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GAZETTE
JULY/AUGUST 1982
Rape Cases —
A Trial Within A Trial?
by
Brenida Power
Christina is afraid of the dark. The glare of an orange
street light turns the old window bars to beaten gold and,
inside the third-floorflat, the gentle, greasy flicker ofan old
oil-lamp keeps the night away. The electric light is much too
strong for sleeping by.
She pulls the curtains across, and smiles nervously, but it
doesn't reach her eyes. She is wary, and it shows.
"I should feel strange talking about it, but it's easiernow.
I suppose I need to. Don't use my name."
The noise ofcars passing in the street fills the room some-
times, making conversation difficult. But even in the silent
intervals, Christina talks in a hesitant, almost breathless
manner. She is 21, tall and slim, with dark blonde hair cut
short. She smokes as she talks, holding the cigarettes be-
tween long, red-tipped fingers.
I wanted to be a nurse andwork in a hospital in the town.
She loved the lazy peace ofthe large rural town she was bom
in, and never planned to leave it. Yet on a wet Thursday
evening four years ago, she caught the late train to Dublin,
and has not gone home since then.
I'm still afraid to go out late — I hate the dark. Most
evenings Ijust stay in and read. I leave the light on all night.
Winter is the worst time for Christina. Darkness comes
down quickly, and traps her before she gets home from
work.
She smiles again, easier, and stubs out the half-smoked
cigarette, resolved. She wants to talk, but where to begin? I
cannot help her — is this how a priest feels, in a confes-
sional? Helpful, yet helpless.
She begins.
"I suppose I was always a bit wild, but I swear it wasn t
my fault. Don't make them think it was my fault." Any
absolution will do. Even fromme.
Christina's father died when she was thirteen. Her
mother, with whom she never really got on, subconsciously
blamed her for his death, and her impotent revenge took the
guise of indifference. Christina began to drink and smoke,
hanging around with a rough crowd who were known
around the town. Her mother never seemed to know, or
care.
"We were just young, and silly. I can't blame her, but I
didn't know any better. They were my friends."
Walking home from adance one night, Christina noticed
a car pass her, then stop and turn around, nosing along
beside her as she walked separated from her friends.
"After a while I heard footsteps behindme. They sound-
ed odd, because it's a lonely road." She began to run, and
the footfalls quickened, too. She turned around in a bright
patch ofthe road, and recognised a man she knew vaguely
from the town. Older than her, he was married with one
child, and rich.
He caught up with her, dragged her into a nearby field,
and raped and beat her.
"I didn't go home at all that night. It was summer, and I
lay in thefield for. .. . I don't know how long.Then I went to
the Garda Station."
Not surprisingly, the dice were heavily loaded against
Christina. The man was well known in the town, a member
of all theright clubs andsocieties.
"I was well-known, too, but for all the wrong reasons!"
Her treatment at the Garda Station should have been fair
warning. One ofthe Gardai even went as far as to suggest
she had led him on. Why if she had not spent the night with
him, did she not report the attack straight away?
"The court case was a nightmare. I wish I had never
pressed charges." Christina stops talking now, sitting rigid-
ly and staring into space. She looks atme, almost virulently,
and begins again, slower, quieter.
A trial within a trial. A travesty ofjustice. The accused
was allowed to cross-examine the complainant. The judge
decided that it would have been "unfair" if he was not
allowed to bring up evidence, referring to Christina's past.
"They made it all much worse, and he twisted every-
thing I said. He was educated, I wasn't. He was rich. Who
do you think they believed?"
The man was acquitted, and Christina left the town
shortly afterwards.
"I couldn't stay then. I was worse than a whore. No, I
never want to go home again. I'd still see him around."
The law relating to rape, and indecent assault in the
Republic of Ireland dates back to the Offences Against the
Person Act, 1861. In 1981 the Criminal Law (Rape) Bill
was passed to amend the act.
The main purpose of the amendment was to restrict the
admissibility in proceedings for rape offences ofevidence of
any sexual experiences of the complainant with men other
than the accused. Yet this amendment is largely ineffectual,
because, by their intrinsic nature, rape trials immediately
cast shadows of suspicion on the victim of the attack.
Evidence about a woman's past is just a red herring which
distracts the jury from evaluating the real evidence about
the crime itself. If there is a jury. In Christina's case, the
legal proceedings involved nothing more than a summary
trial in a District Court.
The 1981 amending Act does not alter the legal position
on rape within marriage. In the eyes of the law of the
Republic of Ireland, it does not exist. And assault on a
woman with some foreign body, a bottle for example, is not
even classed as rape.
It seems wrong that the onus should be on the woman to
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