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Everyone Deserves a Fair Trial | UK Column Interviews · UK Column Radio

0:08
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, This is Diane restmussing with UK Column. I'm
0:11
Speaker 1: really happy to be welcoming doctor Stuart Wayton back to
0:14
Speaker 1: UK Column. He has contributed in the past as the
0:17
Speaker 1: chair of the Scottish Union for Education, which is doing
0:20
Speaker 1: some amazing work up in Scotland fighting in doctrination and
0:24
Speaker 1: in favor of education for Scottish children. But today he
0:27
Speaker 1: is here speaking in a capacity in his world as
0:30
Speaker 1: an academic to tell the story of this ridiculous experience
0:35
Speaker 1: that he's had over the past few months as a
0:38
Speaker 1: senior lecturer at Abertay University. So again, welcome to UK
0:42
Speaker 1: Column Again, Stuart, it's great to have you here.
0:45
Speaker 3: Thank you.
0:46
Speaker 1: I guess I really wanted to speak with you today,
0:47
Speaker 1: as I said, to tell the story which has been
0:50
Speaker 1: in a few media sources.
0:52
Speaker 2: In the past, well past a little while.
0:54
Speaker 1: I know you've been supported by academics fract Freedom, the
0:57
Speaker 1: Committee for Academic Freedom, et cetera. But I think to
1:01
Speaker 1: hear the story from you, to go through what you've experienced,
1:06
Speaker 1: it really needs to be that story, to share what
1:09
Speaker 1: you've been through, because I really want people to understand
1:12
Speaker 1: exactly what universities are doing to academics.
1:15
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I had a guest lecture last I think
1:19
Speaker 3: it was October and it was three women from Justice,
1:25
Speaker 3: Fitness and Men's Scotland. They're a campaign group of women.
1:29
Speaker 3: I think it's in the case of the three women
1:31
Speaker 3: that turned up, I think it's their partners who have
1:33
Speaker 3: all been charged and found guilty of rape and in prison,
1:39
Speaker 3: and the campaign not around the individual cases, but around
1:47
Speaker 3: concerns that they have about the justice system in Scotland
1:51
Speaker 3: and in particular, well, there's a variety of other issues.
1:55
Speaker 3: In particular and the thing that I'm particularly interested in
1:58
Speaker 3: is the restriction of evidence in rape cases in Scotland
2:02
Speaker 3: because I've been looking at this for a bit of time.
2:06
Speaker 3: This connects to why the issue. So, for example, a
2:10
Speaker 3: couple of years ago, the Scottish government tried to get
2:13
Speaker 3: rid of or at least had we're going to have
2:15
Speaker 3: a pilot to get rid of juries in rape cases,
2:19
Speaker 3: which failed largely because lawyers basically down tools and said
2:24
Speaker 3: we refuse to cooperate with this. But they were trying
2:27
Speaker 3: to get rid of juries, and they're trying to get
2:29
Speaker 3: rid of juries because they say the conviction rate isn't
2:31
Speaker 3: high enough and essentially, which is something that I still
2:37
Speaker 3: think is mind boggling that this is argued without any embarrassment.
2:45
Speaker 3: The essential argument is the public believe in rape myths.
2:48
Speaker 3: In other words, their sexist, misogynist can't be trusted to
2:54
Speaker 3: be on juries, So she get rid of juries and
2:56
Speaker 3: have just judges who've been educated to be trauma formed
3:00
Speaker 3: and to understand rape in a more nuanced way than
3:05
Speaker 3: the idiot, deplorable public, which I think is astronomically elitist,
3:14
Speaker 3: and it turns law and juries on their heads. So
3:17
Speaker 3: rather than laws and laws reflecting the people and juries
3:22
Speaker 3: then coming together to reflect that, juries become seen as
3:27
Speaker 3: a problem that need to be managed by the professional
3:30
Speaker 3: class if you like. Anyway, that's a backdrop. So I
3:34
Speaker 3: was very interested in this issue, and I started to
3:37
Speaker 3: look into this issue of evidence being withheld from juries,
3:40
Speaker 3: which it has been significantly for a long time in Scotland.
3:47
Speaker 3: So I came across this group called Justice Winston in Scotland,
3:51
Speaker 3: group of women largely mothers, partners and so on, of
3:59
Speaker 3: people who who met each other in prison by accident,
4:04
Speaker 3: and found out that in almost all their cases they
4:07
Speaker 3: had very similar experiences of evidence being withheld. So this starts.
4:12
Speaker 3: They set up this group to say, look, there's something
4:14
Speaker 3: seriously wrong here with the Scottish justice system. So I
4:18
Speaker 3: thought this would be great. I'll invite them into my class.
4:20
Speaker 3: So I do it to forth year criminology class. I
4:23
Speaker 3: would describe myself as a critical criminologist, so I'm interested
4:28
Speaker 3: in looking at power and the abuse of power, the
4:32
Speaker 3: criminalization of different people in groups, and also the abuse
4:38
Speaker 3: of the justice system. And I saw this as a
4:42
Speaker 3: classic case of abuse by the justice system, which I
4:46
Speaker 3: think I can argue in evidence and which I'll come
4:50
Speaker 3: on to later. The Supreme Court of the UK agrees
4:54
Speaker 3: with me. Anyway, So I invite these women. They talked
4:58
Speaker 3: to the class. It absolutely finds twenty people in the class,
5:02
Speaker 3: have a discussion, ask questions, had emailed the class to
5:07
Speaker 3: explain that this was going to happen, who was coming
5:09
Speaker 3: in and so on, and it was absolutely fine. But
5:12
Speaker 3: then there is an online sort of explosion by a
5:19
Speaker 3: woman I think in particular called Ellie Wilson, who is
5:24
Speaker 3: a rape victim and hates Jim's the Justice for Innocent
5:29
Speaker 3: Men Scotland group, which she sees as a campaigning for
5:35
Speaker 3: rape apologists. And they'd also there'd been a kind of
5:38
Speaker 3: online spat between one of the people from Justice in
5:43
Speaker 3: Scotland and ed Ellie Wilson where things were said, which
5:47
Speaker 3: I don't think we're particularly clever or diplomatic, but that
5:52
Speaker 3: led to a certain tension between them. So when this
5:56
Speaker 3: woman and her supporter, she's on TikTok, she's got like
5:59
Speaker 3: some five thousand supporters, so and she just a kind
6:02
Speaker 3: of quite a famous activist around the issue of victims
6:10
Speaker 3: of rape and so on. And when she found out
6:13
Speaker 3: that the group had spoken at Abertay, or at least
6:17
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure it was her, launched kind of tirade
6:21
Speaker 3: against Abertay, tirade against Justice Swinson in Scotland and then
6:25
Speaker 3: against me. And then all of a sudden, there was
6:29
Speaker 3: three hundred complaints came into the university from various sources.
6:36
Speaker 3: As it turns out, the vast, vast majority of them
6:39
Speaker 3: came from outside the university. But he also had a
6:42
Speaker 3: few kind of student activists in the university, and so
6:46
Speaker 3: the university panicked, or at least I would say they panicked.
