Media Storm - S1E3 Rape Justice: What happens to the 98%? - with Leyla Hussein and Gina Martin

Starting point is 00:00:00 Halloween is on Disney Plus So you can feel a little fear What's this? Or a little more fear I see dead people Or a lot of fear Or you can get completely terrified Who's that?

Starting point is 00:00:24 Choose wisely With Halloween on Disney Plus I'm going to tell you a story that I haven't told many people. And it's not the only one of its kind. But when I was 15 or maybe 16, a man masturbated on me, on the bus at rush hour. And I didn't do anything. I didn't report. It's actually quite an anticlimactic story.

Starting point is 00:00:50 Well, not for him. Oh, God. Not for him. Oh, God. Tilda. First of all, I'm so sorry that happened to you. Like you said, it was rush hour, so I assumed there were other people around. Did no one else say anything?

Starting point is 00:01:12 No, no one said or did anything. And the more I think about why I never said anything, and it's not just that I didn't report. I didn't tell anybody. I think it is because their collective silence encouraged mine. Like, okay, this is clearly just something we don't talk about. Yeah, it definitely encourages shame. Maybe it goes some way to explaining why, according to UK crime surveys,

Starting point is 00:01:40 nearly 90% of assault victims don't report their attacks. I did report, and nothing came of mine. I was on the London Underground, again, at rush hour, and I was groped by a man standing behind me. I actually turned around and confronted him, shouted at him he was literally smirking at me i then attempted to take a photo of him at which point he really violently knocked my phone out of my hand and then the doors opened at the next station and he jumped off now i did report it and they found him and arrested him and long story short

Starting point is 00:02:14 and literally long because the whole ordeal from start to finish took over five months the evidence i had was the CCTV footage of him getting on the tube behind me and jumping off at the next station The CCTV of me getting off the tube, hysterically crying with two women's arms around me, a witness giving her name forward to say that she saw him knock the phone out of my hand, and the man himself admitting he was standing behind me and there was no other person standing between me and him. But because, and I quote, there were no independent witnesses or CCTV evidence to the sexual touching itself, the case wasn't even passed to the CPS and he was let go. I mean, that is one of the main issues with crimes of this nature.

Starting point is 00:02:57 A lot of them happen without witnesses for very obvious reasons. In 2020, 98% of reported rapes were dropped by police in the UK. And the UK's not alone. The USA, 95% of rape investigations are dropped by police. And that's just about going to trial. It doesn't even touch on convictions. Well, we read a lot last year, didn't we, about how conviction dropped to record lows over the pandemic.

Starting point is 00:03:21 Last year, just over 1,000 rapists were convicted in the UK out of over 50,000 reported. And that, as you discovered, is overinflated, isn't it? It is, yes, that figure actually includes people who were acquitted of rape, but convicted for other associated charges like theft or assault in the same incident. So we put in a freedom of information request to find out the real number. And what did it say? The prosecution says, that they don't actually record those statistics

Starting point is 00:03:54 and it would be too expensive an exercise to deliver on freedom of information. So we do not know the real conviction numbers for rape in this country. It's just not a record that we even keep. Wow. These statistics have made for shocking headlines and have put much needed pressure on institutions. But there is work being done.

Starting point is 00:04:16 And doesn't the fact it's such a global issue make it hard to blame one single institution. The problem is clearly so much more pervasive than that. So how do we go about diagnosing it? I will be hitting the road to speak to survivors from different jurisdictions around the world before asking the people responsible what's going on. And I'll join you back in the studio with special guests to discuss everything around this media storm. What do you mean this happened to me? If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has raised We've got to listen to one more grey-faced man with a $2-dollar haircut. Explain to me what rape is.

Starting point is 00:04:55 You can do anything. You're having by the pussy? We are the corporate. Kelsey Smith. Kelly Stewart. Welcome to Media Storm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Malinson. And I'm Helen Awadier.

Starting point is 00:05:09 This week's investigation. Rape justice. What happens to the 98%? Columbia University, New York City. Anne-Marie has just gotten in, her dream space for a career-changing post-grad. That career, by the way, is public-facing, so we're actually using a pseudonym. She should be thrilled, but pacing around with a small white stick in her hand, she's more distressed than she's ever been.

Starting point is 00:05:37 Two stripes, no mistake. She's pregnant with her rapist's child. I had to get an abortion. I asked the person who assaulted me, like, to help me pay for it because I was, you know, like, really low income at the time. He said that I got myself into this because I opened my legs. I was dating someone in December of 2015. I was asleep and he was having sex with me as I was asleep. I was scared, but also it never occurred to me at the time that it was assault.

