Many other women and girls
I wonder if the Jason Stanleys of the world ever publicly wring their hands over this kind of thing:
The Dorset teenager Gaia Pope was devastated when she learned a man she had accused of raping her had allegedly harassed and targeted many other women and girls, an inquest jury has heard.
Pope, 19, whose body was found on a clifftop in November 2017, 11 days after she went missing, had reported the rape because she wanted to protect others, jurors were told, but detectives told her there was little chance of the case succeeding and it would be traumatic to go to court, it is claimed.
A few months later, Dorset police posted on Facebook that the man had been jailed for an unrelated sexual offence.
Giving evidence at the coroner’s court in Bournemouth, Pope’s cousin Marienna Pope-Weidemann said: “Underneath the post were hundreds of reactions and comments from people in our community disclosing their own experiences of having been harassed by him, having their 12-year-old daughter contacted by him on social media and having to intervene because he wouldn’t leave them alone.”
Please, tell us more about how genocidal we are for continuing to know the difference between women and men.
In June 2016 police told Pope the man was not going to be prosecuted. They told her she had a right to appeal against the decision. “But they described what it would be like in court being cross-examined by a defence lawyer. They said: ‘We don’t think there is any chance of it being successful and it would be very traumatic.’”
Or to put it another way, rape is something men can do with impunity.
Pope-Weidemann…said Pope was particularly upset when a psychiatrist wrote she had “delusions of sexual assault”.
But men don’t get told they have delusions of being a woman.
Now does she have delusions of being killed?
Damn, I hate how the justice system lets men off the hook. And yet, a lot of men report they feel threatened by things like MeToo, that they will be locked up just for saying “hi” to a woman. No, shit for brains, you could probably rape her in public and get away with it.
“…and it would be very traumatic.”
Why is that portion of the decision to prosecute in the hands of the police / prosecutor? Surely that’s for the victim to weigh.
I think it’s a conversation among all three? I think it has to be, because people don’t necessarily know what they’re getting into. I actually see why prosecutors feel (and perhaps are) obliged to warn women of how it goes in practice, because it is a nightmare. But if the result is just despair, obviously that’s no good either. It’s an insoluble problem in an adversarial legal system.
This probably doesn’t matter, but she wasn’t killed by her rapist or anything, right? So this is more a driven to suicide (maybe?) sort of thing?
Doesn’t make it less awful or anything but “they ignored her rapist and then he killed her” was my first impression.
Holms @2
In the United States, the decision is ultimately solely in the hands of the prosecutor, who represents, not the victim, but the state (or country, in the case of federal cases).
In practice, the prosecutor’s decision comes down to whether or not they enough evidence to present a decent case. The victim’s attitude is important because a victim’s testimony is evidence. An uncooperative victim won’t help the case.
The TV trope of “the victim refuses to prosecute” is misleading.
Things may be different in the UK, or maybe this report is a bit garbled.
*IANAL, but have worked in county own-recognizance and probation departments and had classes in criminal law and court reporting*
@BKSA #4
That’s what I thought too. They let him go and he killed her. Not the case?
Whereas these rapists have “delusions of being ‘good guys.'” E.g., there was at least one study of college men who, if certain behaviors were described without using the word “rape,” still believed themselves not to be rapists, though they freely admitted to, among other things, taking advantage of a drunk woman to have sex with her, or pressuring a woman for sex after she said no. And too many people have delusions that, if a man calls himself a woman, there’s no chance he would be a rapist, just as women are not the major perpetrators of rape against women.
Lady M,
It’s similar in the UK. We have the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales and (as I understand it) the brilliantly-named Procurator Fiscal in Scotland who ultimately make the decision about whether a prosecution should go ahead. The idea is that the police work with these bodies to build a case that will stand up in court. I’ve no idea how it works in practice.
I know that if the evidence ain’t there it just ain’t there but this kind of thing always makes my stomach twist:
But…. isn’t that your entire job? To find that evidence? To build the case?
I can’t help but wonder how many women are being fobbed off with the self-fulfilling excuse that such cases have little chance of success. Especially in light of stories like this:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/victims-furious-police-forces-870-26727737
which reports that 870 sex offenders were let off without a criminal record (they would even pass a standard DBS check) providing they admit guilt and apologise in 2 years. The list contains offences such as sex between consenting 15 year olds (the age of consent in the UK us 16) which I agree should generally speaking be dealt with using discretion. But it also includes indecent exposure, a known gateway offence (remember Sarah Everard).
And it also includes rape and child rape.
In my own county of Durham, this scheme was used to let off at least one rapist of at least one child under 13.
It’s obviously a money-saving exercise: these ‘community resolutions’ are intended for minor offences such as shoplifting and minor public order offences but the police are using them to get serious crimes off the books without spending any money.
And, of course, it’s natural of them to pick sexual offences as a target because the victims are mostly women, who don’t really matter.
So I find it hard to swallow when detectives tell a woman there is little chance of prosecuting her rapist. I have absolutely no belief that they even tried.
With regard to the community resolutions issue, by the way:
If you’re in the UK, might I suggest that you write to your MP and PCC about it? I wrote to mine urging firstly that there be a review into the child rape case and guidelines put in place to make sure that doesn’t happen again; secondly that my MP begin some activity to strengthen the guidelines for when community resolutions should be used and to increase visibility and accountability; but most of all to do more to raise the public awareness that this is happening at all. I think most people would be horrified.
Unfortunately, my MP is a Tory and is unlikely to want to rock that boat, especially at present, and my PCC is Labour, which doesn’t know what women even are. Also, *ahem* my MP won’t answer my calls or emails any more anyway. I’m afraid I made myself disagreeable, you can probably guess how.
But I still urge you to do it if you can and if you have any better ideas, I’m all ears.
Obviously this has been going for a very long time but here in the UK the situation was exacerbated a decade or two ago when the government introduced “league tables”, ostensibly to give the public a measure of how well various institutions were performing. They did it for things like education, health and policing.
What happened, in fact, was that institutions began to focus their efforts in areas that pushed them up the table, in order to increase the funding that they received. “Problem” children, that are difficult to teach; patients, that are difficult to treat; and cases, that are difficult to prosecute, are ignored in favour of easy wins.
And thus the police/CPS are extremely reluctant to spend time and effort on cases that they know will have a hard time getting through court proceedings.
And because these cases are hardly ever seen the impression is given that the problem is not large enough to warrant extra funding. And so the cycle continues.
Oh, that’s interesting. I’ve vaguely heard of league tables but I didn’t know this.
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