6:51
Speaker 3: They put out a press release saying that they disagreed
6:55
Speaker 3: with Gym's and so on, and that they were sensitive
6:58
Speaker 3: to victims, trauma and so on. The media then got
7:04
Speaker 3: involved and started to write pretty despicable articles about me,
7:12
Speaker 3: in particular, reading all sorts of things they usual. They
7:16
Speaker 3: like to see things like field Brexit Party candidate, because
7:21
Speaker 3: I stood for the Brexit Party purely on the interest
7:25
Speaker 3: of democracy. But anyway, there you go that I'd said
7:29
Speaker 3: that the N word in class, because this is an
7:31
Speaker 3: earth thing, that students had gone to the papers to
7:33
Speaker 3: say that I had used this word in a class,
7:37
Speaker 3: a totally different class, and various other things that they're
7:43
Speaker 3: trying to you know, I'd done a campaign where I
7:47
Speaker 3: said you shouldn't criminalize parents for smacking, so that must
7:50
Speaker 3: pro smacking, lunatic and other stuff. Whatever it was. They're
7:55
Speaker 3: just pilot all in to try and discredit me, when
7:59
Speaker 3: all I was doing was invite these women in to
8:05
Speaker 3: discuss miscarriages of justice. So there's a huge pylon. I
8:11
Speaker 3: don't teach directly to the students, then I had to
8:15
Speaker 3: do my teaching online. There's an investigation not into me,
8:19
Speaker 3: but into the issue itself, which was ongoing for about
8:23
Speaker 3: five months. The newspapers continued with some of the kind
8:29
Speaker 3: of accusations and outrage. And also the thing that I
8:33
Speaker 3: think is again another thing that is astonishing is that
8:37
Speaker 3: even the conservative press and the sort of local newspaper
8:40
Speaker 3: the Courier, have or appeared to have absolutely no concern
8:46
Speaker 3: that there might be hundreds and hundreds of men in
8:49
Speaker 3: prison in Scotland who haven't had a fair trial. And
8:54
Speaker 3: that is I would argue, this is the greatest legal
8:56
Speaker 3: scandal in Scottish history and there's very little being said
9:00
Speaker 3: about it in the press, touch on it, but too
9:04
Speaker 3: little else. But anyway, a week after, which is a
9:07
Speaker 3: good timing, a week after this happened, so all the yeah,
9:10
Speaker 3: there's graffiti on the wall as well. By opposite my
9:13
Speaker 3: window there was graffiti saying F wait and he's a
9:21
Speaker 3: rape apologist, He's a racist c U n T F
9:27
Speaker 3: this F that all over this the High School of Dundee,
9:30
Speaker 3: which faced my office. There was also a counter lecture
9:36
Speaker 3: at my university organized by Police Scotland and I think
9:41
Speaker 3: it was Dundee Women's group, you know, I mean, I
9:46
Speaker 3: don't know what I by. Anyway, then students were saying, yeah,
9:49
Speaker 3: we need this because you know, there's no free speech
9:51
Speaker 3: in Stuart Waiting's lectures and so on, so all sorts
9:57
Speaker 3: of stuff, and a little demonstration as well, was a
9:59
Speaker 3: demonstration Friday. Hardly anyone as far as I know, turned
10:03
Speaker 3: up to the counter lecture, and similarly, the demonstration was
10:09
Speaker 3: very small as far as I know, And none of
10:12
Speaker 3: this had to do with any of my students at
10:15
Speaker 3: bar War. I think one of my students ended up
10:18
Speaker 3: being one of the complainers, although I assume that happened
10:22
Speaker 3: after the kind of pylon and it'd become one of
10:25
Speaker 3: those things that you get involved with if you're that
10:27
Speaker 3: way inclined. So that was the situation. A week later,
10:36
Speaker 3: very usefully, the Supreme Court, which had been looking into
10:39
Speaker 3: this issue, gave its ruling on it. And it's ruling
10:42
Speaker 3: was that since twenty thirteen, and I would say at
10:46
Speaker 3: least twenty thirteen Scotland and the way the judges have
10:53
Speaker 3: been restricting evidence meant that essentially they were breaching Article
10:58
Speaker 3: six the right to have a fair trial. Right now,
11:01
Speaker 3: this and again, this is the thing I would sort
11:04
Speaker 3: of emphasise if I could say, I would just keep
11:06
Speaker 3: repeating this. This is a scandal. This is Scotland, not
11:11
Speaker 3: North Korea. And the Supreme Court, even though I would
11:15
Speaker 3: say the Supreme Court is almost as politically correct for
11:20
Speaker 3: want of a better term, as the justice system in
11:23
Speaker 3: Scotland and biased in a very feminist direction in terms
11:28
Speaker 3: of its perspective, which again I think I could prove
11:32
Speaker 3: fairly easily in terms of how they use the term
11:34
Speaker 3: rape myths constantly, as if it's just a fact that
11:39
Speaker 3: all of us idiots have these rape myths in our head.
11:42
Speaker 3: But even they had to conclude that Scotland was essentially
11:47
Speaker 3: you can get a fair trial because of restrictions of evidence,
11:50
Speaker 3: and that's what happens. Though over a period of time,
11:55
Speaker 3: appeal court after appeal court after appeal court had been
11:58
Speaker 3: trying to look at rape cases and work out essentially
12:03
Speaker 3: how to justify limiting evidence right because you know, to
12:08
Speaker 3: have too much evidence about their past or about character
12:11
Speaker 3: or whatever is to re traumatize. And essentially this is
12:15
Speaker 3: the paper I'm writing at the minute. I would say,
12:18
Speaker 3: you've got a situation in Scotland where you have a
12:21
Speaker 3: victim justice system rather than the justice system which prioritizes
12:26
Speaker 3: or thinks about the complainer as a victim, especially in
12:32
Speaker 3: rape cases. And of course the reason that this is
12:34
Speaker 3: such a problem is that until a verdict, there is
12:38
Speaker 3: no victim right, and the terminology they use is increasingly
12:42
Speaker 3: about victims. The way the core operates, the entire framework
12:48
Speaker 3: of the legal framework, the practicalities, the policies that they've developed,
12:53
Speaker 3: and so on, are all to try and protect the
12:59
Speaker 3: victim in speech marks, who of course doesn't exist until
13:05
Speaker 3: the verdict, because the victim might be a man who's
13:07
Speaker 3: been falsely accused in having his life potentially destroyed by
13:10
Speaker 3: that false allegation. And so that's what had happened. Judges
13:16
Speaker 3: have been writing these statements, assessing appeal cases and essentially
13:23
Speaker 3: trying to work out how to limit that evidence in
13:28
Speaker 3: a kind of legalistic, administrative, technical way, and they had
13:32
Speaker 3: done it to such an extent that even a Supreme
13:35
Speaker 3: Court had to conclude that you essentially are breaching Article
13:39
Speaker 3: six and you cannot get a fair trial right. Again.
13:42
Speaker 3: This is astonishing. This is an absolute scandal. There are
13:46
Speaker 3: hundreds that could be up to one thousand men in
13:48
Speaker 3: prison who haven't had a fair trial and have been
13:51
Speaker 3: sort of labeled as rapists, and that is massive as
13:56
Speaker 3: far as I'm concerned, and that is something that should
13:59
Speaker 3: be being looked at. Which is why I was looking
14:01
Speaker 3: at it, which is why I invited the justice fins
14:04
Speaker 3: men Scotland women in to talk about it. And of
14:07
Speaker 3: course what I think is it's like a perfect case.
14:13
Speaker 3: In fact, one of my students even said this, right,
14:15
Speaker 3: because part of my don'm going on and on, but anyway,
14:17
Speaker 3: I'll just got to give you the whole thing. So
14:20
Speaker 3: one of my students said to me, this is amazing
14:25
Speaker 3: what's happening to you because it's exactly what we've been
14:29
Speaker 3: discussing in class, right, Because in class it's not that
14:32
Speaker 3: I was just discussing rape trials. I was discussing the
14:36
Speaker 3: issue of a therapeutic culture, the rise of victimhood, the
14:43
Speaker 3: power of victim hede, and the development of the victim
14:47
Speaker 3: within the criminal justice system. And my argument was we
14:50
Speaker 3: now have a criminal justice system and institutions and a
14:54
Speaker 3: culture that has elevated the moral status if you like victims.
15:01
Speaker 3: It's become a new type of morality to protect the vulnerable,
15:06
Speaker 3: and the elites operate around this. But it has potentially
15:09
Speaker 3: even though it sounds very caring and humanitarian, it has
15:13
Speaker 3: potentially disastrous and authoritarian dimensions to it, like this for example,
15:22
Speaker 3: and then like what happened to me. So, you know,
15:26
Speaker 3: the very act of having these women come in and
15:31
Speaker 3: talk and raising this issue and questioning the rape system,
15:37
Speaker 3: in the rape trial system in Scotland was essentially, I
15:41
Speaker 3: would argue, seen as unacceptable that you're not really allowed
15:45
Speaker 3: to do this. This re traumatizers, and this is the
15:48
Speaker 3: language constantly being used that what I'm doing is traumatizing
15:53
Speaker 3: my students, retraumatizing victims. And even so for example, I
15:59
Speaker 3: think it's conservative spokespersonal equality and victimhood or something something
16:05
Speaker 3: like that in Scotland came out recently and said, yes,
16:08
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court ruling is is quite concerning because it
16:13
Speaker 3: can be re traumatizing for victims. This is the conservative
16:20
Speaker 3: person when the MSP's in Scotland. So no mention of
16:24
Speaker 3: it's it's concerning that our justice system is you know,
16:28
Speaker 3: like Iran in North Korea, we are basically locking people
16:32
Speaker 3: up without allowing them to have a fair trial. No mention,
16:36
Speaker 3: no concern, And that that's one of my things I've
16:39
Speaker 3: been saying for years that there's this issue is seriously
16:44
Speaker 3: problematic because across the political spectrum, nobody is prepared to
16:48
Speaker 3: question the victim narrative, especially around rape cases, and not
16:54
Speaker 3: only do they not not question it, they promote it.
