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Original poster

To ask all Irish women to please show solidarity today?

349 replies

RottenTomatoes959 · 29/03/2018 08:20

Please join the rallies in support of the victim in belfast today,theres rallies in Dublin belfast and cork. Enough is enough and we can not take this one lying down. Show support to the brave young woman and lets not have this trial be in vain.
Something has to change.

OP posts:
Idontdowindows · 30/03/2018 08:45

Rape is terrible. But hounding innocent men, who have been found not guilty by a jury

And another one who confuses "not guilty" with "innocent".

Is it any wonder women cannot get justice with these attitudes?

Lizzie48 · 30/03/2018 08:50

If it didn't happen, it didn't happen, regardless of how much the woman believed it did.

What an appalling attitude. When you're raped you bloody well know you've been. If you didn't want to have sex and you felt you had no choice then that's called rape. Angry

LaurieMarlow · 30/03/2018 09:05

There's a big difference between 'it didn't happen' and 'it can't be proved beyond reasonable doubt'.

Rape is tricky because determining consent or lack of it is very difficult.

Because we have a high bar for determining guilt (and I'm not disputing that) getting a conviction is very difficult. But the upshot of that is that rape is de facto legal. And that's very hard to stomach,

moofolk · 30/03/2018 10:11

The system is a disgrace. I cried reading those whatsapp messages and have not been able to get it out of my head. Those men are scumbags.

I find the PP saying that the women and the men on the jury must have all had the same opinion (that these men are innocent) to be simplistic.

It is likely that they were advised by the judge to give a not guilty verdict.

Had they come back with a guilty verdict the bastards would have appealed. Appeal verdicts are decided not by a jury but by three judges who would have found them not guilty even though they know she was raped because of the technicalities related to burden of proof. If they say it was consensual there's no way to disprove this. She's injured? Liked it rough.

This happened when my friend sat on a jury. The judge said it was obvious that the defendant raped the victim but if it went to appeal she'd have to go through the traumatic trial process again and he'd end up walking free, so he advised the jury to find him not guilty out of compassion for the victim.

Our criminal justice system is fucked.

TatianaLarina · 30/03/2018 11:21

Burglary has nothing to do with rape

Indeed but that was not the only fatuousness.

Women are not a piece of property nor do they have windows they can lock.

TheNameIAmAChanging · 30/03/2018 11:25

Yes these 'men' have been found 'not guilty' by a jury but they can not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as 'innocent'. The WhatsApp messages alone, even without the woman's testimony and medical evidence, tell us all we need to know about the kind of 'men' they are. I am just glad they are not my sons or my brothers, and I pity and fear for any woman who has the misfortune to encounter 'men' like that on a night out.

Unlike all the decent real men in the world, these pathetic individuals don't deserve to be called men. I pity them, that they have this sort of behaviour in their hearts and minds, and towards the gender that gave them all life in the first place. What a sad and sorry way to want to live their lives.

lalalalyra · 30/03/2018 11:27

The system is also a disgrace in that she was called by her actual name throughout the trial. So with a packed public gallery her identity is known and is being shared around freely.

And just in case anyone missed that her name was used in court Jackson's lawyer's faux concern for her when he said she'd been let down and her name had been used throughout means that everyone now knows that her name was used and is out there....

AngelsSins · 30/03/2018 14:45

I am having trouble with concept of withdrawing consent after kissing someone and going home with them.

Ok, so if you invite someone to your house and you have a nice evening but then suddenly, at some point in the night, he starts acting badly, breaking your things, being abusive, whatever, are you suggesting you have no right to ask him to leave? Or are you suggesting that women should have less say in who enters their bodies than you have about who is in your home?

AngelsSins · 30/03/2018 14:51

No one deserves to be burgled or raped, but if you leave your window open, you do make it easier for the criminals to be taken advantage of

That may be so, but he would still be found guilty of burglary, and you wouldn't have to prove that you didn't leave that window open because you wanted him to come and take your stuff. It wouldn't be suggested that because you'd given stuff to charity in the past, you clearly wanted him to take your possessions this time too.

RitaMills · 30/03/2018 14:54

This is just such a sad story, my heart breaks for that girl. I’m not in the least bit surprised at the outcome though, the justice system has failed her, it’s failing women.