Starting point is 00:06:13 because we had been intimate, you know, before I fell asleep, it actually wasn't until graduate school program orientations, and one of them discussed sexual assault. I realized in that moment I did not give consent, you know, each time that we were intimate. Like the vast majority of sexual assault survivors, Anne-Marie did not report the crime against her. This is the first and greatest hurdle on the road to rape justice,

Starting point is 00:06:41 and the reasons are many. really ashamed of what I had done, who I had let into my life as a woman of color. I just, I don't see many women of color getting justice, if I'm honest, in any regard, you know, whether it's homicide or rape or anything like that. In the U.S. and U.K. research shows sexual violence is disproportionately targeted against women of color, while they're statistically less likely to see justice than white women. The same is true for trans victims, but for all survivors there are many systems in place, preventing them from speaking out. For Alison Turcles from New York, sex education bears some of the blame.

Starting point is 00:07:24 I didn't report when I was 16 because no adults in my life were having conversations with me about consent. No one in my life was having conversations with me about the fact that sex is and can be wonderful, but it must be pleasurable for both parties. Where were the adults in my life who were naming the word sexual assault, who were naming the word rape? I don't need to learn how to put a fucking condom on a banana. That's not helpful. It's just unhelpful to me. But with Anne-Marie, she shared a fear of being blamed as well. You know, I would have been asked questions consistently of like, how much were you drinking? How late did you stay up? Why didn't you lock the door?

Starting point is 00:08:01 Why didn't you tell someone immediately? Those questions aren't helpful. But even asking why didn't you report it, Alison points out, flags a fundamental issue with where we look when diagnosing rape culture. I feel like we are perpetuating the perfect victim narrative. It puts all of the labor on me as a victim. I want to turn the table and to say what systems were and still are in place that made it so that I didn't report.

Starting point is 00:08:31 Because in October 2017, and I'll pick up that story, but in October 2017, I did everything right. I reported within 24 hours and look at where it fucking got me because the answer is nowhere. The only person who gets to decide what justice and repair looks like is the person who has been harmed.

Starting point is 00:08:51 The new headline tonight involving one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. The Harvey Weinstein news drops, October 5th, 2017. And so October 13th is a Friday. Just when the Me Too movement was taking off on the streets of New York, Alison was about to be reminded of why. Now the next three minutes contain descriptions of sexual violence.

Starting point is 00:09:10 She's been on a girl's night out and, as you do, orders a taxi on an app called Lyft. It's a quick ride, her guard is down, and she falls asleep. When something wakes her up, they're crossing a bridge and that's not right. So at the light, she tries the door. It doesn't open. Shear and utter panic set in. And I, that night I was wearing a set of, like, seven to ten, like, silver bangle bracelets.

Starting point is 00:09:37 And for anyone who wears bangle bracelets, you know that, like, if you breathe or move, they are, like, a marching band. I'm, like, trying with every single fucking ounce of strength to open this door. Like, I think that I'm going to break this handle. And the driver turns around at this red light, and he pulls a gun on me. And he just tells me to shut the fuck up. They drive into a deserted park where two other men are waiting. So the driver instructs me to lay down in the back.

Starting point is 00:10:04 seat of the car and he and the two other men proceed to gang rape me and the overhead light and the car is on. I have blue eyes. I have very sensitive eyes. I'm very sensitive to light. So my eyes are closed. After the rape, Allison's assailant drives her home and the next morning she remembers nothing. When I left the apartment, I opened up the Lyft app and my ride from the night before was over $100. And there's a map of the entire ride. This is something worth highlighting, trauma-related memory loss, because it's often used to deny a survivor's legal credibility. For Allison, it took a reenactment of the journey with two male NYPD officers to fill in the gaps. But do you notice she seems to remember it now with minute detail, the number of bangles she wore, the overhead

Starting point is 00:11:03 light. This is something I've noticed with other survivors I've spoken to. They recount the events with unnecessary detail, at least for the purposes of this interview. To me, it feels like a need to paint an overly accurate picture so that no one can pick holes. It's as if they don't expect to be believed. October 16th of 2021 will be four years since I reported. No one is in custody. No charges have been brought forth. The driver is still driving. Most likely is still driving for a lift and Uber. I understand that your rape kit provided multiple semen samples that presumably from the app you had the ID, the license plate number. On what grounds was this all deemed unusable evidence? Yeah, great question. So the driver's DNA is not in my kit, which could

Starting point is 00:11:52 be for a plethora of reasons. Like the driver might have worn a condom according to law enforcement because his DNA is not in my kit, they cannot charge him with sexual assault. A question that will live with for the rest of my life. You had his license plate number. You had the make and model of the car. Why not do a hair and fiber check? And my PD never did it. Why not collect video evidence from Liberty State Park to see if there was video evidence of the sexual assault? And my PD never did it. There are glaring factual errors on my police report. The date that I reported on my police report is wrong. My address on my police report is wrong. I knew that they were not going to be helpful. I never knew how unhelpful they would be. I never knew how helpful. I never knew how.

