Let the reckoning begin [17]

In this final episode of 'Everyone is Talking About This: the true story of a rape case',  we fight to get a new trial date after the first one is cancelled due to the defendant allegedly catching Covid. The entire country seems to be talking about rape and the terrible statistics surrounding charging and conviction rates - but nothing seems to be being done to improve this. Try as we might, it's hard to feel optimistic about going to court when we know that just 1% of rape allegations lead to a conviction. What hope is there for Bea? How can we begin to rebuild our family if we fail and the defendant, the man who raped Bea, walks free?

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 carry on checking for updates.
'Everyone is Talking About This: the true story of a rape trial' will be coming soon.... 

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 0:04

The postponement of the trial to some indefinite date in the future due to the defendant allegedly catching COVID flattens us. B is diminished, destroyed. We all are. This torture is never ending. It's inhumane. I miss my mocks for nothing, she wails. She doesn't even care that much about the exams, but thinking about them gives her a focus and somewhere to spill out all her grief. I want to rage and rail, but I'm too exhausted. And if missing the mocks is bad, the very real danger now is that the trial will be rescheduled for during the actual A level exams. B's entire education, her future, all her hopes will be gone if she fails those exams. It's time to have my biopsy stitches removed. I find the scissors and tweezers and pour some boiling water over them, then grab the bottle of Detal. Phil gets a magnifying glass and starts having a dig around. It doesn't hurt so much as feel weird, the sensation of my skin being tugged and pulled from the inside. Phil retrieves a hang of black thread and puts it on a piece of tissue. Nearly done, he says cheerily. I gritch my teeth and try to visualize. A blue sea, an empty beach of golden sand, the distant cry of seabirds Ouch Fuck I can't help but swear as Phil yanks out the last stitch. Gotcha, he beams, staring at the final piece of thread. It's incredible how clean it comes out, isn't it? No blood, nothing. He's turning it around in front of his eyes, inspecting it closely, engrossed. I have to laugh. I'm glad someone's enjoying it, I replied dryly. That night the wound is painful, a sullen ache with intermittent twinges. I worry that I didn't cleanse the equipment properly, that it wasn't sterilized, that I'm going to get sepsis and die like that woman on the archers. Plus there's something up with my jaw, I can't open it fully, eating is painful. I've picked the skin around my fingernails again and again, pulling off layers and layers. Three of my fingers and both thumbs were bleeding when I went to bed, so I had to plaster them up so as not to sully my bedlinen. These self inflicted wounds hurt. My jaw hurts, my leg hurts, and I don't sleep. I don't get up for my exercise class in the park. I'm too tired. Instead I spent hours emailing. Again. I email our MP Sakia Starmer. Can he help to get our trial rescheduled ASAP, which just might save B's A levels and mitigate her suffering? Can he help to make sure it's held at the actual Crown Court, with proper provision for the public to watch? The more I think about it, the more I worry about the staffing at these Nightingale temporary courts. Where are they getting all the spare judges from to run the places? I picture some cyrogenically frozen Judge Pickles being raised from a vault and defrosted so he can bring his prejudice and bigotry to B's trial. Though what he could blame B for, I have no idea. Not her clothes, not her makeup, not her sexual history. For being female, for being out of the house alone, for daring to think she could walk the ten minutes from the tube station to her own house in safety. It occurs to me that of course the defendant didn't ask for or obtain B's consent. He didn't think he needed to. He thought a girl out on her own, who engages in even the most mundane of conversation is fair game. Consent didn't come into it. I stop myself catastrophizing and email the Guardian newspaper. There's not much we can publish about the trial and the case while it's still subjudice, but the fact that the police are telling the parents of a child rape victim that there is no room for them to attend the trial at the Nightingale Court can certainly be publicised. I get an email by return from the home affairs editor. They'll look into it. I feel ridiculously pathetically grateful. On Sunday morning I manage to get up for my running class. My police officer friend, who is part of the group, agrees with my doubts about the validity of the defendant, Mr Y's COVID test. How is it done? Is it self administered? How do we know he hasn't tampered with it? It's in his interests to delay the trial. The longer it takes, the more the chance of key witnesses going missing, withdrawing support, not showing up to give evidence. More crucially, the longer it takes, the more