She told me he’d coerced her into sex. But did she lie?
I will never know for sure what happened in that bedroom three decades ago
Ibrooded long and hard this weekend about #Metoo and the recent slew of rape trial scandals and the confusion they’ve inevitably sowed in female breasts. For most women the defenestration of Harvey Weinstein was a long-overdue sign that a certain form of sexual predation, involving using your professional status as a crowbar, would not be tolerated again. Who knows whether Weinstein will ever be found guilty in a court of law, but it’s fair to say the court of public opinion is firmly against him.
Then there’s the Belfast rape trial, involving Ulster rugby players who were eventually acquitted of any offence. The crude and debasing social media messages sent between defendants about the girl at the centre of the trial, not to mention the fact she suffered a bleeding vaginal lesion means many people, myself included, can’t help feeling there were offences against basic human decency.
Pulling in another direction, there’s the standing down of Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, whose term of office saw an alarming number of failed rape trials: prosecutions that collapsed after it became clear potentially exonerating evidence (such as flirty online messages following supposed rapes) had been withheld by the police. Cases that, it seems, should never have come to trial. Suddenly many a female heart was stricken with thoughts of a son or younger brother standing in the dock because an awkward sexual encounter had been misconstrued, or regretted.
Yesterday we learnt of a teacher who lost care of a child he’d just adopted because of false allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour. We cannot avoid the truth that men can find themselves vulnerable too. That the truth may not be instantly or easily resolved – indeed, the truth may not be recoverable at all.
Rape is the hardest offence to prosecute because in almost all instances nobody witnesses it and it’s often impossible to say for certain an offence has even been committed. That’s really what the trial’s about. Yet we still act as judge and jury on the Twittersphere, expressing our convictions with an almost messianic sense of certainty.
Yet it’s vital to bear in mind nice guys can and sometimes do behave in an uncharacteristically oafish fashion and that boorish rugger lads have plenty of consensual sex. However outraged I feel about the low rate of rape convictions, there’s no doubt we must cling to the central tenet of justice: guilt must be proven beyond reasonable doubt. I know from personal experience how easy it is to let personal prejudice and dislike distort your better judgment. Twenty-eight years ago I was an undergraduate, discovering the joys of feminist theory and bohemian escapism. This largely meant that when I wasn’t devouring the works of Doris Lessing and Sylvia Plath, I was swimming naked in the Thames near Abingdon. My interactions with female intimates had a coven-like intensity, which included fomenting fierce dislikes for certain male contemporaries. So when a friend came to me in tears and said she’d been coerced into sex by a man who I was borderline allergic to, I accepted every word. This youth seemed to me to suffer from a toxic brand of condescension and aggression. My friend was reluctant to take the matter further, and I was the bold, mouthy one in our friendship, so it was clear to me I should act as her champion.
I marched my friend off to lodge an official complaint with the women’s officer and dean, prompting her when she fell strangely silent about her ordeal. The offending student was duly put through disciplinary procedures, which included a period of rustication and instructions to live outside the college’s grounds. I never felt more like a warrior queen than when I strode across the college lawns shortly after this, and the man came up to me and lobbed a huge gobbet of spittle at my foot. I felt proud of my defence of truth and honour: like Joan of Arc and Boadicea merged into one.
And that’s how I continued feeling for a couple of years. By then I had moved into a flat in London with a group of women, including my assaulted friend from student days. As the months passed, I noticed my friend was inclined to be worryingly economical with the truth. She was also alarmingly flirtatious (and I approve of flirting on the whole) with any man who entered the apartment. She had a boyfriend who seemed to exist on a pitch of rampant jealousy and despair. He would phone asking where she was and the truth was we generally didn’t know.
Then a trusted mutual friend revealed that my flatmate had told her boyfriend she’d been raped by a work colleague. I knew the man in question well and simply couldn’t believe it of him. More than that, it made no sense that she would only discuss the rape with her pathologically jealous boyfriend. I decided to quiz the work colleague concerned and he admitted he’d been having a consensual affair with my flatmate for six months.
As we talked, a terrible realisation struck me. What if my certainty that my friend had been sexually assaulted during our university days was also open to question? Was that why I’d had to propel her before the authorities? And why the accused youth felt so angry he spat on my feet? The woman at the centre of this story is the only friend I’ve ever had to simply stop seeing: her relationship with the truth was simply too taxing. I will never know for sure what happened in that student bedroom three decades ago, but I now embrace my ignorance, uncertainty and the fact that some sexual encounters are ambiguous.