{"id":211,"date":"2008-07-03T23:03:42","date_gmt":"2008-07-03T22:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2008\/07\/03\/jill_saward_wrong_then_wrong_now"},"modified":"2025-10-09T19:13:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T18:13:28","slug":"jill_saward_wrong_then_wrong_now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2008\/07\/03\/jill_saward_wrong_then_wrong_now","title":{"rendered":"Jill Saward: wrong then, wrong now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among the people who have entered the forthcoming Haltemprice and Howden by-election, triggered by the resignation of David Davis to fight on a civil liberties platform is Jill Saward<\/a> (campaign site here<\/a>), who is best known for being the victim of the Ealing Vicarage rape attack in 1986. The last time she was actually famous was in the late 1990s when she was calling for the introduction of what she called a "manslaughter version of rape", i.e. second-degree rape, manslaughter being roughly equivalent to second-degree murder, and suggesting that women who were less than decently dressed might actually be partly to blame for what happened to them. This time, she is openly defending the 42-day detention law, the prevalence of CCTVs and a national DNA database.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Back then, she achieved some notoriety with an article in the Daily Mail which mentioned the tendency towards girls wearing dresses or skirts which might have been worn as slips not that long ago, and concluded to the effect that women can show their femininity without parading their assets like streetwalkers. A female letter-writer in the Guardian called her piece a "self-centred treatise on 'proper women'" which suggested that it was a whole lot worse to violate one of them than a woman of lesser virtue. There was a certain sense that she resented being lumped in with victims of "lesser" rape (keep in mind that a man can be charged with rape if he has sex with a prostitute and then refuses to pay). At the time, the Independent<\/a> quoted Julie Bindel (of Justice for Women fame) as saying her remarks were "bloody awful" and comforting to men because they let men off the hook; in an interview in yesterday's Guardian<\/a>, Bindel asks whether she still believes this, but does not question her about it.<\/p>\n

I have long been puzzled as to why anyone thinks a woman's dress contributes to her own experience of rape. Of course, when drink and drugs are brought into it, people's inhibitions are lowered and all that, but this never seems to figure in the discussion. A woman attacked in the street and raped is likely to have been stalked, or otherwise attacked because she was an easy target; a man who attacks a woman because he sees undressed female flesh and cannot control himself is more likely to be fought off, and by the way, men can control themselves, and do all the time. I can well understand<\/a> why the comments by the Lebanese mufti, Taj Hilali, that such female behaviour leads to "a look, then a smile, then a conversation, a greeting, then a conversation, then a date, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay jail … then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years" caused outrage; it was not about a man who was overwhelmed with desire while high on drugs, but one who led a gang of thugs who raped a series of women in Sydney.<\/p>\n

Now, she's running on a platform that amounts to "nothing to fear, nothing to hide"<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nNot all men are rapists or sexual predators. But with sexual violence affecting one in three women, the chances are that every man will know victims of sex attacks – even though they may not know it. Many victims feel so dehumanised by their experiences they are unable to tell even their closest friends or family.
\nCrimes of sexual violence are at epidemic levels – partly because it is a crime that is so easy to get away with. The police and health agencies have dramatically improved the way victims of sexual violence are treated; but it is still increasingly difficult to obtain the proof necessary to bring charges – let alone secure a conviction. So every tool in the fight against this heinous crime must be made available to the police.
\nOne such tool is the national DNA database, which has proved invaluable in identifying those responsible for some of the vilest crimes imaginable.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Her solution to the question of whether it's just to maintain DNA records of anyone who's been in contact with the police, whether they are found guilty or not, is simply to keep records of everybody in the country. Of course, she throws out a dubious statistic as fact – one in three women "affected" by sexual violence, which could be true depending on both your definition of "affected" and of sexual violence. Rape is easy to get away with because it is difficult to prove; however, the most difficult to prove "rapes" are those where sexual intercourse (and therefore the presence of DNA) is not in dispute, but rather, the alleged victim's consent is (more here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Her "victims' rights" platform precludes any sympathy for the potential victims of the policy, as opposed to what the policy is intended to prevent:<\/p>\n

\n(Bindel:) Isn't she worried that she's deflecting debate from the important issue of detention? "I know that some people who support Davis's stance on the 42-day issue will criticise me, but the reality is that terrorists are using increasingly clever methods to escape detention, and the investigation into these crimes are always complex. If the police say they need more time to work on these cases, then I support them. I want to be safe from terrorism."
\nAnd what about the effect of the 42-day change on the Asian community? "It will target people who are seen to be a threat to our nation's freedom. At the moment, that might be some Muslim men, 10 years ago it was the IRA – so people with Irish accents were the target – and soon it could be Mugabe's men." In this case, her sympathies tend towards victims of terror attacks and those who enforce the law, rather than potential victims of the detention policy.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, it is easy for Saward to support extended pre-trial detention on the grounds of upholding the rights of potential victims of terrorism, because she is among the least likely to be affected by the latter, being as she is a well-connected, middle-class white woman. Those likely to be affected are mostly dark-skinned and mostly male, most of them no more wishing to see another terrorist attack in London than someone like Saward. Whether it is necessary, on the basis that there has only been one successful attack due to a combination of police work and the low calibre of the terrorists, is in much dispute. Nobody seems to question whether police chiefs would claim to need enhanced powers to detain and interrogate suspects in order to curry favour with politicians who want to be seen as tough on terrorism.<\/p>\n

Simon at Obsolete\/Septicisle has already taken apart Saward's platform<\/a>; among other things, her apparent lack of understanding as to why "criminals" (or rather suspects) have rights in law that "victims" do not, and her statistics about the efficacy of DNA testing. Her campaign website<\/a> is headed "True Liberty", which echoes the saying of politicians recently that security is the highest civil liberty, as if protection from harassment by the state, and being caught up in whatever plans state officials have. Saward claims she's not a politician, but has already got the hang of using selective qutoes, quoting the words "she will have done the nation a service" from an article in the Independent<\/a> by Deborah Orr, which is about rape rather than any of her central campaign issues, and does not actually say "vote Jill". Her stance is a selfish one, buttressed by a spurious "victim's licence"; perhaps she really expects a constituency of people like her – provincial, middle-class whites, unlikely to be caught up in the "war on terror" – to kick out a long-standing MP for her, at a time when the Tories are in the ascendant. It would be interesting to see if they fall for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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