‘Nobody would have believed me’: Readers on why rape trials keep failing women
Charlotte Proudman’s argument about ‘himpathy’ – the disproportionate sympathy shown to male perpetrators of sexual violence over female victims – has triggered a strong wave of reaction from Independent readers following a controversial rape sentencing case.
In her piece, Proudman argues that the justice system too often places the futures, vulnerabilities and potential for rehabilitation of boys at the centre of sentencing decisions, while the lifelong harm experienced by girls is pushed to the margins as secondary or inevitable collateral damage.
That framing struck a nerve with our community, many of whom expressed anger at what they see as overly lenient outcomes in cases involving serious sexual violence. A recurring concern was that mitigation factors such as youth, neurodivergence or a lack of understanding of consent risk being used in ways that soften accountability, reinforcing the idea that male offenders are fundamentally “salvageable” in ways that the damage done to victims is not.
Alongside this was a powerful focus on the experience of survivors themselves – the lasting psychological impact, the trauma of court proceedings, and the sense that justice rarely reflects the severity of what they have endured.
Here’s what you had to say:
Women are always dismissed
Women have always suffered the punishment for men’s sexual misdemeanours and violence; and have always had their worries and traumas dismissed as ‘well, you’ll get over it’. And I sincerely hope that the girls who were so severely traumatised get all the social and psychological help they need for as long as they need it. Sadly they have been traumatised; nothing now can change that.
I just beg to differ about how this affects the sentencing of the guilty and whether an apparently punitive sentence really helps the victim. And if so, for how long?
What many fail to take into account are the ages of the perpetrators at the time of the offences; what made and encouraged them to behave like that? How best can they and others be prevented from repeating such behaviour? And is imprisonment really a deterrent, or is close supervision, control of their behaviour, and a chance that they really learn how absolutely awful and unforgivable their behaviour was a better way to reduce the chances of any possible repetition?
And maybe society could work harder at weeding out what encourages boys to become so misogynistic, and men could work on fairer attitudes to women!
Welfare of victims should come first
Listening to a senior legal expert on Radio 4 just now. She was saying that when a judge comes to pass a sentence on a child, the first concern is for the welfare of the child. The child in question is now a convicted rapist.
Sod their welfare.
I care about the welfare of their victims, who were filmed by an accomplice whilst their human rights to privacy and family life were being abused.
I demand women are protected
Yet again I am appalled at the heartless views of, it seems, mainly male judges. Given the few details that have emerged about the accused during the trial, I see no reason to commend them for anything. This crime was not just very bad; it was an abomination.
As a man I happen to have, or have had, a mother, wife, daughter and granddaughters; I demand that they are protected from harm with all the power with which we can endow our police forces and judiciary. With this judge I feel no confidence at all that my standard of protection will be afforded to my female relatives. The perpetrators of these vile acts deserve long custodial sentences and the opprobrium of the whole country, and the judge should either be removed permanently from sitting, or undergo a period of training to appreciate generally held views about acceptable behaviour in teenage young men.
‘Good girls’ don’t get into trouble
It is much worse. Irrespective of culture, religion or geography, there is a universal belief that ‘good girls’ don’t get into trouble. Under all the liberation and emancipation that we claim, submerged underneath – unlike the carrying of that prejudice openly in some societies – is himpathy. Significant numbers of mothers with only sons will not hesitate to blame the girl or woman. Yet we walk around with a sense of superiority over other conservative cultures.
This is nothing new
This is nothing new; back in the 1990s my mother was raped by a man she thought was a friend. She was in her sixties; he was about 10 years younger. My father died when she was in her forties and she had never been intimate with anyone but him, and never was after this.
I wasn’t at the trial; the police, who had been wonderful throughout, were so certain of a conviction that my mother asked me to stay away (victim shame) and instead came from Yorkshire to London where I lived straight afterwards to get away from it. My sister and a good friend were there for her and they were appalled.
He beat her; she was covered in bruises, could barely walk, and he ripped her clothes. The judge told the jury that this could have been a result of ‘enthusiastic sex’. My sister said he waved my mother’s ripped tights in the air while saying this. He gave her the clap, but the solicitor didn’t want to use that as he felt the defence would suggest she was the one who gave it to him!
The policewoman who had supported her through it all wept at the verdict.
I suspect my mother was ‘guilty’ of being naive, of not realising that this man wouldn’t be satisfied with a friendship.
She had a few weeks with me while I tried to help her start to come to terms with things; she blamed herself throughout for simply being alone with him. Rape Crisis were wonderful, offering help for her and then turning to me and asking how I was coping.
Dare I suggest that the issue with the justice system and rape trials is that it is run by men, often old men at that.
Wrong on too many levels
I despair! And feel so sorry for the victims.
This is wrong on too many levels to list, and the sentencing review cannot fail to impose a significant custodial sentence, if only to set an example for any others who might be tempted to commit serious crimes… it can’t, can it?
When I was younger, parents warned their children not to get a criminal record because it would mess up the rest of their lives. How that has changed, with the authorities now bending over backwards to let young criminals off pretty much everything, is beyond me.
That malaise has now spread to one of the most heinous crimes there is.
Children who are not disciplined by their parents now grow into adults who lack the self-discipline to police their own behaviour. I’m not arguing for ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, but children need to learn the difference between right and wrong at an early age, and the authorities need to be there to step in if their behaviour oversteps the mark.
Why have things not changed?
It just makes my blood boil. My first ever comment on this website was just a few days ago to declare that I was an angry woman – that is a major reason why. At 12 years old I was sexually abused by an adult male who didn’t see anything wrong with his action, even though I told him my age. I was pilloried by everybody and almost thrown out of school as ‘Lolita’. When I was just 18, I was raped in the car by an older acquaintance, who had invited me out for dinner and thought it was his absolute right to take his dessert afterwards. I didn’t tell or go to the police, as nobody would have believed me against him, a successful business and family man, a pillar of society! That was many decades ago but has overshadowed my life until now. Why have things not changed by now?
Separating crime from offender
It feels like there is a failure to separate the crime from the person who committed it, as if something is ‘less of a crime’ because – in this instance – they were young. Surely the way forward is to separate out the establishment of the facts of the crime, impose a sentence accordingly, and only then consider if there are any mitigating factors which might lead to a reduction in that sentence. By separating these things out clearly, both the crime evidence and the mitigation should be tested, and maybe the latter, like the former, should be decided by a jury – or at least someone(s) other than a single judge.
These cases need female judges
I suspect the sentence would have been different if the judge had been a woman. It would be interesting to compare the outcome of rape trials according to the gender of the judges.
A good thing Starmer and his ministers promised to protect women and girls. Something certainly needs to be done about men and boys getting away with a slap on the wrist.
How about such trials being judged only by female judges?
Some of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity.
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