Stormy weather [12]

In this episode, Bea meets a memory expert - who tells her an astonishing fact about the rapist's claims. I applaud a possible change in the law around sexual harassment - and continue to despair of the broken justice system the whole family is mired in.

Trigger warnings: this podcast deals with rape, sexual assault, anxiety, depression and eating disorders.
 
 Most mothers will never have to find out what happens when their child becomes the victim of a horrendous crime. I, Lisa Lennox, never imagined that it would happen to my family, to my 17-year-old daughter. But one benign, ordinary summer's day, it did. And so began my family's immersion in the horror unleashed by such a crime, the trauma, the fear, the on-going nightmare of dealing with a police and criminal justice system which, if not completely broken, is certainly fatally fractured and struggling to cope. 
 
 Everyone is Talking About This is the true story of an ordinary family forced to face an extraordinary circumstance. I’ve tried to be honest and forthright about my desperate struggle to help my child get justice - and, on many occasions, to see the reason to go on living.

Please be aware that this podcast mentions sexual assault, rape, eating disorders and mental health issues. There is occasional strong language and some graphic detail. 

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this podcast, here are some organisations you can contact in the UK:
Rape Crisis
0808 500 2222 - calls are free.
Or you can visit their website - https://247sexualabusesupport.org.uk/

Beat, the UK's eating disorder charity
08088010677 - calls are free.
Or visit their website - https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/

You can also speak to your GP or, if you are still at school, someone from your safeguarding team. 


To my listeners - please do tell your friends about this audiobook podcast and encourage them to listen so that as many people as possible are aware of the reality victims of rape are up against on a daily basis here in the UK and across the world. 

Help me to spread the word!

And contact me on: everyoneistalkingaboutthis@gmail.com 
or via Twitter: @63136_survivors to tell me what you like about the podcast and what I could improve. 

