Rape Victim Cross Examined Raped All Over Again
"That is merely non truthful…"
"Yous are indulging in the realms of fantasy…"
"Utter fantasy, is it not?"
"This is a lie…"
"What yous accept told this jury is a consummate pack of lies…"
The cross-exam of Frances Andrade, who was in the witness box over indecent assault allegations against her erstwhile music teacher, Michael Brewer, makes very uncomfortable reading when you know that a few days after her courtroom appearance she killed herself.
Three days earlier her death, Andrade texted a friend to say that she felt as if she had been "raped all over once more" as Brewer's barrister, Kate Blackwell, attempted to undermine her testimony. Her son, Oliver, told a paper how profoundly the cross-test had afflicted her. "Equally before long as she came out of the courtroom, she just burst into tears," he said. "She had tried so hard not to exercise information technology in forepart of the jury. She described it equally feeling as if she had been assaulted all over again. All that she could recall was that she was existence attacked. She establish that extremely hard."
Brewer was eventually establish guilty of five counts of indecent set on. Simply during her time in the witness box, Andrade was very clear near the result that the aggressive tone of questioning would take. "This is why cases don't come up forward," she told the QC. "I am not in the realms of fantasy and I really understand why so many cases have not come up to court."
The home secretarial assistant, Theresa May, best-selling the point in an interview afterwards Andrade's death, and said the fallout from the case could have a very negative upshot. "I fear that others may be put off from coming forrad rather than encouraged," she said.
Other rape and sexual assail victims who have tried, with various degrees of success, to accept cases to court are familiar with the deplorable feel of having their evidence torn apart. Commonly when you report a law-breaking, you lot expect to exist believed. Victims of burglary practice not have to prove that they accept been burgled or to justify their behaviour before the break-in. With rape and sexual set on allegations, victims still find themselves subjected to hostile questioning.
Tina Renton describes giving evidence confronting her stepfather, whom she defendant of raping and assaulting her multiple times during her babyhood, equally the "most hard thing I have ever done". She recalls the day in her book You Can't Hide, published earlier this twelvemonth, which details the childhood corruption and her decision subsequently to train as a lawyer and accept her stepfather to court. Part of her case rested on her testimony that she told her female parent nigh the abuse when she was 14, simply her mother chose to ignore her. The defence lawyer, Mr Brown, "went straight for the jugular", she writes. "'Can I just make the position clear to y'all that I practice not take that you always spoke to your mother nigh your stepfather sexually abusing you,' he told the court."
Remembering the occasion in her habitation in Essex, she says she was disturbed by the number of times her stepfather'south lawyer said to her, "I put information technology to you that you are lying."
"It is hard being defendant of being a liar," she says. "I would never have put myself through the trauma of a courtroom case if it wasn't true.
"Because of my legal training, I knew that they were going to attack me. It was actually tough, merely I knew I had to keep to deny that I was lying and to continue existence as true as I was. They were constantly trying to grab me out. They would go over things, over and over again, trying to trip me up," she says. "The approximate was really good. At that place were a couple of times when I got so upset I couldn't exhale, and the judge called for an adjournment."
The process of telling a crowded courtroom what had happened to her was profoundly upsetting, even without the attempts of the defence force barrister to undermine her. "The embarrassment… I had to talk about the about intimate things that I hadn't shared with anyone except a police officeholder, to relive all those moments I had but been brave plenty to tell the police officeholder and never anyone else. You don't take to bring back the memories – they don't get away – but information technology is hard to talk almost them because of the shame you feel as a victim."
Renton still has nightmares about her time in the witness box. "During the solar day I can cope with it. In my sleep… Yous can't control your subconscious." She dreams of "running and never beingness able to find anyone able to help you" and of "standing in court, people laughing at you, but you don't know why".
Despite the all-time efforts of the defense team, the jury believed her. Her stepfather, David Moore, was found guilty of half-dozen counts of indecent set on, 3 counts of committing gross indecency with a child and three counts of rape. In July 2011 he was sentenced to 14 years.
However traumatic her court experience, Renton considers herself very fortunate that the procedure resulted in a conviction. "I feel for Frances Andrade and her family. I am ane of the lucky ones. The system did not fail me; it protected me. My story shouldn't exist so unique, simply the statistics are awful."