likelihood the trauma gets too great for the victim might be, to handle, and she asks to drop the case. The defendant, Mr Y, will have been warned by his legal team that he's likely to get a custodial sentence for the conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, so he'll be in prison anyway. Delaying the rape trial by a few months won't make any difference to that. And anyway, time spent on remand comes off any actual sentence times two, so faking a COVID test might seem like a good strategy, in his eyes. First thing on Monday morning I back up my email with a phone call to Keir Starmer's office. His agent, Richard, who manages his constituency business, is right on it. There's a hearing at midday to reset the trial date, and Richard manages to get a request before the judge to set a new date as soon as possible. At the end of the day I get an email. The new trial will start in just one month's time, and it will definitely be in the actual Crown Court building. This is an incredible result, and I'm sure there's no way it would have happened without the intervention of Keir Starmer's office. I also hear back from the Guardian journalist. They've gone to the Ministry of Justice for a comment, and the MOJ has admitted that the Nightingale provision is inadequate. The journalist calls this a rare capitulation. I take some scant satisfaction in winning something. January turns to February. Everyone has COVID. There are now only two members of the English department at my school who haven't had it, and one of them is me. Another colleague is off, but she's not ill, she's doing jury service at a nightingale court in the city. When she comes back to work I dread talking to her. I don't want to hear that she and her fellow jurors let all the criminals off. Nevertheless, I can't stop myself asking her about it. She tells me that she covered two trials, one about someone driving a stolen vehicle, and the other a domestic abuse case. The judge's summing up on each occasion involved the jury being told If you are not sure, you cannot find this person guilty. She and her fellow jurors were sure. They found both offenders guilty. Oh please God that the same happens to us, to the man who raped B. But what if it doesn't? I've been kidding myself that it'll be fine either way. He'll get a custodial sentence for perverting the course of justice, he's spent time in prison already, and hopefully learnt his lesson. He'll come out a better person. The reality is that I'm dreading it. And will he be a better person if he gets away with it? Or will it encourage him to do it again but just be a bit more careful next time? Don't repeatedly phone your victim. Don't track down your victim's address and send your fiance round with a bribe. If he hadn't made such stupid mistakes, he might never have been found. The days drag, as waiting days do. Every day there's another story about rape or sexual violence in the news. This week there's one about a fifteen year old raped in Peckham. I cannot suppress a hollow laugh when I read that the family are being supported by specialist officers. This line ends every single news report on any crime that has a victim murder, rape, abduction, you name it. But what does it mean? By specialist officers I assume they mean a sewed officer like David, someone whose specialism comes from having been on a training course for a couple of weeks, if you're lucky. By supported, I have no idea what they mean. It gives the impression that there's someone there twenty four seven, dishing out wise words, comfort and cups of tea. But that is definitely not the case. It certainly didn't happen to us. Perhaps it means a phone call every day. We didn't even get that. It occurs to me that this is another feature of the whole nonsense of it all that needs exposing. I wonder if the newspapers said the same when Beatrice was attacked. Unbelievably I realize that I never checked whether it was even in the local press. I didn't think about it. Now I put the local free sheet's title into Google, together with the words rape and the street name where it happened. And there it is, a report, a picture, and this. The seventeen year old victim is being supported by specialist officers. There we go. I wonder who tells the newspapers and TV reporters to say this. Is it standard issue just put there for convention? Do the police ask for this to be written or said? Whatever the reason, I want everyone to know the truth, which is that it's utter nonsense. By the time February half term comes round, all my work colleagues and myself are exhausted. Another two members of the department have been off all week with COVID, plus many others across the school. Those of us still standing are having to cover lesson after lesson. We limp to three thirty PM on the last Friday, a diminished team, spirit sapped. Another holiday, say those who are not teachers, what will you do with all that time? Doctor, dentist, optician, hairdresser, and that's just for starters. People don't realise that in teaching you can't just take time off for appointments. All but emergencies have to be