3 hours ago
18
Over decades, battles have been fought to win the rights that victims of domestic, sexual and physical violence can expect in a UK court. Separate entrances organised so victims do not have to face their abusers. The option of video evidence. Giving evidence from behind a screen. Reams of guidance for judges and legal teams about what is and isn’t an appropriate way to handle an accuser. We have rules about what you can ask a victim about their previous sexual history, and about what in their medical history can and cannot be requested.
Many of us who have campaigned on this issue have pretty much dedicated our lives to trying to make the harrowing experience of facing the man who attacked you even slightly more palatable, not just for the sake of vulnerable victims and witnesses, but for the sake of justice. It is not perfect, the system fails regularly, but I can say as someone who decided to proceed in an alleged stalking case, I can say that if going to court had meant I would be testifying for hours on end in full view of the accused, I would have likely pulled out of the case.
British women have rights, hard won. Oh, that is unless the person who they accuse of assault is a US military man stationed or operating in our country. As revealed in an investigation by the Guardian, the story of Sarah Steele and Capt Jacob Wulfson, a US airman, has taught me that a British woman abused in our county, in a trial held in our country, did not have these same protections. The case has been described in harrowing detail after Wulfson was charged by a US military court for a crime that doesn’t even exist in the UK – “aggravated sexual contact”. He was acquited of that crime and given a sentence of six months in a correction facility for “non-fatal strangulation” by an all-male jury of his peers, subject to automatic appeal.
Steele did not have access to rights I have spent hours of my life arguing for in stuffy committee rooms in the House of Commons. She was in the courtroom with her accuser throughout. The jurors all worked on the same military base as the accused. This is a bit like a jury in a trial against me being heard only by other women from the parliamentary Labour party. I can tell you now that if it was just my actual mates who could sit on any jury of a crime I committed, I may very well fancy my chances of getting away with more crimes.
From reading accounts of how she was questioned by a firebrand US military defence lawyer, I feel safe to say that he would never have been able to get away with saying what he did in a UK court.
Sarah Steele is a British woman. Sarah Steele lives in the UK. Sarah Steele was abused in the UK. Hours of my life have been spent obsessing about how to make women just like Sarah Steele safe, and if she wasn’t safe, to get justice for what happened to her. I never saw Sarah Steele in my head before this week because I thought she was just another face in the crowd of women and girls who we were slowly but surely working to protect. The moment Cambridgeshire police allowed the US military to take the lead in this case, Sarah Steele stepped out from that crowd of women and stood completely on her own. This should never have been allowed to happen.
I can see you now, Sarah. Too late, for sure. Our court system is so far from perfect, I cannot believe I find myself in a position of wishing it was available to everyone, but here we are. Now that I can see Sarah, she looks to me like a woman who might just change the world. No UK victim should be handed over to the US military for a crime committed on UK soil unless that is exactly what they want to happen.
Sarah, I’m sorry I couldn’t hear you, I’m sorry they were able to silence you, I can see you now and I promise I will try to change this.
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Jess Phillips is MP for Birmingham Yardley