Thank you! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

The weather is mild until mid November. Then it turns. The suddenness makes it seem colder than it really is, no time to have got used to it. On my Sunday run in the park, a hoar frost coats the grass. There's a stillness in the air, an expectancy. Winter is coming. The leaves have nearly all turned and fallen now, but as the sun comes up it tinges gold those that are left, like the last ray of hope before the dark. As I run, I think ahead to January, to attending a trial when sub zero temperatures rule outside, but inside is stuffy, hot, and filled with the aggression bred by the adversarial justice system we operate under. Despite the pace of my run, I shiver. Clenching my fists I dig my nails into my palms. They're not going to get away with this, I tell myself, Mr Y and Miss X. They can't. I won't let them. But of course, I have no idea whether justice will or will not be done. I have no control at all over what will happen. Ever since the attack I've been preoccupied by how on earth defence barristers can do it. How can they stand up in court and argue for some complete low life, some tow rag, lying scumbag like Mr Y? How can they want him to walk free? I know all the arguments. Barristers can't choose who to defend. Everyone's entitled to a fair trial. Those two bloody words again. It's their job to get the best outcome, lowest sentence, to point out inadequacies in the legal work, the police work, the evidence, to get the case thrown out on a technicality. Oh yes, I've read and read and read, and I still don't understand. This man is guilty. He's admitted he met a child on the street and immediately had sex with her on a patch of grubby grass. Who amongst us wants a man like that wandering the streets? These barristers want him freed so he can do the same to their sisters, mothers, daughters, nieces, friends? Really? They must know he's telling utter complete lies that nothing he says is the truth. And they can still stomach being in a room with him, listening to his nonsense. They're still prepared to stand up in court and try to humiliate and discredit my daughter in his favour, to try to get him found not guilty. And if he gets off, they'll see that as a victory, not as a travesty of justice. How can they? Honestly, how can they do that? The very language of the legal process also seems so wrong, this talk of winning and losing. I recall Luke Gallagher's words at our meeting with him, the nature of the game. But there will be no winners in this sordid affair, whatever happens in court. Everyone involved will have lost something by the time this business is concluded. Most of all B. Dates have become muddled in my mind, time slowing down and then speeding up like a waltzer at the fair. When I get an email on Monday saying that Miss Y has had a bail hearing and it's been refused, I'm confused and elated at the same time. I'd forgotten it was today. I'm amazed that she's been kept in prison, as the police keep telling us she will be bailed. I asked David Y, but he says it's at the judge's discretion, and the judge doesn't give his or her reasons. Two days later, when I take B for the meeting with the expert witness who is going to examine her memory loss, B shows me a text. It's from Witness Care, and it tells us that the court refused bail on the following grounds commission of further offences, interference with witnesses, and failure to surrender. I wonder why David said reasons aren't given, at the same time as I'm also trying not to laugh. Failure to surrender An image forms in my mind of Miss X barricaded behind a stockade in the Arizona desert, wanted in five states, refusing to give in. Come out with your hands up, shouts the sheriff, who, as I recall, from all the westerns my sister and I watched as children, always sported an impressive Stetson. This is met by a final defiant flurry of bullets from Miss X. When David emerges from the police building, I ask him about the email. Can I please also be on this victim care officer's mailing list? And what does failure to surrender actually mean? It just means that you might not show up to the next hearing or trial, he explains. Oh I'm almost disappointed. Failure to surrender made it sound dramatic and interesting. I refrain from mentioning to David that he had told us the reasons for the refusal of bail are never divulged, because clearly they are, and have been. I can't be in the meeting with the expert witness, and yet again I'm told I can't set foot inside the police station. Once more it seems wrong to be handing B over to the care of two men, one she's never met in her life before, and one she barely knows. I can't argue, though, so I go to a coffee shop, the same one that Phil and I had come to in the summer. It's nice, cozy, homely, just chaotic enough in the lunchtime rush to make for good people watching. I sit in the window next to a pot plant that keeps jabbing its spiky leaves into my head, and look out to the gloomy grey day beyond the steamy glass. I remember the mothers and their babies of the summer, and think back to Beatrice and Iris' babyhoods, the hopes I had for them, the dreams. I feel I've let them both down so badly. To take my mind off things I scroll through my phone, studying the newsfeed for which half the stories require of subscription that I don't have. I end up reading extensively about the royal family, who I don't have the slightest bit of interest in, being an avowed Republican as I am. Nevertheless, I read about Harry and Wills' feud, Meghan's argument with her father, the entire family's beef with the BBC about some documentary, Kate's winning ways with schoolchildren, Kate's latest looks, where to get lookalike Kate looks on the high street, Kate's cute children, Kate's tips on motherhood and parenting. Please God save me from those. And then the joint christening of Eugenie's and Zara's babies. At which point my blood boils and I have to stop. In what way are either Eugenie or Zara in the slightest bit newsworthy? The first is the daughter of a disgraced prince and the second I don't even know who actually is Zara. B is quiet when I pick her up from the police station. Standing in that all too familiar street I take the opportunity to quiz David. Might Miss X plead guilty to the conspiracy to pervert the course of justice? What could her defence be? Coercion? Well, yeah, she could say that, David concedes. He's jumping around from foot to foot as he always does, constantly giving the impression that talking to me is holding him up from some important police work he needs to do that's more pressing than anything I have to say. I give up and we leave. As we pass a branch of Pret, B asks for a hot chocolate. I'm delighted, a return to normal eating and drinking, even if everything else is off the scale awful. She doesn't tell me much of what happened at the meeting, and indeed I've been told I mustn't know, as I could still be called by the prosecution as a witness. But the expert has let slip that Mr Y says he got to know B because she fell over, and he, good Samaritan that he is, helped her to her