16:58
Speaker 3: So the violence against women and girls, you know, the
17:02
Speaker 3: category of that has been celebrated and promoted by the
17:07
Speaker 3: Tories as much as anybody. So Theresa May said it
17:10
Speaker 3: was one of her third things she's most proud of
17:12
Speaker 3: as her work on this issue. I've even said domestic
17:17
Speaker 3: violence should be treated as seriously as terrorism. Right. It's
17:20
Speaker 3: these sort of statements that have been made over the
17:23
Speaker 3: last ten to fifteen years. So I knew what I
17:28
Speaker 3: was getting into, So I wasn't that surprised at the
17:32
Speaker 3: reaction and the defensiveness, to the extent that my university
17:38
Speaker 3: was defensive, because but I mean, the good thing is
17:41
Speaker 3: now my university the investigation has happened and they've said
17:43
Speaker 3: I didn't do anything wrong. But at the same time
17:47
Speaker 3: they were their reaction was quite nervous and arguably didn't
17:53
Speaker 3: necessarily help things very much. And that, again, which I've
17:58
Speaker 3: written about extensive, I think, is because universities have increasingly
18:05
Speaker 3: adopted a relationship with their students that is rather infantile,
18:11
Speaker 3: where anything that has a slight hint of victim who
18:17
Speaker 3: had associated with it they're kind of absolutely all in
18:21
Speaker 3: in the therapeutic language, if we must support you and
18:24
Speaker 3: protect you and look after you and so on. And
18:27
Speaker 3: of course in the context of academic ideas, that's a
18:30
Speaker 3: disaster and I would argue it to the biggest academic
18:33
Speaker 3: freedom is the way that students seen is needing to
18:37
Speaker 3: be protected from difficult ideas. So they're now looking into
18:42
Speaker 3: whether they should have trigger warnings at the university, whether
18:45
Speaker 3: they should whether academics should have to sort of fill
18:53
Speaker 3: out a form to invite speakers in the future, because
18:56
Speaker 3: previously there was no need to do that. Academics would
19:00
Speaker 3: trusted to invite who they liked. So that's where we
19:05
Speaker 3: are at the minute. This I'm in a sense vindicated.
19:12
Speaker 3: I'm vindicated in terms of what the Supreme Court said
19:17
Speaker 3: because that's what I was saying is an issue, and
19:20
Speaker 3: they've said it absolutely is an issue. The Scottish government
19:24
Speaker 3: have said they are basically doing absolutely nothing about this,
19:27
Speaker 3: so in the media saying almost nothing about it. The
19:31
Speaker 3: media have shown themselves to be utterly appalling in terms
19:35
Speaker 3: of basic liberal humanitarian principles of justice. They've been quite
19:45
Speaker 3: despicable in their treatment of me and their treatment of
19:51
Speaker 3: the justice Friends of Men Scotland women who are fantastic
19:56
Speaker 3: and they're doing a fantastic job at trying to make
20:00
Speaker 3: this into an issue, although it's very difficult because you know,
20:05
Speaker 3: it's nobody's nobody's interested. That's one sided victim narrative, that
20:11
Speaker 3: is incredibly authoritarian and dangerous. But as at the moment,
20:18
Speaker 3: we'll have to see what happens, because they're going to
20:22
Speaker 3: have to do something and a lot of these men
20:23
Speaker 3: are going to have to have their trials looked at again,
20:26
Speaker 3: but the Scottish government certainly aren't going to help them
20:28
Speaker 3: with that.
20:29
Speaker 2: Thanks for That's I know it's a really hard thing
20:31
Speaker 2: to go through. Thank you for that.
20:34
Speaker 1: It's interesting what you said about therapeutic education and students
20:37
Speaker 1: and you know a colleague that we both have in common,
20:39
Speaker 1: Professor Jennessayes.
20:40
Speaker 2: I would refer our.
20:42
Speaker 1: Listeners to go look at his work on the rise
20:44
Speaker 1: of therapeutic education and talking about all this about safe
20:48
Speaker 1: spaces and traumatization of the students and the support animals
20:53
Speaker 1: and the warm blake gets in the cups of tea
20:55
Speaker 1: or you know, whatever they're providing.
20:56
Speaker 2: But then we look at what you went through.
20:59
Speaker 1: Would you say that Abertay University supported you or did
21:02
Speaker 1: they just kind of throw you under the.
21:04
Speaker 2: Bus in the whole situation.
21:08
Speaker 3: It's difficult. I don't want to slag them off too much.
21:10
Speaker 3: They are my employers, and you know, they did do
21:13
Speaker 3: an investigation where they eventually have said, you know, there
21:17
Speaker 3: was no wrongdoing here. But initially there was a statement
21:26
Speaker 3: that came out that seemed to suggest that I had
21:29
Speaker 3: not followed the correct procedures in inviting these women, which
21:34
Speaker 3: wasn't true. And I think arguably that helped find the
21:39
Speaker 3: flames and certainly helped the online activists to think that
21:47
Speaker 3: they could potentially get me sacked because of the way
21:50
Speaker 3: it was discussed. But as I say, you know, they've
21:54
Speaker 3: done their investigation and they've come out and said, well,
21:57
Speaker 3: this essentially I didn't do anything. I mean. The other
22:02
Speaker 3: side of it, of course, is I know a lot
22:04
Speaker 3: of people wrote to the university complaining about how management
22:07
Speaker 3: treated me. So you know, is there going to be
22:12
Speaker 3: an investigation into that? I think I think we both
22:16
Speaker 3: know the answer to that question. But anyway, I'm not
22:19
Speaker 3: particularly interested in causing trouble for my university. You know,
22:24
Speaker 3: it's it is, It is what it is I think
22:28
Speaker 3: I think we would both agree that this is not
22:31
Speaker 3: unusual that universities respond in this way, and that there
22:35
Speaker 3: is a nervousness because of the kind of cultural climate
22:38
Speaker 3: that limit. But I also think that universities have created
22:42
Speaker 3: this road for their own back because of the increasingly
22:47
Speaker 3: therapeutic way that they relate to students. But it's you know,
22:51
Speaker 3: for for them and for managers, and you haven't really
22:54
Speaker 3: related to the Scottish government and all the different kind
22:58
Speaker 3: of legal tech educational frameworks that are pushed onto universities.
23:05
Speaker 3: I can understand that they were in a difficult situation,
23:09
Speaker 3: but I also think universities would do themselves a favor
23:15
Speaker 3: by being a little bit more supportive of the principle
23:22
Speaker 3: of academic freedom, especially when I'm right. If I was
23:29
Speaker 3: talking rubbish, right, I mean, if what I was saying
23:32
Speaker 3: was absolute garbage and just made up, then you know,
23:36
Speaker 3: you could say this, We've got concerns about there's a
23:38
Speaker 3: serious bias here. As I say, within a week of
23:42
Speaker 3: me saying this, the Supreme Court had come out and
23:45
Speaker 3: Robert stamped it and said, yeah, you can't get a
23:48
Speaker 3: fair trial in Scotland. I mean that in a sense
23:52
Speaker 3: not to be overly egotistical. I should be celebrated as
23:58
Speaker 3: an academic who spotted a problem, who wrote about a problem,
24:03
Speaker 3: who helped campaign around a problem that has supported a
24:07
Speaker 3: group of women whose husbands and sons and fathers are
24:13
Speaker 3: potentially in prison having not committed a crime, or at
24:17
Speaker 3: the very least having not received a fair trial. And
24:20
Speaker 3: that for anyone who is liberal or radical or reasonable,
24:26
Speaker 3: should be something that is seen as good. The work
24:29
Speaker 3: I have done, I would argue, is entirely defensible, entirely good,
24:35
Speaker 3: good for society, good for Scotland, and good for anybody
24:38
Speaker 3: involved in the criminal justice system. Of course that's not
24:41
Speaker 3: exactly how it's perceived, but we live in strange times.
