Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MATERIAL WITNESS
Items of clothing worn by 12 sex attack victims to go on display
CLOTHES worn by 12 sexual assault and rape victims at the time of their attacks are being exhibited in Belfast.
The items include a First Holy Communion dress, a schoolgirl’s underwear, swimwear and jeans.
Ruth Maxwell, who is behind the exhibition, was threatened with a knife by a serial sex offender as she walked to work in 2016.
She said her aim is to tackle the misconception that what a person is wearing has anything to do with being attacked.
Ms Maxwell added: “I will never forget it. It was about 6.45am and I’d just walked 10 steps into a laneway.
“Suddenly these hands had come around me. The left hand had a dirty cloth in it and the right had a knife that was on my chin.
KNIFE
“I staggered back two steps, but I didn’t go down. Then he took the knife from my chin to my throat.
“I took my left hand out from under my handbag strap, grabbed the blade and pulled it down as hard as I could.
“I went down with it and started to scream. The knife nearly severed through my fingers, so there was projectile blood spurting out.”
Ruth, 46, said her attacker then fled the scene and two Good Samaritans stopped to help her.
A few weeks later a 31-year-old man was arrested over the attack in Clondalkin, South Dublin.
DNA gathered at the scene connected him with incidents in 2011 and 2015 in which two other woman were physically and sexually attacked.
Ruth told how she decided to use her terrifying ordeal to help others.
The brave mum said: “I remember being up on the stand in my trial being asked, ‘Did you consent to this?’
“I had to say, ‘Excuse me, did I consent to being attacked?’ and they said, ‘Yes’. I said ‘absolutely not’. To me that beggars belief. Some people are just sexual predators and it doesn’t matter if you are drunk or if you’re even kissing somebody and you change your mind.
“I was inspired by Katherine Cambareri’s photographs of clothing worn by sex assault and rape victims.
“A sexual predator or a rapist does not care what you are wearing if you are their prey. They are out solely as a sexual predator and nothing [else] is relevant. It’s victim shaming. It’s a really powerful exhibition and some of the victims will be there, but there’s a whole sense of hope around it as well.
“It’s doing everything I wanted it to do.
“There are exhibits in it from a school toilet, a guy at a music festival and a girl who made her First Holy Communion. Only two people out of the 12 ended up getting justice.” The exhibition, titled Not Consent, will be shown at Lawrence Street Workshops in Belfast tomorrow from 2pm to 6pm. It will then be in Sligo IT and NUI Galway, before Kerry and Newport.