09 March 2017
Taking Responsibility For Ourselves
Deciding you weren’t ‘into it’ does not mean you have been raped.
By Lynda Goetz
This is a subject I have addressed before on different occasions and in different ways (see Anonymity or spotlight in rape cases?) and is one on which I find I share almost 100% the views of well-known columnist Alison Pearson, who has written on this in yesterday’s Telegraph. I am talking about personal responsibility, in particular, in this case, with regard to the crime of rape.
On Tuesday a jury cleared graduate Lewis Tappenden, 24, of raping an 18 year-old student studying at his former university. The girl, a first-year undergraduate at York St. John University, whose name obviously we do not know, had started her course only two weeks earlier and was apparently upset that her advances had been rebuffed by someone she was interested in back home. Her response was to go out, get completely drunk and see who she could “pull’. That person, unfortunately for him, was Lewis Tappenden, a young man described by a friend in court as “gentle, thoughtful and reserved,’ who had just completed a course in English Literature and Creative Writing.
By the time she met Mr Tappenden in the Drawing Board night club on October 2 2015, she had been drinking for six hours. She had spent £30 on Blue WKD, a vodka alcopop,and also consumed three Sour shots, two Red Bull vodkas and an unquantified amount of cider. Lewis Tappenden, clearly no angel either, had had three pints of Carlsberg, three triple vodkas and coke and was sipping on a single vodka and coke when he was ‘picked up’ by the anonymous student. He had walked his girlfriend home earlier in the evening.
So, the scene is set for some ‘no strings’ sex. Except that at some point after the sex had occurred and whilst poor Lewis was throwing up the contents of his evening’s consumption in the bathroom, his sexual partner left the room she had invited him back to and woke her flat mates to complain of his behaviour. He was escorted from the accommodation block by security, leaving his socks and boxer shorts in the girl’s room and was later arrested. He still did not know the name of his ‘zipless fuck’ (to use Erica Yong’s wonderful terminology).
The jury was informed by the prosecuting barrister that they were not there to pass judgement on morals. “Welcome to the world of modern students; going out every night, drinking to excess, picking up members of the opposite sex” (he should have been more careful here, he could find himself in trouble with the LGBT community), “with the intention of sexual activity taking place.” He added that whilst the girl may have “initially” wanted something to happen, she had changed her mind and that Lewis Tappenden had “carried on regardless”. Well, she may have changed her mind, but it appears that change of mind had come rather too late; indeed her remorse was ex post facto. Fortunately for Lewis, who with his family had endured “eighteen months of hell” and was so ashamed of finding himself up before the court that he had contemplated suicide, the judge and the jury had the sense to recognise that the responsibility for the girl’s behaviour lay squarely with her. She could not lay her own sense of dismay at her recklessness at someone else’s door. Unfortunately for young Mr Tappenden, his feeling that his life has been ruined is not totally wrong. Not only have he and his family had to live with this stigma for 18 months, but ‘rape trial’ is something that will be associated with his name for a very long time – even though he has been acquitted.
As for the girl, whoever she may be, she apparently abandoned her course shortly after these events; but apart from a handful of those who knew her during those brief weeks in York, some other friends and family, her name will never be associated with this piece of youthful stupidity. As I said a year ago and as Allison Pearson said yesterday, we should perhaps be looking to identify women who have made unsubstantiated claims of rape against innocent guys like Lewis Tappenden. My piece for the Shaw Sheet last year was prompted by another, similar case, that of Louis Richardson, a 21 year-old undergraduate at Durham university. The girl who accused him remains unknown. This January another Durham university student, Alistair Cooke, became the third undergraduate to be cleared of rape in the last year. On 11th April last year rape charges against four students at the Cirencester Agricultural College were dropped after The Crown Prosecution Service decided they did not have sufficient evidence to proceed after all. Meanwhile, the young men, whose names were blazoned all over the press, had been dragged through ‘two years of hell’. The young lady, who of course cannot be named, had, it seemed, worked her charms on at least one of the police officers involved, who had become her ‘confidante’.
In all these cases, young women, who clearly regret what they have done, decide that somehow the responsibility can be shifted away from them and onto the man. How is it that at a time in history when women, in the developed world at least, have all the rights of men – including the right to get drunk and be promiscuous – are choosing in some cases to revert to Victorian or Edwardian prudery and proclaim that they were ‘taken advantage of’? In 2015, Chrissie Hynde, 64, legendary frontwoman of the 80s band The Pretenders caused outrage amongst the third-wave feminists by declaring in her autobiography that she took “full responsibility” for an incident in which she was assaulted by a group of Hells Angels when she was 21. Interviewed on Woman’s Hour she reiterated her view that it was important that “everybody took responsibility for themselves” (see Third Wave Feminism).
Part of the problem lies with The Crown Prosecution Service, which appears so desperate to prosecute that it is prepared to take on the flimsiest of cases in the hope of boosting its conviction rate. An interesting book by Luke Gittos, a lawyer who has dealt with a number of rape cases, Why Rape Culture is a Dangerous Myth, makes for informative and interesting reading for anyone, male or female who wants some insight into this topic. In the meantime, as yesterday was International Women’s Day I would like to join Ms Pearson in reminding the female half of the population that rights and responsibilities go hand in hand.
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