Meeting of the Parliament 01 May 2018
I, too, thank Kezia Dugdale for taking urgent action to secure cross-party support to allow this important debate to go ahead. I pay tribute to her tireless work in giving a voice to women everywhere—especially to survivors of sexual violence—and associate myself with the remarks that acknowledged the Solicitor General’s accomplishments. The debate is not an easy one to take part in, but it is timely. It is taking place against the background of a wider social movement around the #MeToo and I believe her campaigns.
Women’s experience of sexual harassment and sexual violence is being spoken about more than ever before—from Hollywood to Holyrood and in every school, workplace and community in between. It feels as though, as a society, we are taking tentative steps towards a culture change, and I am optimistic about the pace of the progress that we are making. Therefore, it was with anger and disbelief that I reacted to the news that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service had made a policy shift towards compelling so-called reluctant complainers of sexual violence to give evidence.
I, too, attended the briefing about the policy change that was delivered by the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General. None of us doubts the commitment to put dangerous perpetrators of sexual violence behind bars in order to protect women and to deliver justice, but few reported rape cases make it to prosecution and conviction. I understand the desire to see justice done and to protect women from harm but, as colleagues have said, in doing so we cannot neglect the wishes and the wellbeing of survivors of sexual violence.
We know that sexual crimes are underreported. A main barrier to rape survivors accessing justice is the justice process itself, which is often lengthy and insensitive to rape survivors’ feelings. We have heard, and we know, that rape survivors worry that they will not be believed. They worry that they will somehow be blamed, such as for what they are wearing—we heard a powerful message from Claire Baker about women’s clothing: it does not matter what a person is wearing, because it is never the victim’s fault—and they worry that they will be compelled to relay the most intimate details about their lives in court. The system is brutal. We see one high-profile example after another, in the United Kingdom and beyond, of rape survivors being subjected to a hostile court environment and perpetrators being acquitted or given a sentence that does not seem to reflect the seriousness of the crime.
I listened very carefully to the Solicitor General a few weeks ago. I wanted to be persuaded, and she was very persuasive. She talked about how women can feel empowered by giving evidence, and she said that engaging and re-engaging women is approached in an emotionally intelligent way. I consider that people in the legal profession and in the judiciary believe that that is how they are approaching the issue, but we must listen to Rape Crisis Scotland and to the voices of the women who are not being listened to. I am concerned that we have reached a disconnect, because Rape Crisis Scotland, which wanted to engage and be part of a consultation, considers that that has not happened.
I am the last member to speak in the open debate and I will not go over time. However, before closing, I have to say that we must press “pause”. Rape Crisis Scotland and Kezia Dugdale have developed a five-point plan. The confidence of rape survivors is at an all-time low, and we must press “pause” in order to get the policy right.