I was wondering if anyone else feels concerned, as I do, by certain comments made by the defending barrister in the recent rape case concerning a girl student whose alleged rapist, who was a fellow student, was acquitted. The barrister told the jury the girl had got back in bed with Sridhar after the alleged rape and, Joe Stone said: 'Surely if she was raped, the last place on earth she would want to return to would be that room.'
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/12172708/Cambridge-student-found-not-guilty-of-rape.html There are also various other newspaper reports of stages of the trial which can be found on-line.
I understand the defending barrister had the duty to use all means at his disposal to get an acquittal for the accused. But allowed clever oratory at any expense aside - on top of the fact that most date rape cases will inevitably end in acquittal - it is chilling that such an erroneous, ill-informed and biased statement, might have added weight to the the jurors' decision and to the already confused public perceptions of rape cases like these.
I am not hoping to restart a discussion as to whether or not the accused was in fact guilty, but to question this remark, 'Surely....':
A victim's actual reaction to rape may be very counter-intuitive for a person who has not experienced it let alone for those who may doubt this sort of rape is rape in the first place.
There is no valid "Surely..." in the sense the barrister meant.
Jill Filpovic's article below paragraph 14 for example points out that rape victims may not react as expected.
www.cosmopolitan.com/college/news/a30507/sexual-assault-misconceptions/
In this article even the reaction of going on to have sex with the assailant a later point after the rape is shown to be a possible reaction in order for the victim to feel control. I believe it is also possible for the victim to try to act as if the assailant, who was after all known to her before the rape is in some way a friend so as to try to deny and block out the rape or minimise it. It is also possible for the victim to lose all sense of autonomy or will. I am aware there are three well known reactions to trauma: fight, flight and freezing. This girl may have remain frozen and unable to do anything.
As to all the details of the case it is difficult to be clear, but I believe the girl was in her own room into which the alleged assailant entered too after taking her back home after a night out in the town where they had both been drinking because she was worried about being alone in the town at night. After the alleged rape (presumably having got out of bed at some stage) it was her own bed in her own room she 'went back to'. Far from it being the case that surely this was the last place she would go, in these circumstances it may well be all too likely that this would be what she might do. Where else was she supposed to go other than her own bed? And in what sort of numbed and state of disassociation, or state of exhaustion or state of self blame was she after (allegedly) having been raped?
The next day certainly a friend of hers saw the girl in a terrible state of mind.
Why is it that a court case of this kind can take place without expert third party guidance being given to the judge and jury as to how a rape victim might behave? Instead it would seem that a false premise mooted by the barrister may have tipped the already weighted balance* even further on the side of acquittal.
*It is very difficult for a jury to pass a guilty verdict because there will usually be reasonable doubt in a case like this.
www.channel4.com/news/rape-convictions-myths-why-so-low-england