Starting point is 00:12:31 they were going to like truly ruin my case. The privileges that I hold that allow me to navigate the system are just like seeping out of me. I am a white woman. Can you imagine how black trans women are treated, how sex workers are treated? Do you think that your queer identity has had any impact on your experience? So like I used to have very, very short hair at one point in time I shaved it, but the FBI told me that I should grow up my hair because I would, a jury would be more likely to believe me because I would be read a straight. They would look at me and not ask questions internally and being like, but she looks so gay. Why would men want to rape her? I'm doing it. My hair is very long right now. On the 31st of January 2019, Alison filed a lawsuit against the NYPD. They responded to

Starting point is 00:13:19 media storm. The NYPD takes sexual assault and rape cases extremely seriously and urges anyone who has been a victim to file a police report. You did say that you'd had slightly intimidating messages from the FBI after publishing an opinion piece. Have you felt at any point someone is trying to silence you for holding authorities to account? All of the time. As a method of retaliation, I believe that the Eastern District of New York will not prosecute this case because, like, I published a letter, I have called them out, I have filed a complaint. John Masali, spokesman for the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, said, the office does not comment on ongoing investigations. However, we can confirm that all

Starting point is 00:14:02 prosecutorial decisions are made based on the law and the evidence. The office does not retaliate against victims or witnesses. Alison isn't alone in feeling silenced. I want to see you happy and always bursting with light for the shape of the song that is bound to survive. Let me introduce you to Pika Roloff's, a Dutch artist. She claims her botched rape investigation was buried by the state and is taking legal action against them. What the government did and didn't do in those cases show such a severe neglect to the criminal point. Pika already had a rape case open when she says one of the witnesses from that case began stalking her. She called the police to complain nine times but it didn't protect her

Starting point is 00:14:46 from what came when she says he took her hostage in her home and raped her. I've been looking into this case for more than a year. I've read legal correspondence, court documents and medical histories, I've tracked down and interviewed previous girlfriends of the first man accused, who support Peaker's claims against him. I can tell you, there's no shortage of evidence. I've just never had my chance to make the case in court all until now. What I've done is fight to get a proper investigation in the case and fight to get those cases prosecuted.

Starting point is 00:15:18 This becomes really difficult if even the most basic things in these police investigations aren't done already, you know, if witnesses aren't interrogated. if conversations between you and your abuser aren't interrogated. This is the reality of rape cases. Just because a crime happened doesn't mean it will be properly investigated, let alone prosecuted. Once again, Pika feels that the mental impact of her trauma led to her not being taken seriously. I was hospitalized as a result of the abuse, so I became a psychiatric patient as a result of the abuse. But the thing is, they don't look at you like someone who will.

Starting point is 00:15:55 was hospitalized as a result of the abuse. They look at you as a psychiatric patient alone. I just could see in their eyes they just started zoning out and not really taking me serious. I definitely don't think that the system has been put in place to prosecute as many crimes as possible. I think it's just put in place to give people the sense of there being a system that protects them.

Starting point is 00:16:20 There's a theatre show going on. In Pekker and Alison and many others, we have a situation where survivors are going to war, not only with their attackers, but entire justice systems. Back home, our next case takes me to southeast London to meet Verity Nevet. In 2017, she says her ex-boyfriend sexually assaulted her, before going on to rape her twin sister, Lucy. The sisters reported what happened to the police, but a few months later were told no further action

Starting point is 00:16:52 would be taken, despite having texts in which the accused. apologized for the alleged assault. So the real reason was it's not enough for a jury to be convinced beyond reasonable doubt. And by this point in, we'd lost a friend during the police investigation. They didn't believe us. They took his side. I was just like, I've just had a suicide attempt over this. Lucy was very hurt. Sometimes I think that hurt her more than the actual rape.