AngelsSins · 30/03/2018 14:54

I also want to point out that the survivor wasn't the one on trail, she has NOT been found guilty of lying, so no one should be suggesting she lied, especially those so eager to defend these men and the so called justice system. I'm sure you wouldn't want to be accused of holding double standards after all....

Lizzie48 · 30/03/2018 15:07

I am having trouble with concept of withdrawing consent after kissing someone and going home with them.

But snogging someone is NOT consenting to sex. Neither is inviting them to your house. Okay, it often does lead to sex, but it doesn't mean that a woman has to have sex with her date. Nobody has to have sex if they don't want to.

lalalalyra · 30/03/2018 15:08

I am having trouble with concept of withdrawing consent after kissing someone and going home with them.

When I was 19 I went home with a guy that I really liked. We'd been kissing and dancing all night. Back at his place we were kissing and fumbling on the sofa, some clothes were removed. His neighbour came home and banged a door and he made the most disgusting, vile, racist comment I have ever heard in my life. I got up, rearranged/put back on my clothes and left having lost all desire to be anywhere near him. If he'd done anything other than try and pretend he didn't mean the comment and call me a cab I'd have been facing attitudes like yours...

stateschool · 30/03/2018 15:11

‘I am having trouble with concept of withdrawing consent after kissing someone and going home with them.’
REALLY? Cos i’m Not having done this myself several times, luckily with decent, normal men who were fine with the idea that snogging them didn’t mean I wanted to have sex with them and didn’t force, push, coerce or anything else.

stateschool · 30/03/2018 15:14

That girl went back to a house party - something I also did many, many times with a bunch of people I didn’t know that well after being out with mates. That’s what people quite often do at the end of a night out - it doesn’t mean she went ‘home’ with him specifically AND so what if she had? Withdrawing consent can happen at any time FFS

Stillscreaming · 30/03/2018 15:51

I am having trouble with concept of withdrawing consent after kissing someone and going home with them.

So did Mike Tyson, he got six years for it.

Stillscreaming · 30/03/2018 15:53

For anyone who's interested, there's another protest outside BT in Cork tomorrow at 1.30.

Trinity66 · 30/03/2018 15:56

For anyone who's interested, there's another protest outside BT in Cork tomorrow at 1.30.

Brilliant, I'm going to be in town tomorrow anyway, thanks

Stillscreaming · 30/03/2018 16:06

Cork Feminist Collective FB page for updates.

boxthefox · 30/03/2018 16:07

I wonder what can be achieved by the marches, noble and thoughtful and sometimes angry as they are!

The jury has spoken. There can be no appeal against the verdict.

But hopefully these gatherings will bring the subject to the fore. Good on you all for attending.

snowy1982 · 30/03/2018 16:12

@boxthefox, I think that’s exactly what the marches and rallies are for, no one expects the verdict of this trial to change but they want to draw attention to the fact that they think this trial, as almost all other rape trials, are unfair and almost stacked against the victim

BWatchWatcher · 30/03/2018 16:13

The language and attitude of the rugby players is what got me.
Trigger warning obviously!
www.mirror.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/worst-night-ever-raped-full-12271869
Nasty.

boxthefox · 30/03/2018 16:19

@snowy1982,

I hope so.

I kept an eye on the proceedings most days, and it seemed to me that the woman was in the witness box for days, cross examined by EACH of the four barristers representing the accused. Whereas the accused did not seem to have to undergo the same grilling at all.

Something will have to change, that is absolutely appalling IMV.

obligations · 30/03/2018 16:26

I think the marches are partly to give solace to the woman and to anyone who is scared to come forward as it seems many will have been put off in the wake of this case. The support doesn't have to be about overturning the verdict, but more how she was described by the men, what she was subjected to in the court room and that she was left distraught with a 1 cm bleeding laceration in her vagina and severe bruising on her thighs. Maybe also in gratitude to her strength in agreeing to prosecute despite her saying from the start that she probably wouldn't be believed. It happened when she was 19, she's now 21 and was really impressive.

This is what she said in court: “The more I thought about it, rape is a game of power and control. They rely on your silence. The only way you take the power back is when you actually do something about it. I may be preventing it happening to someone else.

“It could so easily have been my friends outside Ollie’s. It could have been my sister outside. It was the best decision I made.”

MollyWantsACracker · 30/03/2018 16:29

I was at the rally in Dublin yesterday. I will attend tomorrow also (City Hall afaik)
Today we find out news that Jackson is going to sue a senator for defamation, & I learned what the Streisand effect is.