Here’s a very robustly argued article from Barrister Blogger Matthew Scott, taking issue with Harriet Harm Man’s proposal to abolish fair trials for defendants accused of rape:

The inevitable result of such a change in the law would be to produce grotesque injustice. It could not do anything else. How could it possibly always be right that a defendant should be prevented from telling a jury that he was in a sexual relationship with a complainant? Of course the existence of such a relationship does not mean a rape could not take place, and nobody in their right minds would ever dream of making such an argument. Of course, there are cases in which the existence – perhaps in the distant past – of such a relationship would be entirely irrelevant. Yet a law which prevented juries from ever knowing about it, except when volunteered by the prosecution, would, in many cases, mean asking jurors to decide whether a man is guilty of rape without exactly the sort of crucial evidence about their relationship which might help them to make the correct decision.

barristerblogger.com/2017/03/26/hariet-h...ly-unfair/#more-2162

In my relentless pessimism about what illiberal, unjust and daft measures our politicians will dream up next, I expect Ms Harm Man’s amendments to become law soon, cheered onto the statute book by Messrs Rudd and Truss (Ms Truss appears to think that defendants in these trials should simply be locked up as soon as they are accused).

Hmm. Harm Man, Rudd and Truss. I find that the term immediately evokes in my mind vague imaginings of something nasty. Sadomasochistic sexual practices perpetrated by snickering feminists on a tightly bound male, possibly. I have no idea what might be involved, but I really wouldn’t like to have someone rudd my truss. But perhaps it’s the term for vandalising justice.

Perhaps there's a school of thought that women are so infantile that they must be coddled like infants through the court system.

Thanks for the link Pete. I left a comment under the article. Here is what I wrote.


Greetings. This is my first comment here, although I’ve read for a while. I’m not legally trained but I can read. Here is a direct copy & paste from the CPS guidance on its website.

‘Section 78 PACE enables a court to exclude evidence which would otherwise be admissible against a defendant on the basis it would be unfair to adduce it . The nature of the courts discretion was explained by Lord Lane C.J. in the case of R v Quinn Crim L.R. 581:

“…The function of the judge is therefore to protect the fairness of the proceedings, and normally proceedings are fair if… all relevant evidence [is heard] which either side wishes to place before [ the court], but proceedings may become unfair if, for example, one side is allowed to adduce relevant evidence which, for one reason or another, the other side cannot properly challenge or meet.”‘

Cannot properly challenge or meet… by statute! So ANY trial using evidence where the defendant cannot ask questions about it or even comment on it in his own testimony becomes unfair. Right?

Excellent comment, Randall. An I believe Jo is spot on in her assessment of 'radical' feminism: it does indeed consider that "women are so infantile that they must be coddled like infants through the court system."

What a contrast to the suffragettes and the young feminists of the sixties (Camille Paglia, Wendy Kaminer, Christina Hoff Sommers, Germaine Greer amongst them) who wanted to repudiate the infantilising assumptions of their societies and be treated as free equals.

These women didn't hate men. They hated chauvinism and its dismissive, contemptuous assumptions about them. Interestingly each of the feminists I just mentioned are today trenchantly opposed to contemporary victim feminism, which they see as reactionary, hysterical and infantile.

Thanks Pete for highlighting the blog Article.

So in theory as I have noted many times previously and others have also noted, of course. And many ordinary UK citizens have also believed that a fair trial is central to the UK court system.

That the judge at the first trial of Rolf Harris was obligated on many counts to halt the trial proceedings when the key defence council went off to hospital before closing arguments, that the prosecution emotional agruments of "non impartial" calling Rolf Harris "a liar" when the prosecution witness is the one who really lied changing her story. That the emotional argument of Hyde and Dr Jeykell scenario essentially highlighting standard human emotional behaviour of two opposing characters in the one person was used. Then the introduction of the late Cambridge key emotionl evidence with no time for the defence to challenge all made for a highly unfair trial. According to the blog article the judge as many have suspected was obligated to step in which he did not thus failed in his duty. I find myself amazed that all those occassions I have seen the judge, CPS, police and prosecution ignore the law has been exactly that. I also now expecting that the police behaviour of just believing a witness fully, of not investigating the facts fully as in the Cambridfge case for example where the taxi, person and so on entered evidence is the person's word only. Nothing was shown that the witness was not elsewhere at the time. No foundamental investigation was done or when a little happened persued. So there must be an overall police directive like duty of care and so on that that slice through the nonsense of oh well only 0.x percent ever lie etc. Randall has highlighted the CPS's principles in his response. So already we know the CPS ignore their own code. I suppose this parliamentary debate highlights how much government just ignore human rights ( But fortunately the media have highlighted this factor in many cases over the years. Must be a good story to do so!).

Of interest in the blog is the following comment from the "however":


Adrian Hunt says:
March 26, 2017 at 6:36 pm

This is a great piece. And it is clear that Harman’s proposal is one which seems to provide a statutory basis for unfair trials in certain circumstances.

However the legal analysis above seems to ignore an essential feature of the scheme of the Human Rights Act 1998. Section 6(2)...
(Not questioning content of points just that there are always these "howevers..." used to blurr human rights and fair trials used...)

I always get lost at those "however" legal manipulations for the lawyers, police and so on to do a "Hitler style make the law line up" to the UK equivalent of "Night of the Long Knives"

So in this blog all is been revealed. Great. (Thank you HH for your stupidity to expose what is happening...)

The superb Christina Hoff Sommers shows how contemporary feminism could be redeemed into a movement for genuine justice; but she also shows how pampered middle class university "Harm-man" feminists in the West are too preoccupied with their own imagined patriarchal oppression to notice the foul injustices meted out to women and girls every day in the "developing world."

Thanks, Pete.

pete wrote:

These women didn't hate men

Actually, I don't think modern feminist extremists hate men either. They hate themselves. As A C Grayling put it, hate is a reflexive emotion. Feminazis, Social Justice Warriors et al have no faith in themselves to excel, compete or achieve eudaemonia and are thus self-disgusted and self-repulsed. Their resultant behaviour is the hate that Grayling describes.

she's a distant cousin who I've never met and I'll keep it that way