Starting point is 00:17:19 What I really want to highlight with this story is the level of scrutiny that claimants often have to stand in an attempt to build their case because surveys show this is another significant deterrent to reporting. I didn't understand why they needed to see our school records going back to like primary school, medical records, counselling notes from when I was like nine. It's not just paper documents that are collected, but entire digital histories, their social media accounts, messages, photographs. There were certain things on my phone like being a university and taking drugs and talking about that, that I was a bit worried that the police would see and then I'd be prosecuted. They kept bringing up messages that they'd read, which now I know is

Starting point is 00:18:00 like very inappropriate, but they kept kind of laughing and being like, you girls are very funny, like your conversations with your mom and your friends. Were these messages in any way related to the case? No. So they'd looked at everything. Can you, is there an option to withhold explicit photographs of yourself or your boyfriend? You know, are you allowed to withhold something? It doesn't feel like you're given an option. And they, they mentioned that they seen those photos, which was embarrassing. But yeah, my social media accounts shut down all the computers

Starting point is 00:18:28 in Lewisham Police Station, because there was so much of it. A lot of the time they have to send the phones off to a lab. Lucy didn't have her phone for like, gosh, nine months. She was walking around with my iPad. The man that the sisters accused did not have to submit to this. He didn't even need to submit to an interview. They didn't interview

Starting point is 00:18:44 him after I had reported. They only interviewed him when Lucy reported. And they said, well, we did ask him about what happened with you, but he gave no comment. They basically just knew he was going to give another no-common interview, so just didn't see the point in there. They were meant to interview my mum, and they didn't. They were meant to interview the first person my sister told,

Starting point is 00:19:02 which is called like the first disclosure, which was quite important to police investigations. And they never did that either. And while the sister's data was needed, because it could be used to pick apart their credibility in court, there's a different approach for the accused. A man's character is used in their favour. We'd said all along, you know, this is someone we'd,

Starting point is 00:19:22 trusted and had been really close with and was part of our family. And they said that actually works in his favour. And I remember my partner just saying, what, so seemingly good men get one shot at being able to rape somebody. It definitely felt like we were the ones being investigated. It's a very interesting time to be looking at this issue in the UK. The government's police crime sentencing in courts bill, which caused controversy earlier this year with its restrictions on protesting, is back in Parliament. It also rephrases officers' powers to access people's private data in a way that critics say undermines data protection law, making victims' privacy even more vulnerable.

Starting point is 00:19:59 Let's see if she's ever said anything dishonest. Let's see if she's ever flirted with anybody. We're looking at her credibility. That's the culture at present. Leading the battle against this is Dame Vera Baird, the UK's Victims Commissioner. She sent the government a list of amendments to bring the bill in line with data protection laws, amendments the government chose to ignore. I'll move on.

Starting point is 00:20:21 But after much fighting, the government you turned. Only, however, for digital data. Third party data like school and counselling records remains in Dame Vera's eyes all too vulnerable. There is only the Crown Prosecution Service to point to. They are very keen to keep their conviction rate up. They think that jurors are very prejudiced. against rape complainants, that it's easy to throw dirt at them,

Starting point is 00:20:54 about flirting, about drinking. And so they want to look for all of those possibilities before they even consider taking it forward. They are, in my view, very worried about their reputation and much, much, much less worried about the privacy rights of a complainant. Prejudices shouldn't be a barrier. Prejudices should be challenged. What makes the government's decision even more confusing is the fact that police actually support these changes.

Starting point is 00:21:27 I've been a police officer for 27 years. The figures and the convictions are worse. That shows we have to do something different. This is Sarah Crewe, the National Police Lead for Rape in the UK, and she is hoping to lead that new departure. So there were some significant cases in around 2016-17, where the police and the Crime Prosecution Service had failed at disclosing material. Dozens of rape and sexual assault cases have been dropped because vital evidence was withheld from the jury. When there's a significant failing, there is a reaction.

Starting point is 00:22:02 And so in the quest for making sure that all the relevant information had been gathered, disproportionate effort and disproportionate focus has gone into material held about the victim, about them, school records, health records, etc. sending the pendulum towards an investigation of the victim. And what I'm proposing and what I hope I'm leading in policing is a swing back of the pendulum, rebalancing our focus onto the perpetrator. Let's not forget the people who are responsible for this are the perpetrators. So what's her plan of action?

Starting point is 00:22:41 Project Bluestone, as it's called, is a five-pillar model. One, that's swinging of the pendulum to focus on the suspect rather than the victim. Two, an interventionist approach to catching criminals before they act. Three, ensuring victims feel respected throughout the process. And four, with the help of academics, continual learning and development that is five, informed by data and analytics. Trial in Somerset earlier this year, rolled out to London's Met Police in September, it will spread across England and Wales in 2022. So on that note, when do you think we can expect to see results? from this change in terms of real prosecution figures?

