Lawyer Uses Smiling Facebook Pic To Claim Rape Victim Is Fine

Yet another reason to stop posting those tipsy, group-hugging, field-skipping pics to Facebook: they might get your rapist off the hook. A British lawyer recently tried to use just that sort of photo to argue that a young woman whose client he raped was not “really” traumatized after the event.

His barrister tried to persuade a judge to be lenient by showing pictures of the woman laughing and smiling at a fancy dress party in the years since the rape.

Colin McCarraher, defending, told Reading Crown Court last week: ‘What we have is a person who has post traumatic stress but is quite capable of going out and having a good time at a fancy dress party.’

Mr McCarraher told the court that although he did not know when the images had been taken, they did not tally entirely with someone struggling to rebuild their life.

Happily for the woman and for our sanity, the judge was unconvinced and sentenced her attacker, Anthony Francis, to five and a half years in jail. The attack happened in 2001, but the woman says she has only recovered fully from the trauma in the past year.

During Francis’s trial last month, Reading Crown Court heard how he met his victim in the Matrix nightclub in the town on July 21, 2001. She left the club with him and he drove her to a park, where he raped her in his car. The woman said that after a while she stopped struggling so as not to prolong the attack.

She describes how she became depressed and at the beginning of February 2003 she took an overdose. Fortunately she was found by a friend.

We think a legit suicide attempt speaks a little more strongly about her mental condition than a Facebook pic. Honestly, who hasn’t faked a smile for the tenth time their grandma tells them they’ve gotten chubby? (Not that we’re bitter). And regardless of whether this woman had happy moments, weeks, or even years since the attack, what happened to her was rape, and that’s just wrong.

Rape victim upset? Well, she’s smiling on Facebook said lawyer [Daily Mail]