Kenneth Glad
The case has raised questions about how courts describe harm, blame and credibility. Campaigners say those choices can affect trust in the justice system.
A sentencing decision involving three teenage boys convicted of raping two young girls has brought new attention to how UK courts handle sexual violence and domestic abuse cases.
According to The Independent, Judge Nicholas Rowland spared the boys from jail, saying he wanted to “avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily”.
The newspaper reported that the backlash led the prime minister to say the case would be referred to the Court of Appeal.
Report finds recurring bias
Right to Equality reviewed analysed family court judgments involving domestic and sexual abuse and found gender bias and victim-blaming language in 72 per cent of them.
The report said discrediting was the most common form of victim-blaming, followed by behavioural blame and trivialisation. It also found mothers’ actions were often examined more harshly, while fathers’ conduct was more likely to be minimised or explained.
Dr Charlotte Proudman, a barrister and founder of Right to Equality, said: “As a barrister, I have stood in family courts and watched judges normalise abuse, trivialise trauma and silence survivors. This report gives voice to what victims have been telling us for decades: bias is real, it is embedded, and it is shaping decisions that affect children’s safety.”
Appeal judges criticised reasoning
One example cited by The Independent came from a judgment by Judge Robin Tolson, who questioned why a woman had not physically resisted her former partner.
He wrote: “My concern about this occasion centres on the idea that the mother did nothing physically to stop the father… because the mother was not in any sense pinned down on this occasion, but could easily, physically, have made life harder for the father. She did not do so.”
Ms Justice Russell later criticised the reasoning on appeal, saying it wrongly suggested a complainant had to physically resist to establish lack of consent.
Campaigners seek fuller transparency
A separate judgment reported by The Independent involved Recorder Roscoe, who questioned whether a woman would have silently endured forced sex for years.
He wrote: “The inherent probability of the mother silently submitting to forced sex, often multiple times a day, for several years seems to me to be low…”
Right to Equality is calling for more family court judgments to be published, mandatory training on gender bias and victim-blaming, and improved transcription systems.
MP Kirith Entwistle said: “Too many women have told me that the family courts felt like an extension of the abuse that they were trying to escape. The persistent, subtle undermining of victim-survivors found in published judgments demonstrates why victims of abuse have such low confidence in being treated fairly in our family justice system.”
Sources: The Independent