Starting point is 00:23:24 I think almost immediately. With that promise, we can watch this space. Miss Crewe knows what's at stake. Rape is such, it's the worst crime you survive, and the criminal justice system should be able to deal with a crime of that seriousness. You know, my own view, and this is a personal view, it throws some doubt around the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. And if the public haven't got faith or confidence in the criminal justice system,

Starting point is 00:23:51 you know, that says something about the way we live and our way of life. Now, as you've heard from our survivors, it isn't just up to police. The Crown Prosecution Service, or CPS, rejects about a quarter of cases referred by police and have a role in deterring referrals themselves. So that's where I'm heading now, inside the Ministry of Justice's building in Westminster, to ask the CPS why that is. I'm hearing I'm getting a better run than Channel 4, so I'm going. The woman leading the CPS for rape and serious sexual offences is Chavonne Blake,

Starting point is 00:24:22 and she insists the same pendulum swing that Ms. Crewe described to focus on suspects is happening in courtrooms as well. Why was this person sat in a nightclub on his own? If he's there for a night out, quite innocently, why isn't he joining in? You're trying to place the jury in the mind of the perpetrator. So you really have to try and focus right from the start of the investigation and what we call an offender-centric approach. Did that lead to a conviction?

Starting point is 00:24:55 We did get a conviction in that case, yes. And in other cases, where do you think the jury's typically lost? Very often, the cases that we are investigating and then prosecuting will have quite limited immediate evidence inso much as a loss of them take place without witnesses for obvious reasons. And also the law on consent is such that we don't simply have to demonstrate that an individual has not consented,

Starting point is 00:25:27 but we also have to show that the defendant hasn't reasonably believed that that individual has consented. That's something that sometimes juries, I suspect, wrestle with. Although it does sound sometimes insurmountable, it really isn't. And remember, the most... important piece of evidence we've got is the victims. And victims are often really, really compelling.

Starting point is 00:25:52 We will prosecute cases simply on the account given to us by the victim. Could you help us and understand why many cases who have clearly very compelling first-hand testimonies to offer? And sometimes what they feel is sufficient other compelling evidence, why it doesn't lead to trial in so many cases? What we have to do as prosecutors is assess all the evidence. And it's not about not believing victims. I think this is the point I'd really like to stress. We're not there to make those value judgments,

Starting point is 00:26:30 but we have to be satisfied that we can put a case to a jury where they could convict. Please hold the faith with it. because we can't do it without victims. I think when you see headlines which talk about the decriminalisation of rape, and dare I say it, some simplistic examples, which are based more on perception than actuality, I think that can be really frightening for victims and survivors.

Starting point is 00:27:07 I walk into an office every day where we have a whole team of private. prosecutors who are prosecuting rape cases and serious sexual offence cases day in, day out. It's what they do. It leaves me fearful that there are survivors who are in really dangerous situations because their confidence has diminished in criminal justice. My takeaway from all this is that pendulum swing to shift pressure from victims onto perpetrators. I think it's needed at every stage. From courtrooms to police investigations, but beyond that, too, our survivors pointed to cultures of blaming or not believing victims.

Starting point is 00:27:50 Are we still just living in a man's world? Where does responsibility lie? That takes us back to the studio. Thanks for sticking around. Welcome back to the studio where we'll be discussing how the media report on break. and sexual assault justice. Our first guest is calling in from Nairobi in Kenya, so we're very lucky to have her. She's a psychotherapist and women's rights activist, the founder of Dahlia Project and

Starting point is 00:28:23 safe spaces for black women. And the first women of colour elected rector of the University of St. Andrews. It's Dr Leila Hussain. Hi, Leila. Hi, hi, everyone. Thank you for having me today. Our second guest is the campaigner who made upskirting illegal. She's also a writer and she is an advocate for UN Women,

Starting point is 00:28:42 UK. It is the amazing Gina Martin. Hello, thanks for having me. Did anybody have any immediate thoughts on the investigation that we've just heard? Do you know what's so sad? How common it actually is. That's my initial thought. I really reacted to one of the women they spoke to who said, you know, I'm a white woman who has a lot of privilege and it was so hard for me. I can't imagine what it's like for black women. And I'm so as sad as it is, I'm glad that I was acknowledged because there is a difference. Unfortunately, when we set it up safe space for black women last year, that was literally the reason we set it up because women are already at the back burner of everything.