24:46
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree, and I'd like to get into that
24:48
Speaker 1: a bit more and your work around this. It is
24:51
Speaker 1: interesting as well, just to support what you said about
24:54
Speaker 1: universities in general, based on my experience at Edinburg Naker
24:58
Speaker 1: University when I was that, well, anytime there's any sort
25:02
Speaker 1: of complaint, we have to investigate. So it's sort of
25:04
Speaker 1: a policy and institutional policy. Not necessarily that they were
25:08
Speaker 1: picking on Steward or picking on Diane, but just that
25:11
Speaker 1: this is what they are told that they have to
25:13
Speaker 1: do and it's just a general policy as difficult as
25:17
Speaker 1: it is for those of us who go through it.
25:20
Speaker 1: So I think that's an important point that she made there.
25:23
Speaker 1: And also I think it's worth noting the legislation around
25:26
Speaker 1: the Academic Higher Education Academic Freedom Act. It only covers
25:32
Speaker 1: England and Wales, which you know that our colleagues and
25:35
Speaker 1: academics to Academic Freedom have done a lot of work
25:39
Speaker 1: campaigning towards that, but of course, as you know as
25:42
Speaker 1: well as I do, it doesn't apply in Scotland. So
25:45
Speaker 1: I think that's also something to note for those of
25:48
Speaker 1: us listening to this conversation. I also wanted to say
25:53
Speaker 1: as well, it's fascinating.
25:56
Speaker 2: To me that it was women who were.
25:58
Speaker 1: There speaking on behalf half of men that they care for,
26:02
Speaker 1: and that they still did this to you and to
26:06
Speaker 1: the women. And you know, when we think about there's
26:09
Speaker 1: to me it seems like there's kind of this hierarchy
26:12
Speaker 1: of who can be traumatized and who can't, and who's allowed.
26:15
Speaker 2: To be a victim and who isn't. It seems as
26:18
Speaker 2: though the women who are there who miss their husbands or.
26:21
Speaker 1: Their fathers or their sons or are sad about that
26:24
Speaker 1: and trying to seek justice for those that they care
26:27
Speaker 1: about that they are just as much of if we
26:30
Speaker 1: want to use the word victim, which I don't really
26:32
Speaker 1: like that word, but they are just as victimized as
26:35
Speaker 1: you are, and as much as the men who are imprisoned,
26:38
Speaker 1: because they're just in the middle of the system trying
26:40
Speaker 1: to speak out on their behalf and then they're being
26:43
Speaker 1: silenced as well, despite the fact that it's also affecting
26:45
Speaker 1: their lives.
26:46
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, absolutely, I mean, there is a very clear
26:51
Speaker 3: framework of who is and who is not able to
26:56
Speaker 3: be seen as a victor, which is highly political and
27:02
Speaker 3: it has to fit within a kind of politically correct
27:06
Speaker 3: framework for it to be established. And as soon as
27:11
Speaker 3: as soon as someone questions the accepted victim narrative, you know,
27:16
Speaker 3: they come down on you like a ton of bricks.
27:18
Speaker 3: There's no real interest or concern. I mean, the thing
27:22
Speaker 3: I'm hoping is that some kind of documentary has done
27:27
Speaker 3: about these women and their cases, because you know, I mean,
27:31
Speaker 3: I genuinely think you know that. I mean, people love
27:35
Speaker 3: the true crime stories, you know, you get them, and
27:38
Speaker 3: they're almost always a bit in America, but this is
27:41
Speaker 3: a true crime, stroke or not crime, as the case
27:45
Speaker 3: may be. Situation that is massive. I mean, it is
27:49
Speaker 3: a massive, massive thing that you've systematically been locking them
27:56
Speaker 3: up and charging them and finding them guilty of a
27:59
Speaker 3: race while not allowing juries to hear evidence that would
28:06
Speaker 3: make I mean that mine has already fallen out, but
28:09
Speaker 3: if I had here, it would fall out. It's the
28:12
Speaker 3: evidence that's being with held from juries is mind boggling,
28:15
Speaker 3: absolutely mind boggling. And the thing I think is even
28:20
Speaker 3: more important than that is what this tells us about
28:24
Speaker 3: where the criminal justice system is at the minute, and
28:28
Speaker 3: how elitist it is, and how it is adopted for
28:31
Speaker 3: one of a better term a walk stroke victim framework
28:36
Speaker 3: for developing And it's why I think defending law and
28:43
Speaker 3: defending liberal legal principles has become almost revolutionary now. And
28:49
Speaker 3: the defense lawyers, by accident, find themselves in this incredibly
28:54
Speaker 3: radical situation of standing up for basic principles. You know,
28:59
Speaker 3: innocent and guilty, you know, the need to use evidence,
29:04
Speaker 3: common sense, the outlook of the reasonable person, all these
29:09
Speaker 3: things that were foundational, especially in the twentieth century, in
29:13
Speaker 3: terms of how a good collective, public and ethical morally
29:22
Speaker 3: just sort of justice system would develop. They're all founded
29:26
Speaker 3: on these principles. I mean, they're profound principles that everyone
29:29
Speaker 3: on paper would say they agree with, and they're all
29:31
Speaker 3: being destroyed and this is a perfect example of that.
29:35
Speaker 3: I'm sure you could look elsewhere in the couple justice
29:37
Speaker 3: system and find very similar problems. But that's massive as
29:42
Speaker 3: far as I'm concerned, And as I say, ultimately, hopefully,
29:48
Speaker 3: and I don't know how many years this will take,
29:50
Speaker 3: this will be recognized as the biggest legal scandal in
29:54
Speaker 3: Scottish possibly UK history, and the people who've been involved
29:58
Speaker 3: in it and have helped push and promote this situation,
30:04
Speaker 3: get us to this, to get us where we are,
30:07
Speaker 3: will hopefully eventually be held to account.
30:10
Speaker 1: So if you could talk us through, as this is
30:12
Speaker 1: er area of expertise, what would it look like to
30:15
Speaker 1: you to have a fair trial for men who are
30:18
Speaker 1: accused of rape and how does that compare to what
30:21
Speaker 1: actually happens?
30:22
Speaker 2: Since happened?
30:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what's basically happened is there was a concern
30:27
Speaker 3: and this concern was already being looked at in the
30:29
Speaker 3: mid eighties, so this is a long time that there
30:33
Speaker 3: was a concern that women in the court setting were
30:37
Speaker 3: being badgered by defense lawyers and humiliated, and evidence that
30:41
Speaker 3: had absolutely nothing to do with the case was being
30:44
Speaker 3: used to try and paint them out as slags and
30:48
Speaker 3: prostitutes and loose women and all the rest of it. Right,
30:52
Speaker 3: So there's this kind of concern that there's this moralistic, conservative,
30:59
Speaker 3: traditional list, misogynistic, or at least sexist framework of how
31:06
Speaker 3: the duty system works, so that these women were coming
31:09
Speaker 3: in and being destroyed by lawyers. Now, to some extent,
31:14
Speaker 3: I think that there there's a truth to this, and
31:17
Speaker 3: I do think that the criminal justice system was relatively
31:21
Speaker 3: poor on issues to do with domestic violence in particular,
31:26
Speaker 3: but also in some cases this would have been true
31:29
Speaker 3: in rape cases. So they tried to look at this
31:34
Speaker 3: and they said, well, what we should do is we
31:36
Speaker 3: should bring out a new system that you can't introduce
31:38
Speaker 3: evidence unless you already go to a judge prior to
31:43
Speaker 3: this in a preliminary hearing. And there's these two sections
31:48
Speaker 3: called section two seven four two seven five, which essentially
31:51
Speaker 3: mean you have to go along as the defense and
31:54
Speaker 3: say these are the questions that we wanted to put
31:57
Speaker 3: in court. And someone will look at that and say, well, okay,
32:01
Speaker 3: but you can ask that, but you can't ask that.
32:03
Speaker 3: You can ask that and so on, so there's there's
32:05
Speaker 3: limits to it. It's a framework, part of the framework
32:09
Speaker 3: of what they call rape shields, right, so what you
32:11
Speaker 3: want to try and shield the woman from unfair questioning. Now,
32:19
Speaker 3: I don't know what to think of that in terms
32:21
Speaker 3: of whether I think that framework should exist or shouldn't exist.