scheduled into the holidays. Vet, I need to make the appointment for Colin to be neutered. What a shame we can't do this to men who assault women, Mr Y, for example. Best thing for him I can't help thinking, and all the other men like him out there. I phone the animal hospital and get Colin on the waiting list. The story about the lack of seating provision at the Nightingale Court that the Guardian journalists and I have been working on and have had many telephone conversations about, appears online and in print, and for a while is the most read article on the website. The tweets that accompany it are all supportive. No one can believe it. Everyone finds it abhorrent that the parents of a child rape victim are told to stay away from the court, ceding their right to be there to the perpetrator's family. After the brief week of respite afforded by the half term holiday, it's back to school. On the news I hear the director of public prosecutions, Max Hill, being taken to task by Dame Vera Baird, the victim's commissioner, for the appalling record of charging and convicting rapists. Needless to say, he's completely useless, coming out with nothing but excuses. And then, in a move that stuns the entire world, Putin's Russia invades Ukraine. It's unbelievable. I learned one useful fact in my four year politics degree, and that is that countries don't change their political cultures. Nowhere is that more true than in Russia. The Tsar, Stalin, Putin, all the same. Tyrannical dictators who crave absolute power above all else. On the Friday after half term I place my work in the cover trays, in anticipation of the trial taking the whole week, which is what we've been advised. In the event, it lasts for nearly two weeks. As I make my way home I check the newsfeed on my phone. The man who murdered Sabina Nessa has pleaded guilty. He chased her, attacked her with a traffic cone, and beat her unconscious, dragging her into the bushes where he removed her clothing, and presumably sexually assaulted, then strangled her. He covered her body with grass, cleaned a bench with wet wipes, and went back to a one hundred seventy pound a night hotel in Eastbourne that he had for some reason checked into. This news forces me to admit something to myself, and I have to put it on paper here because it haunts me day and night. This could have happened to be she could be dead. We could be facing an inquest and a murder trial. I know I have to be grateful that it is merely a rape trial we must endure. But it seems an incomprehensibly sad thing to feel gratitude for. The pain experienced by the families of these women, Sarah, Nicole, Beba, Ashling, Sabina, and all the many, many others is too colossal to understand. It is complete and never ending. We are the lucky ones, our daughter is mentally and emotionally in pieces, but she's still here. We still have her when all those families don't. That Friday also sees the publication of two reports slamming the performance of the police and criminal justice system in the area of rape. Waits of two to four years for trials to begin are now commonplace. There are multiple failings in the process from reporting a rape to getting it to court and conviction. There's a lack of collaboration between police and prosecutors. Victims are left feeling that they are the ones on trial. The list of errors and failings goes on and on. Wendy Williams, HM Inspector of Constabulary, and Andrew Cayley QC, HM Chief Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Inspectorate, are both on record saying the current situation for rape survivors cannot continue. But nobody seems to have the will or the ability to make the changes that are needed. So who will do this? One point I read makes me sit up and take particular notice. The idea that the police and the CPS should work together to ensure a defendant's bad character is taken into account, as there are concerns that opportunities to put such evidence before the courts are being missed. But we are still sitting here on the Friday before our trial begins, not knowing whether the conspiracy to pervert the course of justice will be allowed as evidence in B's case. Clearly, the defence will argue strongly that it shouldn't be, and the prosecution will argue equally strongly that it should be, and the judge will decide. It seems ridiculous to me that this is the way it works. Whichever side makes the best argument, whichever side the judge is inclined towards. The complete waste of space that is Dominic Raab, the Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, says he accepts the findings of Vera Baird. The government is absolutely determined to give victims greater support and swifter justice, he says, and ensure they see their attackers punished. Same old, same old. Same old hand wringing, same old this can't continue, same old this isn't good enough, same old something needs to change. Same old absolutely nothing happens. I receive an email from Luke Gallagher, telling me that recorder Z will be trying the case. At least it's a woman, but I've no idea who or what a recorder is. I look it up a junior