Campaigners ofttimes cite an estimate that just about 6% of reported rapes in England and Wales cease up with the rapist being convicted of rape. Still, this figure is controversial, and seen as unnecessarily discouraging for victims who might be thinking almost coming forward. More recent assay of the figures, based on a more usual definition of conviction rate (the proportion of cases prosecuted in the courts), suggests that 62.5% of rape cases cease in a confidence.
Kate Smith (whose existent name cannot be revealed for legal reasons) was extremely disturbed past similarities between the style Andrade was treated and her ain experience, when she pressed charges against someone she claimed had abused her dozens of times as a child.
The accused was establish not guilty, and then it is difficult to publish many details of Smith's allegations, but she, too, says she was repeatedly told in court that she was not telling the truth. Even if there had been a guilty verdict, she says, she would still have found the cross-examination humiliating and needlessly gruelling.
"I suggest that this is a prevarication, that you made this up," she was told time and once more. She was so angry that she wrote to May, calling on her to review the mode that women who report rape and sexual assault are treated, "to ensure that the victims are not subjected to this tirade of abuse throughout the trials.
"My case was a devastating blow to my self-esteem," she told the home secretary. "Information technology compounded my guilt and shame. Without the support of my fantastic partner, friends… I, too, could have been another Frances Andrade, taking my own life. It broke me. Victims should not be broken in order to become a conviction or even a not guilty verdict… You lot exit a slice of yous behind in the courtroom." Smith has not all the same had a reply from May. "I wanted to say that [Andrade's case] was non a i-off. I experienced being called a liar many times."
Part of the trouble was that the abuse had begun when she was very young, and since 2 decades had passed, she was unable to remember a number of dates and details.
"They said that I lied virtually the dates, but there were things I just didn't remember. I felt it was a very discrediting process from the start."
She felt she was being asked the wrong questions and, when she tried to stop to explicate things better, she was told she couldn't deviate from the question. "I was told to try to be equanimous, try non to get angry… It is difficult, considering you come across as very difficult. You are trying to contain yourself, talking about some of the worst times of your life. It is difficult not to come beyond as existence really hard-faced, because keeping yourself together in courtroom is really difficult. I didn't know if I was going to be sick or faint."
Her diary was read out in court; family photos were handed around. She was upset that pictures were brought out, showing her with the alleged abuser, looking happy. "I am not going to sit down at that place with a sign on my caput saying that I was being driveling – not when I was x, 11, 12 or 13." Her family unit and close friends were as well subjected to aggressive questioning. "I don't retrieve they were really prepared for the whole court experience," she says.
She understands that information technology was the defence'due south chore to subject her show to rigorous scrutiny merely feels that she – like Andrade – was the victim of unnecessarily harsh questioning. The barrister was "male, arrogant and unpleasant", she says. "It was but another case for him to win.
"They picked apart my testify: 'I put it to you lot that this didn't happen, that yous are lying,' " she says. "I said to the jury, 'I'm non lying.' It is hard to explain that feeling of helplessness when you have pretty much laid your whole life out before the court, proverb exactly what happened, and trusting that people volition believe y'all."
Fifty-fifty though her declared assaulter was found not guilty, Smith does not entirely regret her decision to go to courtroom. "In a way, going to court gave me a voice and gave me command," she says. In the stop, however, "The nine years of my life when I was abused were dismissed by the jury."
Smith had the do good of an independent sexual violence adviser, funded by the Home Role to work with victims of sexual assail, who advised her on the legal process. Only, like Andrade, she was told not to seek counselling until afterward the trial. In her letter to May, she says she felt that the criminal justice system seemed to be "heavily weighted in favour of the defence throughout the whole of the court and trial procedure".
Sarah Jones (not her existent name) was never exposed to cross-examination in court because the case was dropped before information technology went to trial, merely she experienced very uncomfortable questioning by police officers as she attempted to take her rapist prosecuted.
She was raped in her own flat by someone she knew a little. She had brought a group of friends and acquaintances back domicile after a party. She was drunk and had taken drugs, and thinks she vicious comatose or passed out. When she woke up, she discovered she was existence raped.
