From time to time I check the titles of the posts that you, dear readers, have looked at. I am occasionally surprised that some readers go down into the cellars of D&N and after blowing the cobwebs off an old post then proceed to read it. I rather like it when it happens because I, too, read it and thus partake of a trip down memory lane. Anyway, when it happens I have decided I might republish them, unless they are too tedious/illiterate/wrong-headed (delete as necessary) or one of my more spectacularly inaccurate forecasts. Here is one dated 21st January 2008 which someone looked at recently:
"A rape! A rape!"
The full quotation from Webster's The White Devil runs thus:
"A rape! A rape! ... Yes you have ravished justice. Forced her to do
your pleasure."
This provides me with an excellent introduction to the reason for my recent
visits to Nottingham. Also, by an odd co-incidence, the exceedingly nasty
villain of the current 'crash-bang-wallop' thriller I am reading is an admirer
of Webster who calls himself 'the White Devil' (1). Anyway, rape is the
subject of this post.
My 'AmDram' society was approached by a couple of university professors of
law looking for actors to play in a courtroom scenario in which a young woman
accepts a lift home from a colleague after a departmental party, invites him in
for coffee, gives him a goodnight kiss at the door and is then raped in her
hallway - or not - depending on ... well, what a jury depends on was the object
of the exercise. The two professors had engaged the services of a marketing
company to produce a 'jury' of 24 people for each scenario. At the end of each
scenario, the 24 people were divided into 3 'juries' of 8 and sent to different
rooms where their discussions and verdicts were recorded and filmed. I should
stress that there was a completely different jury for each scenario. Also, each
scenario differed slightly, so that the following variables were introduced: the
victim being either emotional or calm; the victim either reporting the rape
immediately or waiting 3 days; the victim having minor injuries or not; the
judge (er, that was me!) giving slightly different summations; the presence or
not of an expert witness, and so on.
As you all know, real-life juries are completely private, so this was a
rather good idea to gain some insight as to what influence these various factors
exerted, if any. We tried to make it fairly realistic in that the two young
barristers (real-life barristers) wore their wigs, gowns and judicial collars.
They kindly loaned me gown and collar but, alas, no wig. Despite my pleading I
was not permitted to hang anyone! The scripts were written by the two
professors and seemed fairly realistic to me. I shall be fascinated to read the
results of this research later in the year.
Mostly, I think, the juries reached 'not guilty' verdicts which was entirely
correct but even so I was amazed at how many went for a guilty verdict. In none
of the scenarios was there anything definitive by way of evidence. No witnesses,
obviously, no medical evidence of physical trauma beyond slight bruising to the
victim's chest and wrist for which the medical report refused to offer any
explicit reason. (My wife, for example, only has to brush against the corner of
a table to produce a bruise the size of a soup plate!) So, to my mind, there
was absolutely no objective reason to find the man guilty but, of course, some
jurors are not objective, they are very subjective. They might, as I did, feel
that in some of the scenarios, the probability was that the man had raped her,
but as the lawyers and the 'judge' constantly reminded them, they had to be
absolutely sure of the defendant's guilt if they were going to bring in
a 'guilty' verdict. In none of the scenarios was that the case.
My tentative conclusion is that the demeanour of the witnesses is critical.
Oddly enough, my experience in directing plays confirms this observation. I
always remind my actors that when they are standing center stage declaiming
Shakespeare's immaculate verse they should not assume that the entire audience
are watching and listening, spellbound. Some of them can't understand
Elizabethan language, some of them are only there because the son or daughter
are in the play, some of them are wondering if the curtain will come down in
time for them to catch the last bus home, and so on, and so on. Ours is a
visual age not, like Shakespeare's, an aural age. Therefor, what is loosely
called 'body language' is of the utmost importance. The way an actor stands,
his gestures, his movement, tells an audience that can't quite follow all the
words, what is going on. In summary, one gesture is worth a thousand words! In
my opinion, much the same dynamic takes place in a courtroom. Visual images, I
would suggest, have a disproportionate effect on viewers - and the entire
multi-zillion pound advertising industry will confirm it!
Thus, I offer up, very tentatively, one suggestion; that in rape cases, and
perhaps others, the main protagonists, by which I mean the victim and the
defendant, should be screened in the way that security officers are screened in
terrorist trials. This, I think, would concentrate the minds of the jury on the
facts of the case rather than on visual, subliminal and possibly
misleading impressions.
(1) The Death List by Paul Johnston, paperback by MIRA publishers -
truly, a nail-biter!
First posted 21.1.08