judge, someone who tries less serious cases. I'm confused, angry, perplexed. I email Luke back, questioning this decision, and he replies with one of his terse, passive aggressive responses. I email again. I totally understand that it's nothing you have control over, I write, and I appreciate you getting back to me. But as you have pointed out, I don't have any right to be able to contact our barrister. The only contact I have is you. DC Wade has never communicated with me in any way, shape, or form, even though she is the officer in control of this case, and you yourself told us to go through you, not David. So sorry if you are on the receiving end of my emails, there is no one else. I brood on it all day. In the current climate of one report after another revealing the myriad ways rape victims have failed by the system, and everyone seeming to agree that this is the case, it feels like a slap in the face to find that our trial will be tried by a junior who only presides over less serious crimes. Tell B it's a less serious crime, when her life is in tatters, her health in ruins, her home and neighbourhood violated, her education in disarray, and her future torn away from her. I think she probably wouldn't agree that it is less serious. In reply to my latest email, Luke sends a slightly more conciliatory response, telling me that anyone trying rape cases must be sex ticketed. Well, that's alright then. My thoughts turn to what will happen at the end of this trial. Will we be able to rebuild? Phil and I communicate only about essentials. The children are both traumatized, we're all exhausted. So much so in my case that these days I go to bed at eight thirty PM, I work and I sleep, or try to, and that's about it. And in my many long hours of nighttime wakefulness, I toss and turn. I obsess about the defence, barrister. There are so many questions I want to ask. Have you ever been sickened by a case? Ever been horrified by a not guilty verdict you help to bring about because you know in your heart of hearts that they did it, and have had to pretend that you don't know this? Ever been sorry for what you have done? I know these lawyers would justify their client getting off by saying the evidence didn't stand up to investigation, so the defendant deserves to walk free. But what if they don't really think that? In the park at the weekend the grass is strewn with spring flowers, brilliant splashes of purple and orange crocases, tempered with white, the dainty heads of snowdrops nodding in the breeze. In a side street, an ornamental cherry tree dazzles with snowy blossom. I read in the paper that home secretary Pretty Patel and London Mayor Sadiq Khan are both launching campaigns to make men take responsibility for their own behaviour and that of other men. Great. But it wouldn't have stopped a refugee from Afghanistan who'd only just arrived in the country, who presumably would not have seen or known about these campaigns. Patel has also been droning on about violence against women and girls being a strategic policing requirement. She says she does not accept that violence against them is inevitable. But figures show that more than twenty percent of UK women say they have been a victim of a sexual assault. Carne's words are the most apt I've ever heard. This is not just an issue with the minority of men who are violent, but with men who are sexist, who behave inappropriately around women, who perpetuate a toxic form of masculinity, or who just stand by silently when women feel threatened or are being threatened. Men must change. I have an idea for an advertising campaign. Take the prison photos of convicted rapists, blank out the eyes and print across them the crime, in our case, rape, and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. At the bottom, put the punishment, the sentence the rapist has been given, ten years, twenty years, whatever. That's it. Leave those seeing the poster to think about it, to understand that actions have consequences, and the consequences of rape will be bad. I'm quite pleased with my idea. Pretty, Sadiq, you're welcome. All of these thoughts, though, are a distraction from what is really on my mind, consuming my every waking moment. The trial begins on Monday. New statistics show that under one percent of reported rapes lead to a conviction, mostly because victims withdraw from the legal process, finding it too grueling, intrusive, long drawn out, and overall entirely demoralizing. And have you noticed how, when a case is dropped, it's always reported in such a way as to make it seem as if the complainant had clearly just made the whole thing up. There never was a shred of truth. It was all a malicious lie to begin with. When the reality is that complainants withdraw because they can't face going through with it, having all the details aired for all to see, being humiliated and blamed in court. Quite simply, it's just too traumatic to proceed, so many don't. But B has not withdrawn from the case. She has stuck with it through thick and thin. She is determined to see it through, and so are we. Bring it on. Let the reckoning begin.