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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
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Rape trial juries
sometimes bend over backwards to be more than fair to the woman making the
accusations. It looks as if this happened in the high-profile "pack
rape" convictions in the High Court. There was a time, only
a few years ago, when jurors were influenced by defence lawyers and even some
judges to favour the accused. They used a woman's sex life as a reason for
doubting her unsupported allegations. When it was only her word against that
of a man, she would cruelly be called to account for her sexual history. Women of good moral
character were not supposed to like sex. If a complainant could be shown to
enjoy it she would have the devil's own job persuading a jury that on this
occasion she had said "No" and meant it. Many raped women in those
days kept quiet because they did not want to have to go into court and face
hostile questioning about their sex lives. Those dreadful times are
no more, thanks to feminists and other reformers concerned to protect a
woman's right to say no. Now, when there is no
physical or witness evidence to support a woman's allegations, jurors are
free to make up their own minds whether to believe her with regard to her
consensual sex habits. But they still must be
satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that she is telling the truth. They cannot
simply take her word for it, any more than they can take the accused man's
word for it that he had her consent for the sexual activities. In the Mt Maunganui
trial, it seems the jurors, eight women and four men, have been less than
properly vigilant in making up their minds. Their "guilty" verdict
is a statement that they had no lingering reasonable doubt about the guilt of
the four accused. They rejected the
court's advice that if they thought the men's versions reasonably possible,
they should acquit. And women's support groups are hailing their decision as
a precedent. The fact that the
accusations relate to a grubby incident 16 years ago, when the woman was 20,
does not in itself cast doubt on her accusations. But it is the main concern
cited by every woman I have questioned on her view of the verdict. If the complainant
objected to what took place when she went to a small hut for sex with a man
she was "interested in", they agree, the time to announce this fact
was straight after the incident. When the assignation, billed as something
out of Don Giovanni, ballooned into a group sex orgy, during which she made a
careful note of details of the men's bodies, she should have wasted no time
afterwards in telling the police she had been pack-raped. She should not have
accepted a post-coital lift home, then waited for 16 years to make her
accusations. When she didn't complain at the first opportunity, she left
herself open to the assumption that she had a great old time in the
now-notorious hut, then all those years later changed her mind. That's simplistic, I
know, but in the minds of a lot of "reasonable people", the delay
of so many years is a killer blow to any belief they might have had in her
story. It was not a matter of "recovered memory". It was a matter
of not having got around to reporting the events. For whatever reason. Her story could be
true, but such accusations are too important to be decided on a balance of
probabilities. The prosecution should have been able to satisfy the jurors
that all reasonable doubt had been removed. Many members of the
public who have closely followed the case to see whether all such doubt has
disappeared do not agree with the jurors. Neither do I. |
