Whilst walking to work this morning I was pondering the new banksy statue that has been put up illegally in Clerkenwell Green… must go have a look at lunchtime…. It shows ‘justice’ as a prostitute and I was thinking how true this was and remembering my one experience as a witness to a case that became rather public… as I was thinking about what happened I realised I am still very angry about what occurred… the experience left me with a bitter taste of British justice indeed.

Simply what happened was we had a party where a number of friends, and friends of friends, turned up… much drinking of cocktails ensued and at some point a friend having had vastly too much to drink went to bed. An acquaintance ‘looked after her’ as she was vomiting and then he raped her… trouble was he didn’t think of it as rape… she did, she was unable to give either consent or to say no and in her eyes she was raped… the court saw it differently… the ‘chap’ was a handsome and intelligent rugby type from a very good family, who could afford the best defence, she was an attractive and intelligent woman but a single parent… he offered no defence, said he was too drunk to remember… so in effect didn’t deny it?? It was said in court that she ‘dressed provocatively’ yet in my eyes she wore what we all wore… jeans and a shirt?? Traces of his DNA were found on her clothes and in her hair but other DNA was also found on her clothing,(she had, though, held a friend’s baby earlier on that day?? And we all do the air kissing thing on greeting) It was implied that this DNA might have been from ‘other men’ and that she was flirting at the party… haven’t we all flirted at parties???? Anyway the outcome was he got off and to me this says that any drunken person, male or female, who falls asleep in someone’s bedroom at a party is just not safe from rape, and that he is a particularly dangerous young man, as he couldn’t remember, he could well do the same thing again after drinking?? She has since left England and hopefully is getting over it?? I am still angry… maybe writing this will assuage some of that anger at our justice system…maybe?? Maybe it just colours my view of the world …and of the British justice system… so I will go see Banksy’s new statue and read the words he has written on it…TRUST NO-ONE


Oddly when I checked the webstats on this site I see that someone arrived at my site through putting ‘banksy clerkenwell’ in a search engine… !