Judge Mowat on rape and regulation

Posted By: James

Wednesday 27th August 2014

Judge Mary Jane Mowat, who retired this month, has been criticised after suggesting that the rape conviction rate would not improve until women stopped drinking so heavily. Judge Mowat said: “It is an inevitable fact of its being one person’s word against another. I will also say, and I will be pilloried for saying so, but the rape conviction statistics will not improve until women stop getting so drunk.” The judge also raised concerns about the automatic release of prisoners on fixed-term sentences half-way through their time, describing prison regulations as “the biggest fraud on the public ever”. She said: “You get a three-year sentence and in fact it means only one and a half years, it’s automatically one half. The public were never told this was going to happen, it was done by a sort of statutory regulation. And people are by and large getting out well before that on a home detention curfew on a tag.”

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