Ireland's Chilling Ambivalence Towards Sexual Violence

I didn’t want to write this column.

I didn’t want to write it because by the time you read this it will be yesterday’s news.
I didn’t want to write it because as far as I’m concerned this column should, at least for the most part, be about the joys, pleasures and idiosyncrasies, of sex, not about threats of sexual violence.
I’m, of course, referring to the now infamous ‘rape tape’ – the Mayo gardaí who joked about raping a female protestor unless she gave them her name and address.
I’m sure you are familiar with the details, but let’s recap anyway. The gardaí arrested two women protesting the Corrib pipeline. The women had a video camera with them. While they were travelling to the police station, gardaí in a separate squad car made the remarks, which were caught by the camera’s microphone.
There are two reasons why I decided that this is a topic that ‘Sexed Up’ should deal with. Firstly, because attitudes to sex and sexual violence are more closely intertwined than many people realise; and secondly, because the way the incident was reported generally ignored the context in which the “joke” was made, a context which shows it in a far more sinister light.
The ‘rape tape’ has to be looked at both in terms of power, and in terms of overall gardaí behaviour towards Corrib protestors. Whether or not the gardaí were joking, a threat of rape by someone in a position of authority is a serious abuse of power. The gardaí were on duty and in a police vehicle – therefore at a place of work. This means it cannot really be called a private conversation. We would hardly find it excusable if teachers in the staff room joked about sexually abusing pupils.
For years, anti-Shell protestors have alleged police brutality and 111 complaints have been made to the Garda Ombudsman. None have been upheld, but that doesn’t mean nothing is seriously wrong. A report by the social justice group Front Line Defenders found cause for concern with policing, with Shell’s private security staff and with the failure of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission to investigate policies and practices of gardaí in the dispute.
Whether or not the remarks were a joke, audio* from the incident makes it clear that one of the protestors, Jerrie Ann Sullivan, was deeply concerned about the way the gardaí were handling the arrest of her fellow protestor – “I’m not leaving this girl on her own! She’s not safe here. I’m not leaving her on her own. I’m sorry, she’s not safe here, look at what they are doing to her!” She repeatedly tells a female garda she wants to make sure the second woman is safe, and appears to be alarmed by the behaviour of one garda in particular – “No, she is not safe with that man, look!”
Threats of rape towards female protestors are not uncommon, says Coimhe Kerins of Shell to Sea.
“There’s been numerous incidents over the years,” says Kerins. “While the tape was very shocking and appalling, it’s not the first time threats like that have been made to women on the protest.”
Whether or not you believe this, or the numerous allegations of police brutality, is actually immaterial since audio from the incident makes two things crystal clear: Sullivan was afraid, and at least some gardaí display a worrying amount of aggression and sexism towards protestors.
None of this is surprising given the wider cultural context of sexual violence and the response to it in Ireland, much of which is bound up with repressive attitudes to sex and sexuality in general. Our laws and our beliefs around sexual offences appear to operate according to the Madonna/Whore logic, which is deeply ingrained in many Catholic societies.
The last report from the Rape Crisis Centre in 2009 found that in 70 percent of rape cases, the judge granted the defence’s application to have the victim’s sexual history brought into evidence. According to the RCC, this is prejudicial and shows the widespread prevalence of myths about rape – that if a victim can be shown to be ‘promiscuous’ then she (or he) is seen as more likely to have somehow consented to being sexually assaulted.
Sentences for rape in Ireland rarely reflect the real seriousness of the crime. In 2009, a Waterford man was convicted for two years for rape. The DPP appealed the leniency of the sentence but the Court of Criminal Appeal decided it was fair. Why? Well, it seems to me that in this case because the victim was an escort – and therefore a ‘whore’ – the law thought she didn’t deserve any better.
