09 February 09

My head is spinning

I’m not entirely convinced that forcing rape and sexual abuse survivors to press charges against their attacker is the best way to prevent more rapes from happening. At least not with the society we live in where teenagers who drug, rape, and film the attack go uncharged.

However I know that healing won’t begin unless women come forward and talk about what happened and find peace with themselves. So I’m beyond appalled to hear about a judge in Scotland who jailed a female witness for one night after she became distraught on the stand and started to leave the court. She charges that the defendant raped her when she was 12, about 30 years ago. If she kept that secret for 30 years, no wonder she “struggled to cope in the witness box.” Thankfully the court is “looking into it”, but come on! Until our judges have compassion, how can we expect our law enforcement officers and our citizens to have the compassion needed for a rape victim to testify against her attacker as if it were any other crime?

Comments

  1. i don’t think it’s necessarily the right thing either.

    sometimes that isn’t as much about “moving on” as it needs to be, imo.

    that story is so yicky.

    — carolyn on Feb 10, 06:35 am

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