Initially, she wasn't certain whether the assail would be classified equally rape. "Information technology wasn't rape according to what we are brought up to understand equally rape – it wasn't rape by a stranger, in a nighttime alleyway. I wasn't thinking directly," she says. Information technology was only when she went to the pharmacist and explained what had happened that she was advised to call the law.
Later that day she did then, uncertain about whether she should press charges. "I knew rape convictions are incredibly low. I was actually sure I wasn't going to practise anything about it, because I thought it wouldn't be possible to bear witness information technology. I had a lot of cocky-doubt. I had been taking drugs and I had been drinking. The police were pretty good about it," she says. From the offset they reassured her that a prosecution was possible, and the attacker was arrested.
Meanwhile, a friend explained that she had made everyone exit the flat when she realised Jones had passed out. The rapist somehow managed to return. "He must have hidden," Jones says. "Those were the actions of a predatory rapist; it wasn't consensual. When it became clear that it was then calculated, I felt I had a duty to carry it through."
A complexity emerged equally law began to investigate. One of the other people at the party told police force they had seen Jones kissing someone else that night. She was as well boozer to retrieve, and then did not include information technology in her account. But every bit a result the police decided that she was withholding information and launched a second, very detailed, videoed interview.
"The kickoff interview was very hard, not considering I wasn't believed, but because of the particular yous have to give. It is not plenty to say, 'I woke upwards and he was having sexual activity with me.' You take to draw exactly what you can run across, feel and hear in anatomical detail – a level of detail that is very upsetting. The 2d interview was actually, actually hard. It was gruelling."
After 8 months the instance was dropped and Jones was told she was an unreliable witness. "It felt every bit if they were just looking for an alibi to shut it down," she says. "That's non what our justice system is supposed to do. I take no doubtfulness that I would have been able to convince a jury."
Jones thinks she should have had a lawyer to help her through the procedure. "The accused gets a lawyer. The victim is kept in the nighttime and not given any communication," she says. She was hugely distressed by existence described every bit an unreliable witness. "I went into infirmary for two months afterward they told me; I had a breakdown."
Nearly upsetting was the feeling of non beingness believed, and the proposition that she made upwardly the allegation – an idea she finds hard to sympathize. "The numbers of imitation rape accusations are then negligible. It makes me and then angry."
In that location is such a broad recognition that Uk has a trouble with prosecuting sexual assault that there are some positive developments under fashion, coming from both the government and the legal profession. Figures published by the Ministry of Justice earlier this yr revealed that only an estimated fifteen% of female victims of rape and sexual assault in England and Wales report the crime to the police. Many of the rest say they choose non to considering they find the prospect "embarrassing", the incident was "also trivial or non worth reporting", or because they "didn't think the police could exercise much to help".
The dismay triggered by the Jimmy Savile scandal, yet, has made people reconsider their attitudes towards victims, and Kate Smith wonders whether, if her trial had been held now, there might have been more sympathy from the jury. Earlier this year, the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, apologised to Savile'south victims and promised that this would exist a "watershed moment". More recently he announced that a "misplaced belief" that false accusations of rape are commonplace may be undermining police efforts to investigate such crimes. He said that police should not adopt an "overcautious" approach because of the "understandable" concern that some allegations are faux.
Later the Andrade case, Theresa May said information technology was necessary to run into if the organization could be improved to ensure "victims feel they will be believed when they come forward". The Ministry of Justice is now overhauling its Victims' Lawmaking to offer greater support to those who report crime. The proposals are currently out for consultation, with a concluding version due in June or July.
Victims' minister Helen Grant said, "I want more victims of rape and sexual assault to come forward and get the help they need to recover from these sickening crimes. Too often they tell us they feel they are treated as an afterthought or that the 'system' made their already horrific experience worse.
"Nosotros take strengthened the Victims' Code so victims can, for the first fourth dimension, know what to await and hold the criminal justice organization to business relationship. Victims of sexual abuse will now know what specialist help should exist offered, such as pre-trial therapy and extra support in court – and, if the system fails them, who to demand assistance from."
Frances Andrade's husband, Levine Andrade, said in an interview later her death that he hoped an improvement in the law could be her legacy. "I hope they can modify the police force," he said. "Fran felt as if she was on trial. She kept saying, 'I tin come across why nobody comes frontwards. I can see how people crack under the pressure.'"
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/apr/13/rape-sexual-assault-frances-andrade-court
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