity and dignity of our own proceedings has been brought into focus. Although it is never going to be less than a wretched experience, there’s more to reassure than to discourage complainants under our system – especially now that the Belfast case prompted such a dam burst of sympathy.

Here, for a start, the defendants wouldn’t have been named.

THAT immediately minimises the public interest in a rape case, since there are no names, no pictures, no footage of anxious families outside the court. It also makes it harder to identify the victim, her social circle or even her whereabouts.

And here, the public can’t just wander in off the street to sit and spectate at the humiliation and distress of the parties involved – rape and incest cases are held in closed sessions, and only those with a direct interest are allowed to attend. Considering that we inherited our legal system, and the presumption of innocence, from the British, we’ve made a far better fist of developing one of the more sensitive areas of criminal law than they have.

If there’s any benefit from this sorry matter, and from the devastation it wreaked in the lives of all concerned, it may come in a broader review of the way we handle rape cases altogether. In some countries, for example, rape complainants give their evidence to a judge alone, and the aftermath of this trial might be a good time to consider an overhaul of our approach – hard cases don’t always make bad law.

And this case, odd as it sounds, might lead to more guilty pleas in future. Up to now, after all, it’s been rare for rape defendants to take the witness box, and most tend to sit back and watch the complainant get the grilling while they exercise their right to silence. But after this, juries are more likely to want to hear from them before they acquit – not exactly a prospect you’d relish if you’re guilty. From now on, perhaps, the woman might not be the only one facing an ordeal on the stand. It’s not much comfort, if you ever find yourself confronting that awful Sunday-morning scenario, but it might make the decision a little less fearsome.