2018: Sadly, this piece of rubbish was written by a barrister practising in England.
Even more sadly it won The Bar Council Law Reform Essay Prize in 2018. The author is a feminist airhead who had previously worked for the Women’s Legal Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, in which connection she had helped mount a successful attack on statutes of limitations.
Where to begin with her nonsense?
Firstly, her terminology is wrong, as having read this far you will probably known. The word historic means something notable or important that happened in the past or even today. A man running a 3 minute mile tomorrow would be historic!
Okay, she alludes to Barbara Ziv with approval. Leaving aside the fact that the evidence given by Ziv at the Bill Cosby retrial was worthless, this was not really an historical case. Cosby’s conviction had reasonable doubt written all over it if only by dint of the word alcohol. He was actually convicted in the court of public opinion before he set foot inside a courtroom.
For the full background to the Cosby case, in particular how he was stitched up, see The Prior Bad Acts OF Gloria Allred.
Teale is talking basically about rape trauma syndrome, which does not exist. (See also the entry for the Hamlin list of rape myths).
One more time: rape trauma syndrome is a method of affirming any allegation of rape however absurd, but principally with explaining away any purported delay in reporting.
While there can be problems with genuinely vulnerable women, and of course the young, a reasonably intelligent educated woman – and especially a university alumna like Andrea Constand – should have no credibility when claiming to have been raped months ago, not without extremely strong corroboration.
It remains to be seen if Teale realises that if this voodoo is ever taken seriously by the courts on a grand scale there will be no such thing as exculpatory evidence in any rape case. But perhaps being a feminist she doesn’t care.
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