Starting point is 00:29:20 When you're black and brown, it's 100 times well. So that was really my reaction to investigation. How common this still actually is? I also think that in the mainstream media, in terms of how survivors are depicted, they're often reduced to stock images of white women with their head in their hands. You know, that reduces what we think a victim looks like.

Starting point is 00:29:45 The investigation pointed to discriminatory attitudes held by juries as a significant factor in why it's so difficult to convict. I wonder whether Gina or Leila, you think that the media contributes to myths and stereotypes and discriminatory attitudes of this kind. I think it definitely does. I think so many of the problems we have are, that the very people who experience the thing

Starting point is 00:30:11 aren't at the helm of being able to drive the narrative about the thing. And while we're talking about the media, you know, propagating these rape myths and stereotypes, I want to talk a bit about the phrase non-consensual sex. Non-conceptual sex propagates so many myths. Maybe the biggest myth being that rape is about sex

Starting point is 00:30:29 and not necessarily about power and control and violence. There's also the phrase underage women, which frustrates me no end. And a really good example of this is when Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges. And the media outlet Jezebel counted that in the five days since his arrest, there were over 9090 radio and TV mentions of underage women alongside Epstein's name. Now, I don't know if I'm going crazy here, but there's no such thing as an underage woman. You're a girl, a minor, or a woman.

Starting point is 00:31:07 and I have been in broadcast newsrooms specifically where they cover a lot of crime in London and a lot of stabbings specifically. And they are so careful to use boy when it is somebody under 18 and man when it is somebody over 18 and the same is not applied to instances of rape and sexual assault. And there's almost this grace afforded to perpetrators where the term, Underaged woman is used rather than child or girl. It's unbelievable. Call it for what it is.

Starting point is 00:31:42 The fact that you haven't consented, it's rape. Full stop. The term child marriage comes up all the time. And I'm like, how is a child marriageable? Does it make sense? So the language we use, what it does, it makes it a little bit okay. Because, you know, we respect the constitution of marriage. It's paedophilia.

Starting point is 00:32:02 It's not child marriage. So for me, language is so key. When we constantly say female genital mutilation is a cultural traditional practice, instead of saying female genital mutilation, it's violence, it's not practice. It's violence subjected to little girls who an adult touched their genitalia, which is sexual assault, but now took a knife, to cut it, which is a serious sexual assault. See, that has a whole different meaning. Like, where is this language created, right?

Starting point is 00:32:30 It's not created from, like, regular working people on the street talking about the issue. It's coming from the top down. There's a need to soften the language because we feel complicit somehow in all these different things and then it trickles down into society and it's only when it gets to us that we go, hang on, that's not what we're talking about here. Why are you calling it that? Because you're making it seem normal to people as if it's an accepted part of society, that's something that just happens instead of something super, super violent.

Starting point is 00:32:56 It's common practice as well to use the term had sex with in situations where adults, rape children or young teenagers. Just scrolling through Google, you have man had sex with 14-year-old, man jailed for sex with teen, 32-year-old had sex with 13-year-old, that's not sex, that's rape. Sex is pleasurable, sex is joyful, sex is about love. It's consenting. It's consensual. It's a healthy part of life. This is about power, isn't it? Also, we always release the stats of how many women and girls have been violated, but not the statistics of how many men are the perpetrators. We never see that stats anywhere

Starting point is 00:33:35 because then we can see the problem. We don't see the stats of the perpetrators. In the investigation, they talk about that pendulum swing to focus less on the victim and more on the perpetrator. The media needs to do the exact same thing. I have another question about how the media reports on these things, which is a question of trauma porn quotations. You will often see tabloids regale in very lurid detail

Starting point is 00:34:00 the sadism of these crimes. And at what point is it just voyeuristic? I think often the lurid details of violence reported in our media kind of encourages the portrayal of perpetrators as, or those perpetrators as like monstrous or somehow distinguishable from the average person walking down the street. And then that gives the false impression that perpetrators are like the other when statistics show that most rape and sexual assault victims know their attacker

Starting point is 00:34:31 or they're their partners or family members even. Does this voyeuristic culture tie into our pop culture as well? We seem to have an obsession with series about serial killers and femicide, the Ted Bundy tapes. Earlier this year, we started watching Serpent, which was a BBC one drama about the conman and murderer Charles Subrage. We watch a lot of it through his eyes, and there's a scene in which he...

