Della writes in regarding a truly obscene yet far from unpredicable example of the statist mindset which places the state’s law above any notions of actual justice
First they ban any effective tool of defending yourself against rape, then they prosecute you if you actually defend yourself, now they are prosecuting people for using the most effective method of escaping rape:
“Melissa O’Donnell claimed the unidentified man attacked her as she slept in the spare room of his home in Inverness and she fled by car despite drinking that night.”
“She added: “About 30 minutes later he burst into the room and made a lunge for me. He started shouting and calling me names such as slut. He said I was trying it on with his friends. When he eventually left the room she grabbed her clothes and ran out, only to be grabbed again. Once more, she struggled free and managed to get out of the flat and run to her car, driving off with the door still open and David running after her.
After driving about 400 metres she felt she had escaped her attacker and stopped. However, he [the judge] conceded there were “extreme special reasons” why she drove while over the limit, and that was why he decided to restrict the sentence to a £350 ($560) fine and eight penalty points.”
That is £1408.11 and 32 penalty points per mile.
Although I do as a general rule disapprove of people driving after drinking, the fact is this women did not do any harm to anyone. In this case it is utterly ridiculous to prosecute the woman for driving after drinking given the circumstances. Exactly how else would she have been able to escape a 6’3″ man?
Either the court must reject her story, convict her and punish her fully… or they must accept her account of events that night and set aside the matter of her drinking and driving as not just trivial but fully justified in the circumstances.
And yet, by not banning her from driving upon conviction (for she never denied being over the legal limit), the Scottish state is saying it does indeed accept her version of events… and so the court has in effect prosecuted and convicted her for escaping from being raped.
Della
I’m a bit disconcerted here — which parts of this were written by “Della”? The construction of the post is quite confusing.
Also, I do not understand this part of the narrative:
“Melissa O’Donnell claimed the unidentified man attacked her as she slept in the spare room of his home in Inverness and she fled by car despite drinking that night. She added: ‘About 30 minutes later he burst into the room and made a lunge for me.’ ”
He burst into the room AFTER she fled by car? Were there two separate attacks?
I read of instances like this where British law proves itself an ass. Just what will it take for you Brits to reclaim your legal system? Can you do something through the vote, or are you really that disenfrancished?
Serious question (maybe badly expressed). If you’re outraged, what don’t (or can’t) you demand that things be fixed?
The vote in Britain: which would you prefer…
– a bickering conglomeration of law-n-order authoritarians, mumbling fogeys, race nazis, sleazy power junkies, and embarrassed economc-slightly-deregulators struggling to look “caring”
– a pack of slavering marxists held at gunpoint by a small cabal of earnest and well-intentioned liberal-autocrat pragmatists
– a small third party with little chance of getting elected, filled with naive yet enthusiastic middle-class lefties
– abstain, or vote for someone else, which amounts to much the same thing
Luckily I’m an anarchist, so I can just snigger and ignore the whole charade.
The original makes more sense I think:
First they ban any effective tool of defending yourself against rape, then they prosecute you if you actually defend yourself, now they are prosecuting people for using the most effective method of escaping rape:
“Melissa O’Donnell claimed the unidentified man attacked her as she slept in the spare room of his home in Inverness and she fled by car despite drinking that night. ”
“She added: “About 30 minutes later he burst into the room and made a lunge for me. He started shouting and calling me names such as slut. He said I was trying it on with his friends.
When he eventually left the room she grabbed her clothes and ran out, only to be grabbed again. Once more, she struggled free and managed to get out of the flat and run to her car, driving off with the door still open and David running after her. ”
“After driving about 400 metres she felt she had escaped her attacker and stopped. ”
“However, he [the judge] conceded there were “extreme special reasons” why she drove while over the limit, and that was why he decided to restrict the sentence to a £350 fine and eight penalty points. “
That is £1408.11 and 32 penalty points per mile
I disapprove of people driving after drinking however for the most part it doesn’t do much harm. In this case it is utterly ridiculous to prosecute the woman for driving after drinking given the circumstances. I doubt she would have been able to escape a 6’3″ man any other way.
The obvious next on the legal move: prosecuting people for escaping from rape.
End original.
I disagree with some of the bits added, like “punish her fully” she only drove 400 meters, she never hit anything, and was stopped at the time she was picked up. After she finished her phone call to her mother she might have just got out and walked to a hotel. The justice system should keep things in prespective, people are being punished very hard these days for very minor things.
I’ve had a man chase me about trying to attack me, it was is very frightning, and I know I would have driven to get away whether I had been drinking or not.
This has me a bit puzzled:
“Melissa O’Donnell claimed the unidentified man attacked her as she slept in the spare room of his home in Inverness and she fled by car despite drinking that night. ”
The spare room of _his_ home? That doesn’t make any sense–if she was sleeping in his home, then he wouldn’t have been unidentified, right? Maybe the reporter meant to write “her home?”
Wot is wid you guys? I understood the original article just fine!
If you understand it, it’s only because you’re making assumptions or you have read the original. Because the wording of the post as presented here leaves the precise sequence of events open to inquiry. Again:
“Melissa O’Donnell claimed the unidentified man attacked her as she slept in the spare room of his home in Inverness and she fled by car despite drinking that night.”
“She added: ‘About 30 minutes later he burst into the room and made a lunge for me.’ “
It’s the “added” that is particularly throwing things off. At the least, there should be an ellipsis between the two paragraphs indicating to readers that information has been omitted.
I have since read the original at Scotland on Sunday and now understand the narrative as it was actually written.