Ruth Coppinger holds up thong in Dail

professore wrote: »

Personally I don't think her underwear was relevant either but the barrister thought it would play well with the jury. All sorts of "irrelevant" evidence is routinely used, like the whatsapp messages in the recent rugby trial. No one was protesting that.

Its up to the judge to stop the prosecution badgering the witness in this way.

That’s amusing because in a recent discussion about consent the topic of the WhatsApp messages being used as evidence was brought up. Plenty of posters objected to them being used as part of the prosecution. I’m not sure if you were one of them.

I wonder how many people have switched sides.

Harvey Attractive Baby wrote: »

And sometimes a girl will tan her arse incase she gets the ride, but her having a spray tan done doesn’t mean she’s asking for it

Don't know why your directing your childish retorts at me.


That was stated by the girl friend of the victim.

Hurrache wrote: »

Sometime it's not, but a track history will tell a different story. I'm far from a fan of her myself, we even had words before, but I don't go around "feminist agenda this, feminist agenda that". I can live with the fact we disagree on a great many things without feeling emasculated in the process.

There's very clear and destructive feminist agenda permeating every aspect of our lives, laws and our liberty right now.

You might not be able to see it but many of us do.

I'm astounded at the response from our Taoiseach and the minster to this latest topic de jour, where we have them both threatening to interfere with judicial processes all because of a case they know fluck all about.

All the while not one mention of the true victim in all of this, a 27 year old man who's life lies in ruins as a result of a false accusation of rape.

We are being ruled by a mob mentality driven by a bunch of gob****es on social media platforms who have nothing better to do then get outraged at every possible opportunity..

Dangerous times.

retro:electro wrote: »

Do you measure how “up for sex” a woman is by the type of underwear she has on? Since underwear tends to be worn, erm, under wear how can you even tell? Someone could already be in the process of raping a woman before they even notice what type of underwear she has on.

No I don't. But, as the text you quoted states, the underwear do have statistical implications about the disposition of the person towards sex. This doesn't mean that sexy underwear can't be worn for other purposes. Whether or not anyone else can see them is irrelevant to the quoted text, it is about what is implied about the woman's attitude towards sex.

Your argument here is the same conflation that is common when discussing this case. Nobody is saying "underwear=consent", that's not what the solicitor said (and this inequality is explicitly stated in the text you quoted). Somebody earlier said that the alleged victims friend said something about spray tan and shaved legs; those things also imply things about someones attitude towards sex , and could be brought up in the same way.

retro:electro wrote: »

You sound a bit outraged yourself there.

Hardly.

I’m not the one out on O’Connell St waving my jocks around..

Or screaming and shouting about any other cause for that matter.

I have a pain in my hole listening to gob****es screaming and shouting about theirs though..

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

That’s amusing because in a recent discussion about consent the topic of the WhatsApp messages being used as evidence was brought up. Plenty of posters objected to them being used as part of the prosecution. I’m not sure if you were one of them.

I wonder how many people have switched sides.

You realize it’s not a question of switching sides don’t you? It’s actually rather simple - as far as I can see (and feel free to link me to a post that contradicts this) no one has actually been in favour of the thong being presented as a simple tool to blacken the reputation of the accuser.

What a number of people HAVE said is that they can see cases where there may be evidential aspects where this could be justified, for example if it directly called a witness statement into question. That there are checks and balances on what can be used in court and how. And generally people have acknowledged that if it was simply brought up in summing up in that manner, rather than as an element of something more substantial to cause reasonable doubt, then that would be wrong. And, of course, that they weren’t privy to the full transcript of the court trial to allow full context. Indeed as one poster pointed out, Coppinger appears to fundamentally misunderstand how this type of evidence has been used in many cases, notably the Belfast case.

Which was pretty much perfectly consistent with the position of many on the WhatsApp messages- did they add evidential value or were they used purely to blacken one party in court to drive a desired outcome. The thing is, the nature of the Belfast trial was such that we had a far more detailed view of what went on (albeit still incomplete). And it was relatively clear there that the was little or no evidential value in the messages, as was picked up by a jury in their decision to acquit.

So actually what you’re positioning as “switching sides” appears to be an excellent example of congruent thinking by those posters.

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I'm not saying I agree with it but the use of the underwear in the case was to put the suggestion in the minds of the jury that the woman, at some point that evening, may have chosen the underwear on the basis that she might be sleeping with someone. Equally, she may not have considered that. We do not know, hence it was a suggested consideration by the barrister.

I imagine it was only brought up because the prosecution brought the girls sexual history (or lack of) into it, using it as a valid reason why there is no way she would have consented.

To put it bluntly the prosecution as one of their main reasons to convict on a rape charge was painting the girl as a beyond reproach innocent virgin, the defense TBF had to counter that someway. They are not allowed bring up anything about sexual history, but they are allowed counter within legal reason anything the prosecution base their case on.

There is very few details published about this case with only a few selective out of context quotes.

Even still it would appear the prosecutions case all but fell apart early on and they ended up clutching at straws.

Sorry, what relevancy does someones hair colour have? I know plenty of people who went to the protest on their lunch break.

PlaneSpeeking wrote: »

Front of today's Irish Mirror could have been subtitled "These People Will Never Hold A Job".

So judgemental.

PlaneSpeeking wrote: »

I apologise, I should of course have said "real" jobs.

I imagine there's a fair few activists in that crowd who'll end up as Trinity SU Officers or part time Gender Studies Lecturers.

A job is a job at the end of the day, who are we to judge?

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

It really does show the intellectual level of some. And as for those that thanked it ...

Absolutely no surprise there. The same few who were thanking posts suggesting a t-shirt could consent on behalf of a person yesterday.
The mind boggles.