feet. I try to work out his thinking here, that the jury will be so overwhelmed by the kindness of his heart that they'll forgive, or find completely understandable, that he subsequently raped her, that they'll shrug their shoulders and think, well, who wouldn't do that in such a situation? Obviously, if a girl falls over through alcohol or just a plain trip up, it stands to reason that the next logical step, once she's back upright, is to push her right back down and take advantage of her. I can only hope that they'll find the story both as implausible as I do, and as repellent. But it shows, doesn't it, Mummy B is saying, that I must have been really drunk, if I can't remember if I fell down or not? I consider this. I would have thought you would remember falling over in any case, I say. Most people remember falling because it's so horrible, not to mention painful. But the thing is, he's probably lying. This is the story he's concocted, that he presumably thinks will get him off the hook. I try to stop myself in my tracks from what I'm doing all the time these days, trying to think myself into the heads of the prospective jury, to second guess them. Surely they'll find this tale reprehensible. Surely they'll see it for exactly what it is ruthless exploitation of a young, weak, vulnerable child. Surely they will. Next day B comes to me in tears as I'm getting ready for work. I can't go to school, mummy. I didn't sleep, I feel terrible. She is waflike in her pajamas, pale and lifeless. I can't make her go. The interview has brought it all back, not the detailed memories that we really could do with, but the trauma and the fear and the confusion, along with the anger at the lies Mr Y is telling. Leaving Bee alone all day with her thoughts and her trauma doesn't feel right, but I don't have much choice. I don't want to keep taking time off work and blow all the goodwill which I'll need for the trial itself. Bee promises that she'll catch up with her schoolwork, which she probably will, and she vows that she'll eat a proper lunch, there's leftover chicken noodle in the fridge, which I know she probably won't. Assuring her that she can phone me any time and that I'll try not to be late home, Iris and I set off for the tube station. Every time I walk past it, I look at the patch of grass behind the nursery school where it happened, and I still can't believe it. How the hell did this happen here to my child? It's the twenty fifth of November, the UN designated International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. All I can think is we've got a long, long way to go. I hear an article on the radio about rain. People say that the Inuit have fifty words for snow, but I think it's a myth. However, it's true that English has at least forty words for rain, and Susie Dent introduces the world to apricity, an old English word for the warmth of the sun on a winter's day. It comes from the Latin apricus. I love this word and determine to bring it back to life, using it wherever I can. Hey, do you think there'll be any apricity today? What about this apricity? Great, isn't it? I really wanted some apricity for my birthday, but I didn't get it. Caroline phones to see how we all are. We discuss the way judges and barristers live in bubbles, separated from the real world, protected by their wealth and social status. They don't really care, she says. The crimes they deal with don't affect them, it's all just an academic exercise from their perspective. That's why I retired as soon as I could. I got depressed, couldn't take it anymore. There's so much wrongdoing, so many bad people, so many guilty walking free because of a technicality. There are so many lawyers who are in some kind of war with the police, just want to get one over on them, no regard for the victims. The criminal justice system is broken. I know that Caroline is right, but it doesn't make it easy to hear. This is the system B is relying on. On the first of December there is yet more depressing news. The director of public prosecutions is urging judges to get the public gallery cleared more often in rape trials so that the complainant doesn't have to suffer the glares of the defendant's family whilst giving evidence. It seems inhumane to think that this could ever happen, even more inexplicable that judges would not automatically do anything legally possible to protect victims without having to be reminded. At least B won't have to deal with this issue as she will be doing her cross examination separately in advance, and David has also confirmed with me that she will have an intermediary to help her if she becomes flustered or confused. On the radio news I hear that some rape victims are now waiting four years to get to court, so the time delay has increased by a year and a half since what happened to be. An article in the Metro newspaper declares the system as completely unable to cope or to bring justice to many thousands of victims of rape and sexual assault. As if we didn't know. The subject is never out of the news, and the government continues to insist that the problem is being dealt with. Utter rubbish. Of course it's not. Women are primarily the victims and women don't matter, so it's not being dealt with, or at least not in any remotely adequate way. What was that about a broken criminal justice system again? In more good news, the Omicron variant of COVID is growing, and there are forty eight thousand three hundred and seventy four positive COVID cases, four thousand up on the previous Wednesday. And, for good measure, a World War II bomb blows up in Munich, wounding four people. A few days later, on the fourth of December, it's reported that the government is being asked to consider criminalising public sexual harassment as part of a review into hate crime. Given how many stories I've heard from women, including B and her friends, of the unrelenting pestering they endure every time they leave the house, this legislation is clearly sorely needed. Perhaps the most pernicious aspect is that it's simply become regarded as normal, that being publicly harassed on a daily basis is the price of being female in Britain in the 21st century. The report says that making lewd comments, pressing against someone in a sexual way on public transport, cornering someone, catcalling, and persistent sexual propositioning could all be covered by the changes to the law if they are brought in. Dexter Diaz, the human rights lawyer who's been campaigning for this for three years, says this is about sexual offences and intrusion, and is about the rights of women and girls to have full access to civil society and public spaces. I celebrate and support such a change to the legislation. But the issue is that we'd end up with a nonsensical situation where it's illegal to wolf whistle at someone, but if the perpetrator, let's be honest, it will be a man, then goes on to rape the woman he's whistled at, he can simply claim it was consensual. All this does, as far as I can see, is show the law on consent for exactly what it is inadequate, unfit for purpose, and ruthlessly exploited by rapists and their lawyers. Plus archange.