Starting point is 00:35:01 spikes the drink of a victim and you're given a kind of sense of excitement as you wait for the drug to kick in and I've had a drink spiked before and I found that a really distressing moment and stopped watching. Is it overly sensitive to say maybe we need to police culture better in that way or do you think that these shows glamourise violent and objectifying attitudes towards women. I think it's unquestionable that the things that you take in, the messages you're taking through songs, movies, you know, TV shows, adverts, all that, socialise you into ideas of what's normal, what's part of life and what isn't. A show that talks about or explores sexual violence can do that many different ways, right? Because if you take something like I

Starting point is 00:35:48 may destroy you and you look at that, that's a very, very smart comment on culture, on structural issues we have, on race, on how these things interact. And the complexity of that, dives into that very beautifully. 98% don't. So you get more of a sensationalist, superficial, very much through the male gaze. And it's not really a comment or even a critique or even an exploration of it.

Starting point is 00:36:13 It's just a, you know, rudimentary kind of voyeuristic look at it. And I think that's the problem is that the majority is like that. This is not a new problem, but now in the mainstream, people are so much more aware of how much these things happen. And I just think about decades of, women and decades of marginalised people watching these narratives and not being able to watch them while other people think, oh, the drama, how fun.

Starting point is 00:36:38 Rape is literally made entertainment. Yeah. There's no context. It's just entertainment. Like, since my work, I haven't, I can't watch that stuff because I read about it and hear it every day. I need to escape, and this is actually reality, so I can't escape from reality by watching reality.

Starting point is 00:36:53 Any time I think about the question of pop culture, I go back to blurred lines. the 2013 song by Robin Thick, which includes the lyrics, I know you want it, and I hate these blurred lines, and the way you grab me, you must want to get nasty or nasty. And I remember at the time, whenever I spoke about how I felt about it, I would get told that I was being too sensitive and it was just a song and get over it. And it was like actually impossible at that time for me to have any meaningful conversation about the song without somebody accusing me of being like an agri-feminist who wants to like cancel robin thick or whatever at the time like there was a backlash to this song many women who had been raped said my attacker said i know you want

Starting point is 00:37:38 it's literal defense that is used in court yeah it was it's a literal defense this shocked me during my interview with chauvin blake the prosecutor she said the law on consent is such that you don't just have to convince a jury the victim didn't consent you have to convince a jury that the defendant couldn't viably have believed the victim consented. That's what I'm saying the system's not broken. The system is there to protect certain men. Maybe if we started from that, we can actually start dismantling this properly. Because the moment we think, well, something went wrong, it's not something went wrong.

Starting point is 00:38:12 It was designed this way. How many powerful men in the public eye have zero repercussions for the kinds of things they've done. You know, Chris Brown's still making music. DeBaby with this whole. you know, HIV AIDS thing, homophobic and just so toxic and, you know, then Kanye West brought him and Marilyn Manson out on stage to babies in the top charts. When there's no accountability for these men who set narratives and encourage narratives, why are we wondering why young men who look up to them and see them as the way they want to live and the way they want to be,

Starting point is 00:38:49 taking on this language too? And seeing these kind of behaviours as not a problem. Of course they don't because my hero's doing it and nothing happens to him time now for a look at some of the stories making headlines on this topic we're going to be looking at the story of alice seabald the author behind the lovely bones and lucky when she was 18 years old she was brutally raped and recently it has been discovered the wrong man anthony broadwater was convicted he was a black man and alice sebald's rapist was a black man there were serious miscarriages of justice in the processes that led to his sentencing there's a lot in this story because on the one hand, you know, institutional and individual racism surely played a role

Starting point is 00:39:31 in an innocent man sentencing. On the other, Siebold is facing vicious criticism when she was at the time an 18-year-old who'd undergone a horrific attack. There's a few strains I want to follow, but one of them is the wrongful sentencing and racist sentencing of Anthony Broadwater in 1981. Just as we have ideals about the perfect victim narrative, which was touched on in the investigation. I wonder whether the media fixates on its perfect villains, you know, playing up men of color or immigrant men. And does it deflect from the fact that, you know, most rapists are people's partners or, you know, your average bloke next door? Do you think we have that fixation on a particular type of, quote, villain? There's a history here where black men have

Starting point is 00:40:18 always branded as predators. They were actually called predators by many politicians. These young predators, young predators, young predators. So if you're bombarded with that information all your life and you're seeing this on TV, you know, the human brain is very sensitive. You know, we really take on this information and we create these biases in our mind. You know, she has been victimized. You know, she was raped. So we cannot dismiss that too. So we're looking at two vulnerable situations here. I don't want to say it's a complex case. It's not a complex case. It's very common case, this idea that a white woman being violated by a black man. So in a way, the media played a big role on why she even pointed someone out,

