Above from left: Keishia Taylor, ROSA, Aisling Cusack, USI vice president for Equality & Citizenship, Ruth Coppinger TD, Leona O’Callaghan, survivor of sexual violence and Neil Moore, organiser, Unite the Union.

This morning/afternoon

A meeting of trade and student unions calling for people to ‘take it to the streets’ on International Women’s Day, March 8, on the issue of the gender pay gap, sexual violence and the judicial system.

Leona O’Callaghan, who was raped when she was 13, told the meeting:

“Only a few months ago I stood in an Irish court where my abuser’s defence were permitted to indicate that I, as a child, had given a sign of consent because I did not physically fight back on those rapes.

The judge was asked to take this as a mitigating factor. A child cannot consent.

…The lack of moral compass in the legal, school, government and judicial systems does not represent the morality of our country.”

Victim of rape urges mass demonstration on International Women’s Day (Independent.ie)

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17 thoughts on “Fighting Back

  1. Starina

    We get fupping blamed for everything.

    If there’s a march being organised for that day, I’ll book time off for it.

  2. kellMA

    Regarding the “mitigation”: I don’t get that. How could that not be struck out? Whatever about saying there was implied consent from an adult woman/man because they were wearing fancy knickers (side note – this is also poo), as a point of law, a child of 13 cannot give consent so why can they even make this point? It is ludicrous if nothing else. Sure they might as well say that she had an interest in aliens and some citizen of mars was in a relationship with her.

    1. postmanpat

      The judge was asked to take this as a mitigating factor, Is there anything in the above or Indo-rag to say the judge didn’t strike it out? Maybe he did? He probably did, because the article would have made a point or naming and shaming the Judge who let it stay in. Defense lawyers are paid to get people off, they are amoral in that regard. Especially if they are paid defense and not some disinterested public defender who probably wouldn’t use the “led me on” argument and look like a scumbag for no extra money. The defense firm/individual should be named. Personally if something like this happened to a loved one the situation would not go in front of a judge in the first place because the rapist would simply disappear one day and that would be that.

  3. Emily Dickinson

    Yeah, let’s end gender-based violence! But not the other kind, obviously. So long as we’re stabbing our own gender, who could object to that?

    And I can’t help observing that for an organisation named after Rosa Parks, there’s an awful lot of honkies sitting at that table.

  4. Peter

    Is gender based violence a euphanism for male violence? Or another way of saying end violence against women?
    If it really means end all violence why cant it be put like that?

  5. Emily Dickinson

    Whether we’re dealing with rape trials in Belfast, or young men being beaten to death on the streets of Kilorglin, violent crime in this country isn’t ‘gender-based.’ It is almost entirely alcohol-based.

    For anyone serious about tackling violent crime, the first five things they should be talking about all involve alcohol.

    But of course, there’s no identity-politics benefit in talking about booze. So let’s all turn a blind eye to that.

    1. Nigel

      A concern about alcohol-fueled violence is incredibly laudable but if its only purpose is a vehicle for you to attack people concerned about gender-based violence, you probably don’t actually care about it.

    2. ReproBertie

      In Ireland, only 25% of assaults at night involve the intoxication of one or both parties. Alcohol is not the contributor you seem to believe.

  6. topsy

    What about the gap between the train and the platform at Connolly Station. I’m marching to have that gap closed.

  7. Emily Dickinson

    Perhaps it’s also worth pointing out that there is no such thing as ‘gender based violence.’

    There is no gender-based theft, no gender-based fraud and no gender-based motoring offences. Gender-based violence is a completely made up category of crime invented by virtue-signalling, bra-waving social justice warriors.

  8. Termagant

    I don’t think a march is going to stop violent people inflicting violence on other people, regardless of gender
    Spreading awareness that hurting people is bad is redundant

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