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'Your Honour, I am here in a unique position.

A barrister indicts herself · National Theatre Live: Prima Facie (2022)

'Your Honour, I am here in a unique position.

Line 1 of 36

'Usually, I stand at the bar, 'but now I am in this courtroom as a witness, a complainant, a victim.

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1'Your Honour, I am here in a unique position.
2'Usually, I stand at the bar , 'but now I am in this courtroom as a witness, a complainant, a victim .
3'As a barrister, I have questioned women in sexual assault cases
4' on the assumption that evidence can be delivered in a clean, logical package ,
5'and now I have seen from my own attempts here that it cannot be.
6'In all of my professional life, 'I have participated in a system that has done this to women,
7'and now I know it is not right.
8'It is not reasonable, because now I know, 'from my own life, both as a woman and a lawyer,
9'that the lived experience of sexual assault, 'it is not remembered in a neat, consistent, scientific parcel.
10'And it's because of that, the law often finds evidence "unbelievable".
11'So, I understand a witness can be mistaken in their evidence.
12'I have suggested it time and time again .
13'But this is not a car accident, or a home invasion.
14'This is rape.
15'It's a crime against the person and now I know.
16'You know, when a woman says "no", when her actions say "no",
17'it is not a subtle , unreadable thing at all.
18'Yet before this, I too, I would suggest that she was mistaken.
19'But when a woman has been violated, it is a corrosive wound.
20'It is one that starts with terror and pain deep into the body.
21'It then overtakes the mind, the soul.
22'Yet before this, I too, I would suggest that "she was confused".
23'I mean, the message is, if we do not deliver our evidence neatly
24'in a clear linear story, with consistency in recall , then we are lying.
25'Yet before this, I would point out inconsistencies as proof of doubt.
26'I would tell the jury they couldn't possibly be sure.
27'As a lawyer I know, I know,
28'the law, it cannot jettison consistency entirely, but in sexual assault cases,
29'can we keep using it as the litmus test of credibility?
30'Because, as a victim, let me tell you
31'the rape and the perpetrator, they are vividly recalled.
32'The peripheral details, not so clearly.
33'If a woman is rattled by having to relive the nightmare in court,
34'if a woman's experience of rape is not as the court likes it to be,
35'then we conclude that she is prone to exaggeration 'and it's because of this she is so often disbelieved .
36'So here in court, I want to call it out .'

Why it's worth practising

She steps from counsel to complainant, and each before this knocks the self-blame into a rhythm.

From

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Phrases in this speech

stand at the bar in a clean, logical package unbelievable litmus test

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