32:25
Speaker 3: As it happens, I think what should happen is that
32:27
Speaker 3: the judge, like he would in any normal trial, should
32:33
Speaker 3: say something that is inadmissible and you should shut up
32:36
Speaker 3: the defense lawyer if he's taking it down a road
32:39
Speaker 3: that's got nothing to do with the case itself. Right.
32:44
Speaker 3: So that's the framework. Okay, So I accept that it's
32:47
Speaker 3: a difficult framework. It's a difficult balance, right, but it's
32:50
Speaker 3: a balance that I think the professionals and criminal justice
32:53
Speaker 3: system should be should be able to manage. How they
32:56
Speaker 3: manage that is open to debate. What's happened is that
33:03
Speaker 3: for twenty years, or approximately twenty years, could be more,
33:07
Speaker 3: could be slightly less. I'd say probably more. The justice
33:12
Speaker 3: system Scottish government has been turning to academic feminists and saying,
33:19
Speaker 3: what do you think of what we're doing. Are we
33:23
Speaker 3: doing enough in this situation? And again, this is another
33:28
Speaker 3: one of those things that you just think it should
33:32
Speaker 3: be obvious to anybody that this is a problem because
33:35
Speaker 3: basically they say openly time and time and time again,
33:39
Speaker 3: we want to increase the rate of convictions in rape cases, right,
33:43
Speaker 3: And this is because the rate of conviction in rape
33:46
Speaker 3: cases in Scotland has historically been around fifty percent, whereas
33:49
Speaker 3: in other cases murder and so on, it's much higher
33:52
Speaker 3: than that. Now, I would say it's obvious, and it
33:56
Speaker 3: might not explain everything, but it's obvious that the reason
33:59
Speaker 3: of the name, reason that that's the case is because
34:01
Speaker 3: rape cases are very difficult because there's no evidence. There's
34:05
Speaker 3: no evidence in a lot of cases. And Thomas Ross,
34:08
Speaker 3: who's been the best bravest case who's spoken out on this,
34:14
Speaker 3: just says this, and he's done seen many rape trials
34:17
Speaker 3: and he says, you know, there's often there's eight forms
34:18
Speaker 3: of evidence. Often in a murder trial, in a rape trial,
34:21
Speaker 3: there's one her word against his, it's not nothing else.
34:28
Speaker 3: So that's obvious, right, That is common sense. Now I
34:31
Speaker 3: might not explain everything, but the kind of the myth
34:35
Speaker 3: The real myth that's been kind of pushed for a
34:38
Speaker 3: few decades now is the reason that this these convictions
34:42
Speaker 3: are low is because the public are essentially sexist or ignorant.
34:48
Speaker 3: They don't understand, they have certain preconceptions and so on,
34:54
Speaker 3: and so they need to be educated out of that.
34:57
Speaker 3: So the judge already will say certain things about you know,
35:01
Speaker 3: you shouldn't think this about rabe, shouldn't think that about rape.
35:04
Speaker 3: So they already kind of try and frame it in
35:07
Speaker 3: a way to make surely the jury aren't believing in
35:12
Speaker 3: rape myths has seen and so that that's underlying concern.
35:19
Speaker 3: And then people have been appealing. So they've been appealing
35:22
Speaker 3: and saying, well, look, I wasn't allowed to use this evidence,
35:25
Speaker 3: and I wasn't allowed to use that evidence. It's got
35:27
Speaker 3: the appeal court, and the appeal court has been restricting it,
35:32
Speaker 3: and they've been restricting it partly because over and over
35:35
Speaker 3: again feminists have been doing this research with the support
35:38
Speaker 3: of just about all politicians and the Hollywood system, civil service,
35:42
Speaker 3: the coming justice system itself, all pushing in a certain direction,
35:48
Speaker 3: and the research says you're not doing enough. You're not
35:52
Speaker 3: doing enough to restrict evidence you're not doing enough for this,
35:55
Speaker 3: You're not doing enough for that. More must be done, right,
35:57
Speaker 3: So they keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and anyone
36:01
Speaker 3: who raises a doubt about this is automatically labeled as
36:05
Speaker 3: problematic and someone who believes in rape myths. So you've
36:10
Speaker 3: had all this, all this research, all this political weight,
36:12
Speaker 3: all the kind of in a sense, the criminal justice
36:16
Speaker 3: system that feels the need to morally legitimate itself, I
36:21
Speaker 3: would argue, And they've done this by adopting this feminist
36:26
Speaker 3: stroke victim framework. So they have adopted a more restrictive
36:32
Speaker 3: framework in court, and more and more evidence is limited. Right.
36:36
Speaker 3: And one of the ways, I mean, I don't know
36:39
Speaker 3: how much detail you want on this, but one of
36:41
Speaker 3: the ways they do this, for example, is they say
36:46
Speaker 3: sex is a singular act, right, that it is not
36:50
Speaker 3: an act in general. Right, someone who says or someone
36:55
Speaker 3: who has sex with someone wants if they have sex
36:59
Speaker 3: with them again, that is a separate act. Right now,
37:02
Speaker 3: That's true. Right. But what they then do is they say, well,
37:08
Speaker 3: so you get these cases and this one particular springs
37:12
Speaker 3: to mind, and say, well, okay, so he says that
37:17
Speaker 3: four weeks after the event she sent him photographs of
37:21
Speaker 3: herself naked and says do you want to have sex?
37:27
Speaker 3: And they say that's irrelevant because each act is separate.
37:32
Speaker 3: What happened four weeks prior hare's got nothing to do
37:37
Speaker 3: with what happened four weeks later, right, So they say
37:41
Speaker 3: four weeks that's it's irrelevant. And then you have this
37:46
Speaker 3: convoluted conversation where they say, well, what if it was
37:49
Speaker 3: a few days later, And one of the Appeal Court
37:54
Speaker 3: judges will say, well, if it's if it's two days later,
37:58
Speaker 3: then perhaps that's relevant, and then and another one says, yes,
38:01
Speaker 3: but what happens at one situation is different to what
38:06
Speaker 3: happens at another situation, so even if it's two days later,
38:10
Speaker 3: that is a separate situation, So that they try and
38:13
Speaker 3: create this kind of logical fallacy. And it's funny because
38:16
Speaker 3: I'd called it a logical fallacy, and then the Supreme
38:18
Speaker 3: Court have also called it a logical fallacy because they're
38:21
Speaker 3: trying to construct kind of legally s logical frameworks for
38:27
Speaker 3: how and why you should be able to limit this evidence. Right.
38:31
Speaker 3: So there's things like text messages between people where they're saying, yeah,
38:36
Speaker 3: oh yeah, we definitely should be doing this tonight, right,
38:38
Speaker 3: in terms of certain forms of sex or people sending
38:42
Speaker 3: images of themselves, So people having sex again after they've
38:46
Speaker 3: allegedly been raped, and they say that evidence is irrelevant
38:52
Speaker 3: because it doesn't tell us what happened at this time
38:55
Speaker 3: and at this place. Right, that is a separate act.
38:59
Speaker 3: And so all this evidence, right, and you think, well,
39:02
Speaker 3: what's that going to do with humiliation? Right, what's that
39:04
Speaker 3: going to do with their background? What's that going to
39:06
Speaker 3: do with trying to prove they're a prostitute or a
39:08
Speaker 3: loose woman or anything. This is just they're trying to
39:10
Speaker 3: use evidence that's directly related to their relationship that suggests
39:16
Speaker 3: that it might not be all that it appears. Right. No, No,
39:20
Speaker 3: but that that a different time, different place, blah blah blah.
39:25
Speaker 3: Just because you've had sex with someone monster doesn't mean
39:27
Speaker 3: you had that's a rape myth. Yeah, it's a rape myth.
39:30
Speaker 3: This is a rape myth. That's a rape myth. So
39:31
Speaker 3: on and so forth. And you've just got this massive
39:34
Speaker 3: evidence and in the end, the defense lawyers have been
39:39
Speaker 3: pulling their hair out for years now years. This is
39:42
Speaker 3: why I ended up going to the Supreme Court and
39:45
Speaker 3: why the Faculty for Advocates and the Law Society for Scotland.
