The three boys accused of taking it in turns to rape a girl have been found not guilty

[Lougle]

The three boys accused of taking it in turns to rape a girl have been found not guilty on all counts despite some of the incident being filmed. How could that be? That poor girl. I believe in justice, I wasn't in court. I just can't understand it though.

I remember that, it was appalling

I am old enough to remember Jill Saward, who was gang raped by complete strangers in her own home. They all got substantially longer prison sentences for burglary than rape because the judge felt she hadn't suffered that much!

That was in the eighties. Nothing really changes or improves where the safety of women and girls are concerned unfortunately.

There is a war on women (and female children)....

You said where are the parents. The parents presumably thought their children were off on a short bike ride or similar.

if what you mean is, my children would never behave like that, that’s a different point and I agree with you.

Outrageous and then they wring their hands about not enough women coming forwards about their attacks. It isn't possible for a 12 year old girl to consent to this. My niece is 12, there is no way! That girl was raped and those boys got off with it because they were also young, just not as young as the girl. It smacks of prioritising the lives of those males over the girls life.

It reminds me of the scandal of rape and sexual assaults being hushed up at US collage campuses because accusations and convictions of rape would ruin the lives of promising young men, the women as always can go to hell. If anything this is worse as the victim in this case was a literal child. How will she ever have faith in the police or justice ever again?

They are citing it as the reason the girl isn’t shouting and fighting in the video.
Had she been doing so, jurors would have found it harder to acquit.

No fan of David Lammy, but the sooner they end jury trials and have these cases dealt with by professionals, the better.
A large proportion of people on jury service are not capable of making a clear decision, they just vote the way they ‘feel’

Is there any way to read the court reporting or no media there?

I was a juror on a case which was found not guilty. I don't believe that there was a single person in that court room, including the judge and the defendant themselves, who believed that the defendant was innocent of wrongdoing. But the judge was clear about what standard needed to be met for a guilty verdict and unfortunately the prosecution had not done this so there was no other option for my jury than to find not guilty.

My thoughts are with the victim at this time. I do hope that there is someone who is able to explain the verdict to her, because I do believe that the jury will have wanted to find the defendants guilty (the 9h deliberation time shows this, I believe) but could not do so. It may be a small crumb of comfort to her at this difficult time.

The freeze responce is 'hard wired' into us so that when we are raped, sexually abused/attacked, we dont fight our attacker(s). Therefore more likely to survive.

The freeze response really needs to be understood

He ended up apologising about that when he realised how much she had suffered. She died young and I’m sure that trauma of that attack contributed to her ill health. The trouble is most judges come from a very limited demographic and mix with other similar people. I’m sure they have a very narrow, old fashioned view of women and girls.

My point is, we dont know that.

We have no idea why these jurors made that decision

What a disgrace. Society fails our daughters.

9 hours really isn't a long time at all. It often takes that long just to review all the evidence. Suggests to me that the verdict was arrived it pretty quickly, sadly.

My experience as a juror was very similar to this.

The freeze argument should not be allowed though, as it's scientifically proven to very often be automatic response which has nothing to do with consent.

We don’t know that it’s harder to acquit when the victim is seen fighting and struggling?

Whatever else influenced them to acquit the boys who were filming each other having sex with a 13 yr old, I would hope her struggling would have made that choice much harder for them.

I’m struggling to understand why you are nit picking at that. Can you explain? Or is it a blanket ‘we mustn’t wonder about the behaviour of juries’ kind of thing?

I alway think worse than this (although not relevant for this case) is the fourth primal threat response- fawn. Particularly common as a female response. Make the threat like you, be compliant, and they will go away.

now imagine how many survivors would be able to explain that to a jury

The MEN have turned comments off for it on instagram … is this because it’s to do with children or because it has too many outraged comments?

Interestingly they’ve left comments on for a post two posts prior about a man being falsely accused of rape.

Lammy's change was specifically said to not apply to rape and murder trials though.

I am confused. I thought any sexual activity under age 16 was illegal. So, just for sake of trying to understand that the jury heard more direct evidence than has been reported in the media, presumably to the detriment of the poor girl's character and intentions, then all the boys should have declined to have intercourse. That they didnt means they conducted a criminal activity.
And they filmed it
I wonder why underage intercourse allegation was not entered along with rape?
The prosecution seems wholly inadequate

I'm local to this and followed the trial in the news since it started. The girl was 13 when it happened and one of the boys was 12.
It's absolutely devastating for that poor girl. I hope she has good support around her and is able to recover from both the rape and the subsequent trial.

I don't know how she can sleep at night, to be honest.

O agree with most of this post, but this bit :

' We are being watched globally and we are a disgrace.'

• is the UK notably worse than other European countries? The Nordic countries are probably better at tackling SA, France I don't think is, I have doubts about Italy, Spain, Poland & others. America also I'm unconvinced about.

I think most countries don't handle it well.

By that logic though , if crime was underage intercourse then the girl committed it too. The point is that it was not consensual.