Girls, it’s your right to drink... but I beg you to beware threat from rapists
Appeal by top woman judge as she jails sex attacker in her final trial
A TOP female judge yesterday begged young women to think twice about getting drunk on nights out because it left them at the mercy of rapists and sex attackers.
Lindsey Kushner QC made the impassioned plea as she signed off her 43-year legal career before retiring.
The mother-of-two spoke out as she jailed a man for raping a drunken girl who had been out clubbing all night.
It would be ‘remiss’ of her not to urge women to protect themselves said the 64-year-old as she warned that some men target women who appear ‘more vulnerable’.
Judge Kushner said: ‘Girls are perfectly entitled to drink themselves into the ground but should be aware people who are potential defendants to rape gravitate towards girls who have been drinking.
‘It should not be like that but it does happen and we see it time and time again.
‘They do it because a girl who is drunk is more likely to agree as they are more disinhibited. Even if they don’t, they are less likely to [be able to] fight a man with evil intentions off.
‘Even if they manage to have their way without her consent, the likelihood is she will be less likely to report it because she was drunk or cannot remember or feels ashamed.
‘Or, if push comes to shove, a girl who has been drunk is less likely to be believed than one who is sober. I beg girls and women to have this in mind.
‘They are entitled to do what they like but please be aware there are men who gravitate towards a woman who might be more vulnerable. That’s my final line, in my final criminal trial, and my final sentence.’
Manchester Crown Court heard that the victim had drunk a ‘significant amount’ of alcohol, including lager and vodka.
The 18- year- old had also inhaled a ‘popper’ party drug on the night out at AXM nightclub in Manchester last July.
She stayed when her friends went home but was removed by bouncers just past 5am.
The young woman went to a Burger King where she met factory workers Orlando Machado and Ricardo Rodrigues-Gomes, both 19 and Portuguese.
CCTV showed the girl holding hands and flirting with Mach- ado before all three left at 6.15am. They walked to a footpath by a canal where both had sex with her in broad daylight.
A resident of nearby apartments, who was awoken by the girl pleading with the men, filmed the attack on a camera phone and called the police.
She could be heard saying: ‘No, stop. I don’t want to do it. I don’t like this, it’s not fair.’
Rodrigues-Gomes, of Gorton, Manchester, was convicted of rape. Machado, of Moston, Manchester, was cleared of the same charge. Both claimed the girl had ‘propositioned them’.
Jailing Rodrigues-Gomes for six years, Judge Kushner told him: ‘It’s up to any woman to decide what she wants to do with her body. If she wants to go out on the town and meet somebody and have sex with them within an hour that’s up to her.
‘But that’s not a signal for anybody to do what they like if she doesn’t want it. That’s what you did.’
The court heard that the girl had been forced to defer a place at Salford University because of her ordeal which had left her feeling suicidal.
‘I feel as though I have lost an entire year of my life,’ she said. ‘I no longer have any confidence and am worried to leave the house alone.
‘I feel as though my own family all look at me differently and there is often an atmosphere as they feel sorry for me.’
Judge Kushner, who went to Manchester High School for Girls and Liverpool University, became a Recorder in 1993 and a senior circuit judge in 2002.