39:49
Speaker 3: I think it was both. They went along to speak
39:53
Speaker 3: to the Supreme Court and to argue that there was
39:56
Speaker 3: a serious problem of what was happening in Scotland under
40:00
Speaker 3: because they're just saying, what's impossible. You can't defend you
40:03
Speaker 3: can't defend the person because you know it's like this,
40:07
Speaker 3: you know, it's the famous face, which you know, the
40:10
Speaker 3: Supreme Court said this was this one was fine in
40:12
Speaker 3: their ruling, which I think is nonsense. Andrew Kia where
40:16
Speaker 3: they're on a drunken night out and the woman in
40:19
Speaker 3: question is you know, they're basically they're basically having a
40:23
Speaker 3: sexual evening where he ends up having sex with and
40:26
Speaker 3: a toilet and then takes her back to his house.
40:29
Speaker 3: Later on they're both totally drunk and she alleges that
40:33
Speaker 3: he raped it. And then everything from the evening is
40:39
Speaker 3: not allowed. His statement, evidence of them having sex, and
40:43
Speaker 3: the toilet, evidence of them kissing and pubs, all of
40:46
Speaker 3: it not because what's that going to do with what
40:49
Speaker 3: happened in the house. Right in the house, that's a
40:52
Speaker 3: separate time, a separate place. She was drunk, blah, blah blah.
40:58
Speaker 3: So I mean it's just one I've or another. You
41:00
Speaker 3: just had case after case after case where they're just
41:03
Speaker 3: restricting evidence that almost anybody, unless you're a kind of
41:08
Speaker 3: particularly well trained feminist or now judge who's trauma informed
41:17
Speaker 3: and clearly more enlightened than the rest of us, everyone
41:21
Speaker 3: just thinks this is this is mad, this is insane.
41:24
Speaker 3: This of course the jury should hear this evidence. It
41:27
Speaker 3: makes no sense. So that's that's that's where we are.
41:29
Speaker 3: It's it's a framework of it starts with a kind
41:31
Speaker 3: of good intention, if you like, and it ends up
41:35
Speaker 3: over decades of biased or one dimensional, one sided research,
41:42
Speaker 3: so you never hear another opinion. Is there is no
41:46
Speaker 3: alternative opinion being offered to or heard by the justice
41:50
Speaker 3: system other than this therapeutic So they're our judges are
41:55
Speaker 3: now trauma informed, which means that they're being educated that
41:59
Speaker 3: you know what, how a victim will act after a
42:04
Speaker 3: rape can be anything. You can't really expect certain things
42:08
Speaker 3: because of trauma and so on, So you must be
42:11
Speaker 3: trauma informed. And that's one of the arguments for why
42:14
Speaker 3: it should be judges only that adjudicated on these cases
42:17
Speaker 3: because they've been correctly educated in therapeutics, which again I
42:24
Speaker 3: would say bias is the trial, because the judge has
42:26
Speaker 3: already gone in there being educated that you must understand
42:30
Speaker 3: the trauma of the woman standing in front of him.
42:33
Speaker 3: The woman might not have had any trauma, she might
42:35
Speaker 3: be lying, but the whole framework is developed around being
42:40
Speaker 3: victim sensitive. So I mean, it can't do anything other
42:46
Speaker 3: than put a bias and the balance, which should be
42:51
Speaker 3: in favor of the accused, right, rather than the state,
42:55
Speaker 3: the balance has actually turned the other way around, so
42:58
Speaker 3: that now, through the language of the victim, the state
43:04
Speaker 3: has more and more power. Right, that's the essential outcome, Right,
43:09
Speaker 3: It's done through the language of the victim. But the
43:12
Speaker 3: app the end point is a massive overreach, an extension
43:19
Speaker 3: of state power to limit an individual's ability to actually
43:23
Speaker 3: defend themselves. So yeah, that's that's where we are.
43:27
Speaker 1: There is I guess if it's always been traditionally what
43:30
Speaker 1: I've always heard about, you know, is you I guess
43:32
Speaker 1: you would call this ratements is like it's it's his
43:34
Speaker 1: word versus hers, and there is really no actual evidence
43:39
Speaker 1: other than you know, if the woman goes to the
43:42
Speaker 1: hospital afterwards and they can confirm that you know, sex
43:45
Speaker 1: took place, and maybe there's some bruising or whatever. That
43:48
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily even mean then that it was that it
43:50
Speaker 1: was forced, or that it was chosen or not chosen.
43:53
Speaker 1: So it is a very very difficult thing I would
43:56
Speaker 1: imagine to look at as you say.
43:59
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, that's thing is I would say,
44:01
Speaker 3: you know, and I think the vast, vast, vast majority
44:04
Speaker 3: of ordinary people would say this. Every rapist should go
44:07
Speaker 3: to prison and every innocent person should go free. But
44:11
Speaker 3: the only framework we can do that is by having
44:13
Speaker 3: fair trials. And it is I can entirely understand why
44:19
Speaker 3: it is incredibly frustrating that I have no doubt that
44:23
Speaker 3: a lot of rapists get away with it. I have
44:26
Speaker 3: absolutely no doubt about that. And there are reason a
44:29
Speaker 3: lot of rapists will get away with it is because
44:31
Speaker 3: it is so difficult to prove, and it must be
44:33
Speaker 3: an absolutely insufferable situation for women to be in. But
44:40
Speaker 3: unfortunately there's nothing you can do about that. All you
44:42
Speaker 3: can do is make the police better at interviewing, trying
44:49
Speaker 3: to find evidence and so on. And you know, you
44:52
Speaker 3: should be balanced. You should treat the woman with respect,
44:56
Speaker 3: but you should also treat the man who's accused with respect.
44:59
Speaker 3: You should be professional. And that's what we that's all
45:02
Speaker 3: we can ask for, is a just a system that
45:06
Speaker 3: attempts to find the truth. Right, That's what That's what everyone,
45:13
Speaker 3: I think would absolutely.
45:16
Speaker 1: You know, what it reminds me of is if we
45:18
Speaker 1: go back, what was it fifteen years maybe to the
45:21
Speaker 1: hashtag me too movement For those people who are not
45:25
Speaker 1: aware of that, that was a campaign that was going
45:27
Speaker 1: on social media several years ago around saying me too,
45:31
Speaker 1: meaning well that you know I was also raped, or
45:33
Speaker 1: I was also treated in disrespectful way sexually, or I
45:37
Speaker 1: was also you know, some going through some sort of
45:41
Speaker 1: I guess we can now call toxic masculine behavior.
45:44
Speaker 2: Everyone used that term, ridiculous term.
45:47
Speaker 1: But what it does for me as well is that
45:51
Speaker 1: if all of these women are jumping on this bandwagon
45:54
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, they want to be essentially part of
45:56
Speaker 1: the group, which they're doing by identifying with this hashtag,
45:59
Speaker 1: and some of the still goes on now and it
46:01
Speaker 1: may be in a slightly different form, is that it actually,
46:04
Speaker 1: to me diminishes or cheapens the truly traumatic experiences of
46:10
Speaker 1: women who really are raped and by everyone jumping on
46:15
Speaker 1: this bag bandwig, and you actually may end up potentially
46:20
Speaker 1: getting fewer men punished to deserve to be punished for
46:24
Speaker 1: actually raping, and women who were actually damaged to not
46:29
Speaker 1: get the justice that they deserve. It seems to me,
46:33
Speaker 1: and this is just my observation of the whole situation,
46:36
Speaker 1: is that the lines have been crossed and there's fewer
46:41
Speaker 1: boundaries about looking for actual truth and actually making sure
46:45
Speaker 1: that innocent men don't get locked up and that guilty
46:48
Speaker 1: men do get locked up. With it.
