Crown Prosecution Service settles claim for wrong decision to drop rape case in which defendant claimed victim had ‘sexsomnia’

[IwantToRetire]

CWJ’s client, Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott has accepted £35,000 in compensation from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) following their decision to drop her case two weeks before the trial against her alleged rapist was due to commence.

Read the full press release from Centre for Women's Justice at https://www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/news/2024/8/15/crown-prosecution-service-settles-claim-for-wrong-decision-to-drop-rape-case-in-which-defendant-claimed-victim-had-sexsomnia

It really feels like the entirety of the Crown/justice systems really, really hate women.

Because somebody had a few episodes of sleepwalking as a teenager, she is basically being gaslight into accepting she might have been asleep but consenting? How can this be allowed as a legal defence for the rapist?

How many thousands of female teenagers have sleepwalking incidents and that means in the future if they are attacked, none of their rapists will ever be tried? Will the next excuse for the rapists be 'well as a teen he did sleepwalk so actually now he's 30 he definitely didn't rape anyone, he was asleep and dreamt he had consent, it's just a sexual sleep disorder not rape at all'.

I am glad she got some compensation, but the way this has been handled means that an alleged rapist wasn't tried and might rape again. What is CPS doing about that?

I just heard the recording of the conversation with a CPS lawyer on our local news and my jaw fell so far I think it may be dislocated. That poor, poor woman!

What the fuck?

What's to say any rape victim ever hadn't just consented while asleep?!

Insane. Outrageous.

The CPS appears to have some very dodgy people working for them given some of their publications. Poor management in fear of activist employees I suspect with women and children being the collateral damage.

I doubt this has anything to do with activists.

This is about hard grained sexism and misogyny.

Two weeks before an agreed trial date they dropped the case because of "experts". ie men presuming to know better that a woman herself what happened. No doubt backed up the the usual male excuse, she egged me on.

It has been decades now that so few cases get to court and it all boils down to not believing women.

Ffs, why the hell were her medical records from years before even disclosed. This should not be a thing. Why do we still live in a world where you report a rape, and if a prosecution is brought the victim is effectively put on trial themself? In what other crime does this happen? It's so unbelievably wrong. Ffs

If someone breaks into my house, no one would ask for my medical records. If I'm assaulted in the street, no one is going to trawl my medical records looking for a reason to excuse my attacker. Does this effectively mean that any woman with any documented sleep walking episode, or possibly any other form of unconscious event, now cannot expect to be taken seriously as a witness to her own rape?

That's piss-poor compensation imo. She has this with her for life.

Or someone with epilepsy, or unconscious in hospital, or blind drunk… That is terrifying.

‘It felt like it was plucked out of thin air’: how rape trial was derailed by sexsomnia claim

Interview with Jade McCrossen-Nethercott who received a payout from the CPS

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/24/it-felt-like-it-was-plucked-out-of-thin-air-how-trial-was-derailed-by-sexsomnia-claim