Consider the Mary Shannon case of 2007. Shannon’s attacker, Adam Keane, broke into her home and raped her while she was in bed. The original judge gave Keane a three year suspended sentence. Shannon, shocked by the leniency of this sentence, waived her right to anonymity. The DPP appealed and Keane was finally convicted to ten years, with the last three suspended.
One cannot help but assume that the original judge must have considered Shannon in some way responsible for Foley’s actions and she was also the subject of slander. Online message posts by people professing to be friends of Keane styled her as ‘loose woman’ or claimed that she had been ‘carrying on’ with her attacker. In other words, Shannon was painted as some sort of ‘whore’, a woman who deserved no justice.
Then there was the Danny Foley case of 2009. Foley, a club bouncer, received seven years in prison for sexually assaulting a young woman behind a skip. After being convicted, around fifty people, mostly middle-aged and elderly men, shook his hand. The attack took place in the small country town of Listowel and although the victim’s name was not released to the press, everyone knew who she was. She reported being shunned by locals and asked if she was sorry for what she had done to Foley. Here again, the victim suffered a second victimisation – while Foley was regarded as an upstanding member of the community, she was a ‘whore’ who got no better than she deserved.
Two years for rape is not a harsh sentence; neither is seven. These lenient sentences seem to suggest that Irish law doesn’t really care about women. But, if you can be seen as a sweet, young, innocent girl, it’s a different story.
Last year an eighteen year-old man lost his appeal challenging the so-called ‘Romeo and Juliet law’ of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2006. If convicted, he will face up to five years in prison for having sex with a fourteen year-old girl when he was fifteen. He will also be placed on the Sex Offenders Register. The sex was consensual and the fourteen year-old in question was his girlfriend.
In cases involving sex with a minor under fifteen, the law doesn’t consider consent as a defence and the maximum penalty is life imprisonment. Of course it is necessary for the law to protect young people from adult sexual predators, and given the history of systematic sexual abuse of children in this country, harsh sentences allow the Government to look as if it is actually doing something to prevent future abuse.
However, between two young people of around the same age, ignoring consent is morally indefensible. Because the girl was fourteen, and I’m presuming here, a virgin before her sexual relationship with this young man, she makes an excellent victim, one the law can sympathise with.
Because of the Madonna/Whore logic underpinning our attitudes to sex and sexual assault, this young man may receive a sentence only marginally lighter than those given to dangerous sexual predators such as Foley and Keane. Consider this in light of the fact that victims of real sexual assault often find it hard to get justice – because prosecution and conviction rates remain low, because judges hand out lenient sentences or because pursuing a case will see you shunned by your community and subjected to slanderous whispers.
Given our response to cases of serious sexual assault, the chances of gardaí being kicked out of the force for “joking” about rape seems unlikely. As I write there has been hand-wringing, apologies and transfers to desk duties. That’s probably going to be the extent of it, but the hidden costs are incalculable – we have no idea how many victims of assault will now be too wary to report the crime to police, how many decent men and women will decide not to join An Garda Síochána and how this incident will affect the public perception of our police in the long run.
It would be easy to blame this state of affairs on men, who still make up the majority of our police, politicians and judges. But that would be unjust. Firstly the views of authority, even elected authority, don’t necessarily represent the views of the populace; and secondly, the Madonna/Whore logic permeates our culture in many ways and women are just as likely to use this thinking to divide up victims of sexual assault.
The Irish legal response to sexual assault and the repressive ideology that underlines it taints us all by association, but this is doubly true for men.
For the most part, Irish men are decent human beings, but the law, and a handful of ignorant boors that blame the rape victim instead of the perpetrator, make all Irish men look bad. That’s not fair. Many Irish men, not just women, are concerned about this. The ‘rape tape’, the Foley case, Adam Keane’s original sentencing, and other incidences of blatant sexism in our society shock most of the men I know.
Victims of sexual assault deserve better. So do Irish men. It’s time we stopped being complacent and whinging among ourselves. It’s time we did something. The question is: what?
*The full audio is available at . See also Mick McCaughan’s report in Frontlines, page 55.