Judge was right about drinking, says rape victim
A RAPE victim has said a judge who warned that drunken women put themselves in danger was right, as it is “hard not to blame yourself in that situation”.
Megan Clark, 19, was raped by a man she met in a Burger King restaurant after a night out in Manchester in July last year.
The trial caused controversy after Judge Lindsey Kushner said the drunken behaviour of some women was putting them at risk.
Miss Clark’s attacker, Ricardo Rodrigues-FortesGomes, 19, was found guilty at Manchester Crown Court of two counts of rape and detained for six years. The jury saw how he ignored Miss Clark’s screams while he attacked her, in video footage played to the court.
Waiving her right to anonymity, Miss Clark said the judge’s comments had been taken out of context and her advice to women to “be careful” was “good”.
She told BBC Two’s Victoria Derbyshire programme that she took the judge’s comments in “a positive way”. Miss Clark added that the judge had been right to say that a drunk woman was less likely to be believed than a sober one. “It’s not the way it should be but that’s the harsh reality,” she said.
The teenager had been drinking alcohol before the attack and had inhaled the party drug amyl nitrite, the court was told.
Summing up in her final trial before retiring, Judge Kushner said that she felt she must warn women to protect themselves from predatory rapists who “gravitate” towards drunken women. The judge said that while women were entitled “to drink themselves into the ground”, their “disinhibited behaviour” could put them in danger.
Women’s rights activists branded her comments “outrageous”. But Miss Clark said: “She just said to be careful, which is smart advice. She wasn’t victimblaming. I felt I put myself in that situation. I need to be more careful.”