Starting point is 00:41:01 because that's all she's ever seen, that black men are predicted. Because in one of her statements, she said, I saw a black man running that looked like the rapist. I mean, how that was even considered evidence, it's shocking to me. There's so many things going on here, and there isn't really an easy answer to it. But what I would like to see happen is a focus on what the institution was doing throughout this. How were the police acting with this? I'd really like to see that more

Starting point is 00:41:25 instead of just a complete focus on her and no one else. Some mainstream media's definitely jump on that narrative of men of color, black men or immigrant men as these kind of monsters. And it gives, you know, the opportunity for the whites, middle class and or non-immigrant men to shift the blame. So when it comes to say, Stanley Johnson, the Prime Minister's father, former politician who has been accused of groping

Starting point is 00:41:57 at least two women, one a conservative MP and another a journalist. Those allegations are questioned and the nature of the assault is questioned and it's dismissed as just a bit handsy and why didn't they say anything at the time. And that's because it's inconvenient, I think, for so much of the media for Stanley Johnson to be a sexual assa rather than say an immigrant man of colour that they can call a monster and point at and decry violence against women. 100%. He holds so much power, right? So the way in which we'll talk about him and the lengths in which we'll go to powerful men

Starting point is 00:42:33 in powerful positions, there's a real hesitancy to hold them to the same level as account that we would hold someone to account who has way less power and who we can very easily dehumanise. I also think, Gina, as you were saying, you would like to see the questions of the institution in Alice Sebald's case. And I guess a lot of the time when cases like these are in the media, people jump on the idea that it was a false allegation. And do you think that false allegations, which are statistically relatively rare, give maybe a warped sense about women supposedly lying all the time about their assaults? Yeah, because we talk about them at a

Starting point is 00:43:17 disproportionate level to how much they happen. They're two to four percent. They're around the same level statistically as almost every other crime. But, you know, we rarely talk about, someone gets mugged. We rarely say, yeah, but like, were you telling the truth about being mugged? Were you lying about being mugged? That's why a lot of rape victims never even report. Yeah, I think it is so important that the media clarifies that not being convicted of a crime is not the same as being found innocent. So a criminal trial is about the prosecution trying to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. But the defence does not have to prove that the defendant is innocent. So that means that we cannot say that every failed conviction means the alleged victim was lying.

Starting point is 00:44:04 And there are so many men in the public eye who have been accused but have not been convicted of rape or sexual assault. but who very much may be guilty and let's remember also that it is much easier for rich and famous men to get away with rape and sexual assault I think that is I wish what you've just said there which I kind of knew but the way in which you phrased it and made it so clear

Starting point is 00:44:32 it's almost like we need to put that on the TV every day so like just that simple threat just because people don't know that okay well I'll pitch a new TV show where I just sit and say that over and over again. Maybe the BBC will pick it up. Gina and Leila, thank you so much for joining us on Media Storm.

Starting point is 00:44:52 Gina, what are your social media handles? Where can people find you? And do you have anything to plug? Thank you so much for having me. My social media handles are Gina Martin, at Gina Martin on Instagram and at Gina Martin, you can, Twitter. And I have my thing to plug as I have a newsletter that is free every month where we talk about an issue happening right now. We take actions together. There's 4,000 people on there who take actions together to kind of get their muscles going.

Starting point is 00:45:13 and it's mostly about the government and how rubbish they're being. So you can sign up to that. It's called The Good Chat and it's on Substack. And Layla, please tell us where we can follow you and hear more from you. So my social media handles on Twitter is Leila at Leila Hussein. Instagram is at Leila Hussein UK. I raise money for lots of things, but raising money for Safeway for Black Women has been the hardest thing ever.

Starting point is 00:45:37 We have over 500 women who come for therapy every week. And we don't want to lose that space. It's really important. It's a safe space for them to come. So I'm going to plug in safe space for black women. If you can share it on your social medias, share the Godfamily page. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:45:55 Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week with episode four, transgender health care, a waiting game. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcasts so that you can access new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok at Helena Wadia, at Matilda Mal and at Media Storm Pod. Get in touch and let us know what you'd like us to cover or who you'd like us to speak to. Media Storm, a new podcast from the House of the

Starting point is 00:46:32 Guilty Feminist is part of the ACAST creator network. It is produced by Tom Salinsky and Deborah Francis White. The music is by Samfire.

Media Storm - S1E3 Rape Justice: What happens to the 98%? - with Leyla Hussein and Gina Martin

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.