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Thong protest in Belfast raises concerns over rape trials Thong protest in Belfast raises concerns over rape trials
(about 1 hour later)
Thongs and placards have been held aloft in Belfast in solidarity with protests in the Irish Republic earlier this week over how rape trials are conducted. It was a mere scrap of fabric, deep blue and edged with lace. But when the legislator Ruth Coppinger drew it from her sleeve and held it up in the Irish parliament this week, the item of women’s underwear caused consternation among her colleagues.
A recent case in County Cork, in which a man was acquitted of rape, sparked outrage after a defence barrister referred to the 17-year-old complainant’s underwear during the trial. Elsewhere, women took to the streets carrying lingerie. In Cork, dozens of thongs were laid on the steps of the courthouse. In Belfast on Thursday, protesters tied knickers to placards and chanted: “My little black dress does not mean yes.”
During Thursday’s protest in Belfast, which follows others in cities across Ireland, thongs were attached to a number of the placards along with the words “this is not consent”. Thousands of women posted pictures of their underwear on Twitter under the hashtags #IBelieveHer and #ThisIsNotConsent.
The case came to wider public attention on Tuesday when the Irish politician Ruth Coppinger held up a thong in the parliament chamber to highlight the outrage felt by some sections of the public. The trigger for protests across Ireland, and the eruption of fury on social media, was the words of a lawyer defending a man accused of rape in a trial in Cork.
The handling of a high-profile trial of Ulster rugby players in Belfast earlier this year also sparked public debate and protests across Ireland. Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding were acquitted of rape. Suggesting the complainant – 17-year-old woman – was “open to meeting someone”, Elizabeth O’Connell said: “You have to look at the way she was dressed. She was wearing a thong with a lace front.”
The case led to an independent review overseen by the retired appeal court judge Sir John Gillen into how the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland deals with serious sexual offence cases. The defendant was acquitted in a unanimous verdict following deliberations by the jury lasting 90 minutes.
A popular social media campaign was sparked by the fallout from the Cork case with women from Ireland and abroad posting pictures of their underwear with the hashtag #Thisisnotconsent. According to Fiona Ryan, a city councillor in Cork, anger over the defence counsel’s comments on 6 November took a few days to build.
On Thursday up to 100 women and men gathered during the lunch hour at Belfast City Hall to take part in chants including: “My little black dress does not mean yes.” “It didn’t blow up at first, it was almost a delayed reaction. But it festered,” she said. Ryan suggested staging a protest in Cork on Wednesday, eight days after the end of the trial, and was astonished when up to 500 people turned up to take part, many carrying items of underwear.
The event, organised by a number of feminist organisations including the charity Rosa, included speeches from seven female speakers. The day before, in the Dáil in Dublin, Coppinger had made her point with a flourish. “It might seem embarrassing to show a pair of thongs here ... how do you think a rape victim or a woman feels at the incongruous setting of her underwear being shown in a court?” she said.
The compere, Rosa activist Cerys Falvey, opened speeches urging the building of a movement. “We have seen protests across Ireland saying this is no longer acceptable so what we need to do now is build a movement and fight back.” At a rally in Dublin on Wednesday, Tara Brown of the National Women’s Council of Ireland said: “We stand in solidarity with survivors of sexual assault who are being grievously failed by our criminal justice system. The type of clothes a victim was wearing has no place in our criminal justice system, and it had no place in determining what is consent.
Anne Orr of Rosa said it was correct for the protest to take place to show anger at what happened in Cork. She added: “Yesterday people also took to the streets of Dublin and Cork and across the south to show that this is not OK, people’s underwear is not consent, what we wear is not consent, it has nothing to do with consent. “We have a responsibility to create a safe system for survivors of sexual assault, and we are repeatedly shown that we are a long way from achieving a victim-centred [prosecution] system.”
“It is not just here, people internationally are getting angry and rightly so.” In Belfast on Thursday, Cerys Falvey of the feminist campaign group Rosa said: “We have seen protests across Ireland saying this is no longer acceptable so what we need to do now is build a movement and fight back.”
Eleanor Crossey-Malone, also from Rosa, said many wondered why they did not hear of men’s underwear being shown during trials. According to Noeline Blackwell of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, juries in rape trials are often told details of what the victim has been wearing.
“Today we are all reminded of the Ulster rugby rape trial, when at that time we wondered: why is it never his underwear that is brought out in court?” she said. “It comes up very, very regularly how someone was dressed, the amount of drink they had taken, why they hadn’t screamed if they were in trouble,” she told the Irish Independent, after the verdict.
Carmel Gates of the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance trade union said there could not be silence on the issue, adding: “It is unfortunate that we are here again talking about women’s underwear as an issue in the courts, and it is an absolute disgrace. “These kind of mythologies and stereotypes around rape come up again and again in court cases, because the defence to rape is that the sex was consensual. So anything the defendant can do to suggest there was consent will be used,” she said.
“We cannot stay silent. Some people ask me what’s the point in protesting. There is every point in protesting because if we are not here on the streets to shine a light on the injustice, then the injustice continues. Ryan said: “Unfortunately, the response, particularly from younger women, is that if this happened to them they wouldn’t report it.”
“We need to be fighting it in protest, we need to be fighting it in action and struggle in our workplaces, our students’ union, everywhere we have a voice we need to fight and struggle to change the system.” There was a lot of anger directed at the barrister, especially because she was a woman, she added. “But the reality is that is a cog in a dysfunctional wheel. This is standard practise in rape trials, and a reflection of the sexism and misogyny in our judiciary.”
People Before Profit representative Fiona Ferguson said: “What message are courts sending out to victims of sexual assault, the court in Cork, what message are they sending to sexual assault victims? Sexual assaults are on the rise but prosecutions are still shockingly low. Why would any woman be encouraged to report, to have her underwear paraded around a courtroom?” This week’s protests echoed another in Belfast earlier this year when 1,000 people marched in solidarity with a 21-year-old woman at the centre of a rape trial that ended in the acquittal of two Irish rugby internationals. At the time there were also protests in Dublin, Derry, Cork, Limerick and Galway.
In court, a 19-year-old woman who had accused the pair of rape was cross-examined for eight days and her underwear was passed around for the jury to examine.
The case led to an independent review into how the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland deals with serious sexual offence cases.
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Rape and sexual assaultRape and sexual assault
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