46:52
Speaker 3: Also, it extends into another major concern I have, which
46:57
Speaker 3: is that we're not just bastardizing the justice system in
47:03
Speaker 3: this instance, but we're also I think changing the nature
47:09
Speaker 3: of relationships potentially between young men and young women and
47:13
Speaker 3: all of us, because more and more things are seen
47:17
Speaker 3: as damaging, traumatizing and need intervention. You know, the sort
47:23
Speaker 3: of title nine is at nine title E level. I
47:26
Speaker 3: remember in America where you've already got a situation in
47:30
Speaker 3: colleges where it's almost the case that if a girl
47:35
Speaker 3: says something happened, then she's going to be believed. And
47:40
Speaker 3: that's part of the Harshtag me too thing was it's
47:42
Speaker 3: had a hashtag belief at the idea was you know
47:45
Speaker 3: this is it's it's a it's a fallacy to to
47:49
Speaker 3: argue that women just make these things up, or ever
47:53
Speaker 3: make these things up, and women should be believed, which
47:58
Speaker 3: again is a devil stating the authoritary situation to be
48:04
Speaker 3: And then that is one of the arguments that the
48:07
Speaker 3: gym's women make is that we've now got a situation
48:11
Speaker 3: where and it's something I haven't looked into massively, but
48:14
Speaker 3: you know, to the extent that I have, it seems
48:16
Speaker 3: to be true that you've got a situation now where
48:21
Speaker 3: you can go to the police say you've been raped,
48:25
Speaker 3: and then you go to victims support and potentially get
48:29
Speaker 3: a hand out of thousands, possibly tens of thousands of pounds,
48:33
Speaker 3: and you don't need any evidence, any proof, doesn't have
48:36
Speaker 3: to go to trial. I think it's the only place
48:40
Speaker 3: because they usually ask for medical evidence and other evidence
48:43
Speaker 3: and so on. This is, as far as I'm away,
48:46
Speaker 3: no evidence needed at all. All you need is that
48:48
Speaker 3: you've reported something to the police. And I know one
48:51
Speaker 3: of the women at James in particular says, you know,
48:54
Speaker 3: the woman who accused her partner has done this numerous
49:01
Speaker 3: times and there's actually a financial incentive for this potentially
49:08
Speaker 3: to happen. Now, obviously you'd hope that very very few
49:10
Speaker 3: women would be interested anything like that, but it's entirely
49:15
Speaker 3: possible that some women, some women are and some of
49:19
Speaker 3: course other women might be vengeful, and there might be
49:21
Speaker 3: all sorts of other reasons, because relationships are fraught, and
49:25
Speaker 3: especially your most romantic relationships can be extremely fraut. So
49:31
Speaker 3: this is an area that we need to be very
49:33
Speaker 3: careful about. And yeah, more generally, I am concerned that
49:37
Speaker 3: young women are today being trained by sort of activist
49:43
Speaker 3: educators that they're at danger from young boys who are
49:48
Speaker 3: increasingly being described as being toxic. So it seems to
49:53
Speaker 3: stretch all the way through our institutions where we have
49:56
Speaker 3: a kind of victim feminist perspective, perspective has been adopted
50:02
Speaker 3: as the norm and right, a new kind of moral
50:05
Speaker 3: correct way of understanding people in relationships, and it seems
50:10
Speaker 3: to be taking us back to almost as sort of
50:12
Speaker 3: chaperone society as well as I can see, where women
50:15
Speaker 3: are seen as fragile and need to be protected from
50:17
Speaker 3: the all the monstrous men and boys there out there.
50:21
Speaker 3: I mean, I would put it very differently. I think
50:23
Speaker 3: most men and boys are good people and wouldn't dream
50:28
Speaker 3: of treating a woman in a disgusting or monstrous way.
50:32
Speaker 3: But that's certainly not how it's been projected by certainly
50:37
Speaker 3: by a lot of the academic feminists and our institutions
50:40
Speaker 3: to some extent.
50:41
Speaker 1: A slightly different topic, but also I think a bit related.
50:44
Speaker 1: Is I hear from men just you know my role Carlin,
50:50
Speaker 1: men who have spoken about not having the same rights
50:53
Speaker 1: to see their children, for example, when a relationship breaks
50:56
Speaker 1: down and then they're we're left with the women, or
50:59
Speaker 1: you know others situations where the men don't get the
51:02
Speaker 1: same privileges as the women do, that it sort of defaults.
51:05
Speaker 2: To the women.
51:07
Speaker 1: Would you say, in the case of looking at criminology,
51:11
Speaker 1: is that somehow related that the men are somehow vilified
51:15
Speaker 1: even when there's no reason for them to do so.
51:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I think it's just we we've
51:21
Speaker 3: definitely over the last few decades developed a new type
51:25
Speaker 3: of morality, or at least what I would say this
51:27
Speaker 3: is my main area of interest is looking at the
51:29
Speaker 3: new elites and looking at who they are, what categorizes them,
51:35
Speaker 3: what is their outlook and so on, And I would
51:36
Speaker 3: definitely say a key outlook that they have is that
51:39
Speaker 3: they see or they've developed a type of moral virtue
51:44
Speaker 3: around victimhood. And in that context, you have certain identities
51:51
Speaker 3: that become validated and celebrated, and you have other identities
51:56
Speaker 3: that become seen as toxic and are what's been described
52:01
Speaker 3: as sort of spoiled identities. And I think men fit
52:04
Speaker 3: into that category. I mean, I'm not in men's rights
52:08
Speaker 3: because I don't like the term particularly, and I don't
52:11
Speaker 3: like thinking of myself as you know, this is to
52:15
Speaker 3: do with men. I'm interested in universal categories, so I
52:18
Speaker 3: think of people as individuals, and I think of justice
52:20
Speaker 3: as justice for everybody. But nevertheless, I absolutely think that
52:26
Speaker 3: this is becoming a normal situation where presenting men, feeding
52:33
Speaker 3: men to a certain extent, and educating people about men
52:39
Speaker 3: is more and more negative. And you know, you certainly
52:43
Speaker 3: there's a a guy, what's it called. He's Scottish or
52:48
Speaker 3: the Critical Drinker. He's a YouTube film buff who does
52:55
Speaker 3: film reviews and he does these very good ones on
53:00
Speaker 3: the death of men in films and the sort of
53:03
Speaker 3: the rise of the girl boss. And he sort of
53:05
Speaker 3: looks at and he's you can tell he's not an
53:07
Speaker 3: old fashioned type guy at all, but he can just
53:11
Speaker 3: show how they've destroyed a lot of films in the
53:14
Speaker 3: film industry to a certain extent by their desperate attempt
53:18
Speaker 3: to reconstruct girls and women as warriors and men as
53:24
Speaker 3: either pathetic or vile. And you just look at the
53:29
Speaker 3: representation of men on television and on the general culture,
53:35
Speaker 3: and I think it's absolutely true. I think that's just
53:38
Speaker 3: that is the part of the cultural elites perspective. So yeah,
53:43
Speaker 3: it's a it's again one of the frustrations of the
53:46
Speaker 3: victim feminist perspective because it's really it's the world upside
53:51
Speaker 3: down because at the minute, I don't think this. I
53:54
Speaker 3: have no question at all about the spoilt identity is
53:58
Speaker 3: menicularly white men, you know, that are seen as not good,
54:07
Speaker 3: that it's not a good identity. It's the worst.
54:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think you.
54:13
Speaker 3: Do it.
54:14
Speaker 2: You're straight, you're white, you're British, you're a.
54:16
Speaker 3: Male everything, fail filled failed Brexit party candidate who's who
54:25
Speaker 3: said said the N words. You see, all you have
54:28
Speaker 3: to say is you just drop these things in and
54:30
Speaker 3: you already know that it's like I'm a cigarette paper's
54:35
Speaker 3: wits away from Adulf Hitler, even though all I'm doing
54:40
Speaker 3: is basically arguing very very basic, decent liberal principles.
54:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I think in this current society,
54:49
Speaker 1: the way things have been the past few years, that
54:51
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and I would include a lot
54:54
Speaker 1: of people in this who watch you K column that
54:57
Speaker 1: maybe thought of themselves as traditional only liberal, and now
55:02
Speaker 1: we've got these other labels assigned to us, you know,
55:06
Speaker 1: and I believe you know, I had a liberal university education.
55:09
Speaker 1: To be a liberal education means you learned about a
55:11
Speaker 1: lot of topics, and you look at different sides of things,
55:13
Speaker 1: You make up your own mind and see what you
55:15
Speaker 1: think about things after you've learned some different perspectives and
55:20
Speaker 1: read some things. Unfortunately, it seems as though society and
55:25
Speaker 1: education in particular, and this kind of goes along with
55:29
Speaker 1: what you've just been through, is that certain perspectives are
55:32
Speaker 1: not allowed, which then cancels the whole idea of having
55:36
Speaker 1: a truly liberal education because those.
55:39
Speaker 2: Those perspectives are not are not acceptable.
55:41
Speaker 1: To these elites and these you know, people that are
55:45
Speaker 1: pushing these feminist agendas or whatever you want to call
55:48
Speaker 1: these on young people who are there presumably to get
55:54
Speaker 1: an education and learn different things about the world.
55:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's it's sad as well because it just
56:01
Speaker 3: creates a more insecure, frightened, nervous and hate filled sort
56:08
Speaker 3: of cultural environment where you know, it's like, what was
56:14
Speaker 3: I doing. I was inviting some women to have a
56:18
Speaker 3: discussion about miscarriages of justice in Scotland. You know that
56:22
Speaker 3: that was It's not it wasn't a big thing, or
56:25
Speaker 3: it shouldn't have been, and yet you end up in
56:29
Speaker 3: this mad, crazy situation of all sorts of pylons and
56:35
Speaker 3: time and energy wasters and accusations made, and so it's
56:42
Speaker 3: just deeply intolerant, you know, it's deeply intolerant climate. And
56:47
Speaker 3: that's part and part of the victim framework that we
56:52
Speaker 3: we live in, whether that's within the framework of a
56:54
Speaker 3: university or and the framework of a criminal justices.
56:57
Speaker 1: I meant to ask you earlier on when you were
56:58
Speaker 1: telling the story, when you said there was maybe only
57:01
Speaker 1: one student who complained, do you have any idea where
57:04
Speaker 1: these external complaints came from.
57:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, the one student was one of my students, Okay,
57:09
Speaker 3: so there were other students. So there was three hundred complaints,
57:13
Speaker 3: eighty four percent of them, I think six came from
57:16
Speaker 3: outside the university. I assume they were people who were
57:25
Speaker 3: whatever you call it on TikTok TikTok tiktak followers of
57:30
Speaker 3: Ellie Wilson. I suspect. I also suspect it's then kind
57:35
Speaker 3: of LGBT type people because I've I've had a run
57:40
Speaker 3: in with them before because I've questioned the whole transgender issue,
57:45
Speaker 3: which was another that was another attempted semi attempted cancelation.
57:52
Speaker 2: Yeah.
57:54
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that the the and the students
57:57
Speaker 3: people involved in the students associations. So I think some
58:00
Speaker 3: of those students. So for example, and I assume this
58:04
Speaker 3: person is involved with the student association, there is another
58:07
Speaker 3: there's this first year student at the minute that's come
58:10
Speaker 3: out outraged that Abertay Haven't hasn't done more about me
58:17
Speaker 3: because I'm clearly a In fact, they said, he clearly
58:22
Speaker 3: traumatizes his students and that's why only one student spoke out,
58:26
Speaker 3: because the others were to traumatized or frightened or something
58:33
Speaker 3: so that they're a mind reader. I'm not sure if
58:37
Speaker 3: this person is trans or not, but I suspect they
58:39
Speaker 3: might be. I'm not sure if they're in a student association,
58:42
Speaker 3: but I suspect they probably are, and so you have
58:47
Speaker 3: a that that kind of fragile victim identity. Individuals oscillate
58:56
Speaker 3: around this, They kind of congregate around offense and offense
59:00
Speaker 3: taking and outrage and complaint, which is one of the
59:04
Speaker 3: reasons I think we need to be really concerned about
59:08
Speaker 3: the kind of complaint framework that operates, because the people
59:14
Speaker 3: who are making complaints are not normal people. The vast
59:18
Speaker 3: majority of their time, they're activists, and they're in a
59:23
Speaker 3: sense professional victims. The people who have developed a certain identity,
59:27
Speaker 3: so it's a certain political outlook, certain perspective, certain therapeutic
59:31
Speaker 3: sense of themselves, and they're the ones who are the complainers, right,
59:36
Speaker 3: So you and you only need a few of them,
59:39
Speaker 3: and you know that can be making your life hell
59:44
Speaker 3: as an academic. That you know which happens to me.
59:47
Speaker 3: I get constant, relatively constant complaints. I'm fairly sure it's
59:51
Speaker 3: from the same individual or individuals you egg me on
59:57
Speaker 3: to answer certain questions or express opinions and then complaints
1:00:00
Speaker 3: to the university about that. I expressed an opinion, which
1:00:04
Speaker 3: I almost always do, is that this is an alternative
1:00:06
Speaker 3: perspective rather than saying it's my opinion. But anyway, So
1:00:10
Speaker 3: this the latest thing is this student has gone to
1:00:12
Speaker 3: the umbardsman to say this isn't right. You can't have
1:00:18
Speaker 3: done your investigation and said everything's fine, because it's clearly
1:00:23
Speaker 3: not fine because you know, my victims sensibility is not
1:00:27
Speaker 3: being satisfied. You haven't hung him up yet, so something
1:00:34
Speaker 3: must be done. So that that's the latest incarnation, which
1:00:39
Speaker 3: that was a couple of weeks ago, after the university
1:00:42
Speaker 3: announced that they weren't going to do anything about I
1:00:48
Speaker 3: can't imagine. I mean, you know what what other things.
1:00:52
Speaker 3: It's it's like they can't comprehend that you can live
1:00:57
Speaker 3: in a world where people might be saying things that
1:00:59
Speaker 3: you don't like or that you find offensive, or that
1:01:03
Speaker 3: you can say is doubly traumatizing or whatever. It's like, well,
1:01:06
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, that's you know, unless you want to be
1:01:10
Speaker 3: a hermit, this is the world You're going to come
1:01:14
Speaker 3: across people that have different opinions and perspectives, and you know,
1:01:19
Speaker 3: I don't know what could an onwardsman possibly do? Right, Well,
1:01:23
Speaker 3: the university hasn't correctly punished me because somebody feels traumatized.
1:01:29
Speaker 3: I don't know, thankfully, I don't think we've got that
1:01:32
Speaker 3: situation yet where just screaming trauma can mean that you
1:01:35
Speaker 3: get lynched. But you know, who knows where I'll end up?
1:01:41
Speaker 2: Right Well, unfortunately we're just at about of time.
1:01:46
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that you wanted to say that
1:01:48
Speaker 1: you didn't have a chance to say in this conversation.
1:01:51
Speaker 3: I would just say, if anyone's interested in this, they
1:01:53
Speaker 3: should look at the Justice Friend Innocent Men Scotland website
1:01:58
Speaker 3: and they're on Facebook. Should read have a look at
1:02:01
Speaker 3: my paper that I've written on juries, it's online, and
1:02:07
Speaker 3: people should be contacting the MSPs if they live in
1:02:11
Speaker 3: Scotland about what's happening, or even if you don't live
1:02:15
Speaker 3: in Scotland, because should contact MSPs and see if someone
1:02:20
Speaker 3: somewhere is prepared to actually look into this issue properly,
1:02:26
Speaker 3: because fundamentally, more important than anything that's happened to me
1:02:30
Speaker 3: is that you know, as I said, you've got hundreds
1:02:33
Speaker 3: of men in prison who arguably shouldn't be there, and
1:02:37
Speaker 3: you've got a justice system that is bastardizing the most
1:02:40
Speaker 3: fundamental principles of law and justice. So they're they're well.
1:02:45
Speaker 3: I hope people will take away from this and do
1:02:49
Speaker 3: feel free to shout about it because it should be
1:02:53
Speaker 3: being shouted about.
1:02:55
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
1:02:55
Speaker 1: We'll provide some links in the in the description and
1:02:58
Speaker 1: the write up for the centerview so that people can
1:03:00
Speaker 1: find it easily. Stuart, thanks again for this. Congratulations once
1:03:05
Speaker 1: again on your vindication. That's an incredible thing that you've
1:03:10
Speaker 1: been through it and it's hard to it's hard to
1:03:14
Speaker 1: explain to people what this is like unless you've been
1:03:17
Speaker 1: through it yourself, and anyone who's been through it will
1:03:21
Speaker 1: understand that it does take a large personal professional toll
1:03:25
Speaker 1: on anyone who goes through it. So congratulations you've made
1:03:29
Speaker 1: it and we'll keep our fingers crossed to see what
1:03:32
Speaker 1: happens from here. But thanks for sharing your story. Really
1:03:37
Speaker 1: appreciate your time. Yes, fingers crossed everyone out there, so
1:03:44
Speaker 1: there will be an end some day. But thank you
1:03:47
Speaker 1: again and again it's been great to speak with you
1:03:51
Speaker 1: and to give you this platform to share your story.
1:03:53
Speaker 2: Thank you again for all of.
1:03:54
Speaker 1: Your hard work on behalf of every student in Scotland
1:03:57
Speaker 1: and in this country. And again this has been Diners
1:04:00
Speaker 1: host with UK Columns speaking with doctor Strupt Wayton, so
1:04:02
Speaker 1: thank you against to it.
1:04:04
Speaker 2: Thanks