SlutWalk London!

Our protest outside the Crown Prosecution Service - (trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault)

On 1st July Slut Means Speak Up, together with Women Against Rape, the English Collective of Prostitutes, WinVisible and the Black Women’s Rape Action Project, took to the streets to picket the Crown Prosecution Service. We demanded an end to the unjust and misogynistic treatment of those who report rape only to be derided, shamed and blamed by the police and courts, and demanded protection for the sex workers who the legal system prosecutes for working together for safety, preventing them from reporting sexual violence.

We came together to protest the 6.7% rape conviction rate, the attack on women by the legal system and the criminalisation of sex workers - but statistics and legal reports come nowhere near to explaining the anger and pain that rape victims and sex workers feel at the hands of a legal system which claims to protect us - but instead protects our attackers. Almost everyone at this rally felt empowered to take the microphone to speak about their own experiences - from a sex worker who had been harassed by police on the streets of Paris, to a man who asked the police to act on the sexual grooming of his thirteen year old daughter only to find himself facing an accusation of harassment against police staff, to a woman who held up a picture of her battered face taken after her rape, to a young woman who spoke of the harassment and ridicule young women reporting sexual assault face from the police. A speaker from Women Against Rape told of a case where a man had filmed the woman during his rape of her. At great risk to herself, the woman managed to obtain the video and take her attacker to court - where she was then shown the video in the courtroom. She broke down crying and the judge said that the case was ‘too traumatic’ and put it ‘on file’ - which means that there is no chance of re-opening the case to win justice for this woman in the future.

Niki Adams, from the English Collective of Prostitutes, spoke of the case of Sheila Farmer - a sex worker who reported a gang which had been roaming the area and attacking women, only to find herself on trial for working together with other sex workers for safety. The police charged her with brothel keeping, raided her flat and confiscated her possessions. We were also there to support two women, both mothers, imprisoned for making so-called ‘false allegations’: Gail Sherwood, who was found half naked in a remote field, her hands tied above her head, visibly suffering from shock - yet the police called her ‘a sad, lonely 50-year old who couldn’t get a man and had made it all up’ and lost key evidence. The other is Leyla Ibrahim, a woman who claimed she was attacked on January 4th, 2009. Her mother reports that ‘she scrubbed herself in the shower until she was practically bleeding. She forced her brother to sit in her room with her so she was not alone’ after her assault, and an expert medical witness claimed that it was ‘unlikely’ that her injuries were self inflicted - yet she is now in prison for making a ‘false allegation’ of rape. And a young woman spoke of her rape in her flat at the hands of a friend, which the police told her was her fault for letting the man into her flat. These are real people with real experiences and real anger. We cannot be covered up and silenced by government reports which admit the ‘regrettable’ state of rape prosecutions but take no action, or by the rape apologists who claim that women were either lying or “asking for it”. Our voices are loud and our demands clear.

For a long time rape has been something which our police, law officials and government have been happy to force behind closed doors. Either evidence is lost or badly handled, or her clothes, sexual history, age or skin colour mean that it was not rape and she was in fact “asking for it”, or “men can’t get raped” or it is not “proper” rape - too ‘complicated’ for the attacker to be held to account, as Ken Clarke says - or the woman must be lying. But on the 1st of July we were angry and determined to be heard as our words echoed loudly through the street - giving the Crown Prosecution Service no choice but to listen. Rape - the private pain of the individual - is being transformed into the public protest of the survivor as people of all genders, races and backgrounds come together to insist that we are protected and treated fairly by the law which claims to be accountable to us - yet refuses to protect society’s most vulnerable people.

The success of this demonstration mean that it is likely we will hold another one in the near future so watch this space! Thank you so much to everyone who came and made it such a powerful protest and such a powerful celebration of our refusal to be victimised and intimidated by those who claim to protect us - we hope to see you again and to anyone who couldn’t make it, we hope that soon you will join your voice to ours.

Photo: Niki Adams

More photos of the event can be found here and here.

