Beales of laughter: rank feminist rancour in the Grauniad*

Zoe Williams: a very silly woman.

Your humble Devil notes that Zoe Williams has decided that serial perjurer Gemma Beale is, in fact, a victim—a victim of the justice system...

... a system in which men are the norm and women the deviants.

And how has darling Zoe come to this conclusion? Why, because this serial perjurer is not just a serial perjurer but also a woman—and it is for this latter reason (rather than the serial perjury) that she was sentenced to 10 years.

These three ideas – a woman as ambassador for all women, a woman as a threat not to the individual but to the system, and a woman as a dishonesty time-bomb, waiting for the right sentencing conditions before she unleashes her falsehoods – all spring from the same well: a system in which men are the norm and women the deviants. However far any given woman has deviated from honourable, law-abiding behaviour – and unquestionably, Jemma Beale deviated a long way – she wears shackles of cultural expectation that are punitive indeed.

Well, no, Zoe. Jemma Beale was locked up because she lied, in court, repeatedly. And, as Timmy pointed out, the system just doesn't work if witnesses lie in court—that is why we have the crime of perjury. And, as he points out...

And yes, we do go after rich white men too. Both Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken served time for it.

To make this story all about women lying about rape—rather than the wider crime of perjury—is to deliberately and wilfully miss the point. But that's Zoe for you, eh?

What a little scamp she is.

There lingers this question over the length of sentence: 10 years is atypical; recent, similar cases have resulted in two-year sentences.

Really, Zoe? What "similar cases" were those—I mean, I notice that you neither link to them, nor give any other details...? In those cases, did a women report "four separate incidents [...], claiming [they] had been sexually assaulted by six men and raped by nine"; were they found guilty of "four counts of perjury and four counts of perverting the course of justice" and did an innocent man serve at least five years in prison as a result of those false claims?

Did these "similar cases" actually exist, Zoe—or did you just make them up? I fear that it might be the latter, you know.

You wee scamp, you.

But, just to put the icing on the cake, Zoe then decides that Jemma Beale must, poor dear, suffer from mental health issues.

If this were fiction, one’s next question would be about Beale’s mental health: plainly, no one turns their life into a construct of bogus victimhood for fun. But there is no place for that question...

No, Zoe—there is not. Because it doesn't really matter, you see—Jemma Beale lied repeatedly and did so (in one case, at least) with malice aforethought.

But in the days before the alleged assault, Mr McCormack said Beal had threatened to get him into trouble with the police.
...

Prosecutor John Price QC told Beale: 'You were already planning out what you were about to do – accuse him of attacking you.'

'It was the opportunity to do what you had been threatening to do which was to get Steven McCormack in trouble with the police...'

The problem with writing all of this behaviour off to "mental health issues", Zoe, is that we are constantly being told that people with mental health issues are just like us. Indeed, apparently, we all have mental health issues at some stage in our lives (your humble Devil's are largely measured in how many bottles of wine he drinks a night).

But if all women who make false rape allegations are, actually, suffering from mental health issues and thus should not be treated like the criminals that they so obviously are, then the perception is that anyone with mental health issues might do something similar. And so we start to wonder if people with admitted mental health issues might not bear a close watch on their behaviour; indeed, perhaps they should not be on the streets at all; perhaps, indeed, it might be better to lock them up—in some sort of camp. You know, a nice camp where they can work to free themselves from their troubles.

But I digress, and Zoe has more treats for us—as she demonstrates that she does not understand how the law works...

Arguably, a stiff sentence for a false allegation in itself compromises women’s access to justice: any reported rape, if it fails to secure a conviction, has the potential to be turned into a counter-accusation of perjury.

Hmmm. Well, no, not really.

Let me explain this concept to you, Zoe: in our courts, the prosecution has to convince the jury that the accused is "guilty beyond all reasonable doubt". So, if the accused is acquitted, that does not mean that the accuser lied—it just means that there was not enough evidence to persuade the jury that the accused was guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.

And, given the nature of rape, this is why—whilst not every trial leads to a conviction—the accuser is not done for perjury all the time. And this applies across the board—to every accuser and every witness, in every trial for every type of crime.

Come on, Zoe—this is pretty basic fucking stuff.

But wait—Zoe has another feminist complaint to make!

By this rationale, a mendacious woman has undermined the access to justice of all women, since she has made them less likely to be believed. There is common sense to this – rape defences hinge on the possibility that the putative victim is lying, which is made more plausible every time a woman lies. Yet it’s not something ever levelled at rapists, that they’ve made it more likely for other, innocent men to be convicted. Men never have to act as ambassadors for one another in a court of law.

Yes, they fucking do. There have been endless bloody changes to the way in which rape and sexual assault trials are conducted—including the accused no longer being able to cross-examine the victim. The law has been changed, so that men (not women) are compelled to demonstrate—through some kind of fucking voodoo, presumably—that the woman explicitly consented; and women cannot consent if they are intoxicated (the opposite does not apply, of course).

There were, at one point, proposals to reverse the Magna Carta-enshrined presumption of innocence for rape trials; and the MoJ was even rapped on the knuckles for issuing guidance that, essentially, told people that they had to show that they were not guilty—rather than the prosecution having to demonstrate that they were.

So, your statement, Zoe, is demonstrably fucking false. Your entire article, Zoe, is a tissue of lies, stupidity, and blinkered feminist mendacity.

J'accuse!

And, were the above actual crimes, Zoe, you'd be going down for 10 years too. And not in a good way.

^*I know, I know—not exactly news.