I read Helena Kennedy QC’s new book, Eve Was Shamed: How British Justice Is Failing Women, while Dr Christine Blasey Ford was giving evidence before the US Senate judiciary committee. Shortly afterwards, the president of the US led thousands in laughing at Ford as he stood on a stage and mocked her testimony. As I write, Judge Brett Kavanaugh is about to be confirmed to the US supreme court. And all over the world, women are angry.
It’s been almost exactly a year since the spark that ignited what Baroness Kennedy calls the “tsunami” of the #MeToo movement: the Weinstein allegations that rocked Hollywood and led to the downfall of a stream of powerful and abusive men. This movement, writes Kennedy, is “a form of civil disobedience”. It is a “response to law’s failure”. And if women “had confidence in the justice system and men really feared the shame and consequence of misconduct”, she says, “we would not be seeing a resort to anonymous accusations”.
But women don’t have confidence in the justice system. And going by the litany of horrors that Kennedy details in this relentless, often disturbing book, no wonder.
Continue reading this article at The Observer.