Anastasia

Poster for our picket of the Crown Prosecution Service this Friday!

While only 6.7% of rape cases end in conviction, women who come forward with rape cases are imprisoned for making so-called ‘false allegations’. Police intimidate survivors, lose evidence and refuse to take rape cases seriously. Juries judge whether a woman was raped by the length of her skirt and Ken Clarke, the Secretary of State for Justice, does not consider all rape to be ‘serious’. If we don’t speak up now these injustices will continue. Rapists will continue to walk free, women will be harassed, victimised and raped and only meet with shame and derision from the courts, and mothers will continue to be put into prison for being brave enough to speak up against their attackers. Speak up with us - we’ve had enough of a legal system which claims to protect us, but instead protects our attackers!

PICKET THE CROWN PROSECUTION SERVICE - Friday 1st July - 1pm - Rose Court, 2 Southwark Bridge, London SE19HS

Facebook Invite: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=108529105906296

Poster: http://bit.ly/m4qpTY

SlutWalk London brought thousands onto the streets demanding protection for all rape survivors and prosecution for rapists.

On 1 July, Slut Means Speak Up is targeting the Crown Prosecution Service(CPS) for its appalling track record on rape.

Here’s the Facebook event: link

FACTS: Over 90% of rapes are never reported.  Of those reported, only 6.7% end in conviction.  One in four women suffers domestic violence; at least two women a week are murdered by partners or ex-partners.  In up to 90% of attacks on mothers, children are present; in 45-70% the father is violent to the children too.  Over 30 women who reported rape have been disbelieved and imprisoned in the last 12 months.  Asylum seekers who report rape and other torture are often deported.  Sex workers who come forward risk prosecution.  

We demand that the CPS:

1.    Stop prosecuting rape survivors for so-called false allegations, and prosecute rapists instead.  
Compelling evidence of rape is ignored, lost or dismissed by biased and bungling police and prosecutors.  Survivors who have been prosecuted include: 1) Layla Ibrahim, a young woman attacked on the street and jailed for three years while pregnant; other rape survivors in the area have described a similar attacker. 2) Gail Sherwood, a 51-year-old mother of three jailed for two years after reporting being raped three times by an unknown stalker.  The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has refused to do anything to redress these miscarriages of justice.  But the CPS is doing a review of such prosecutions – let’s tell them what we think.

2.    Stop prosecuting sex workers working together for safety.  Drop the prosecution of Sheila Farmer.
At Slutwalk, Ms Farmer described how after a vicious rape she couldn’t work alone.  The brothel-keeping law makes it illegal for women to work together.  But the CPS has discretion and must only prosecute when it is in the public interest.  Ms Farmer is seriously ill – a diabetic since childhood, she suffers from a brain tumour.  She could face a seven year prison sentence.  This has already aggravated her life-threatening condition.  Over 1000 people have emailed her MP that this prosecution is not in the public interest. 

Black Women’s Rape Action Project, the English Collective of Prostitutes and Women Against Rape launched this protest at London SlutWalk as part of Slut Means Speak Up.  Let’s all turn up at the CPS on 1 July to say  we’ve had enough  … of being blamed for rape by police and courts, of being deprived of protection, of being denied resources and left vulnerable to exploitation and violence.

If we don’t speak up, these injustices will continue and attackers will go free to rape again.  Please get this information to others.  Come to the protest with your banners and placards.  If you can’t come (or even if you can) write to the following policy-makers to demand change – police and prosecutors who don’t do their job should be sacked.

Keir Starmer,  Director of Public Prosecutions  
[email protected]   
Rose Court, 2 Southwark Bridge
London, SE1 9HS, Tel: 020 3357 0000

Jo Johnson, Sheila Farmer’s MP. 
[email protected]
House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA

Theresa May, Home Secretary 
[email protected]  
[email protected]

Ken Clarke, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice [email protected]
[email protected]

Lynne Featherstone, Minister for Equality at the Home Office
[email protected]
[email protected]

Yvette Cooper, Shadow Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities

[email protected]

[email protected]