Harnessing the response

[This was originally a response to a comment on IEL’s post  Quite a crowd …….. but the, eh, “gaffer” (i.e. WBS) suggested it be made a post.]

I expect that taking that support [at the gatherings across the Island to express support for the woman who was the victim in the events that led to the trial of Paddy Jackson, Stuart Olding, Blane McIlroy, and Rory Harrison] and turning it into practical changes would probably entail the RCC or NWCI or sister organisations organising or coordinating specific actions.

‘Places’ that responses could go next include

• revisiting trial and prosecution procedures,
• standards and practices of media providers, including the ‘mainstream’ print and broadcast media and social media,
• standards and practices of sports organisations,
• decisions of commercial organisations that sponsor sports organisations,
• education programmes both in schools and colleges and in other settings,
• police and medical and social care responses to all forms of gender-based violence,
• lobbying for political responses to rape and domestic violence and their victims is a range of settings (including, for example, the nature and quantity of support provided to victims of sexual abuse in the asylum system, including where rape or assault occurred outside this jurisdiction),
• harnessing public support to boycott organisations – commercial, sporting, political, social – that respond inadequately to rape, sexual assault, gender-based violence.

When I was born, the concept of sexual harassment was not a legal concept, but activists lobbied and harried and secured that legal change. That gives me hope to say that there is no reason why that concept could not be expanded, or a new concept introduced (and given legal weight), to prohibit, and to provide effective remedies to, the disgraceful response that occurred on social media, including the comments by the Laois and the Drogheda United players.

I am also reminded that we changed our criminal laws when they proved inadequate to responding to wealth-producing crime to enable the proceeds to be seized, and would be interested to see if the law could be changed to enable sub-criminal sanctions to be imposed in cases of alleged rape, sexual violence or gender-based violence, where the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ standard could not be met but it is sufficiently clear that unacceptable behaviour was committed.

On the other hand, a challenge just at the moment is that the NWCI for the next eight or so weeks has its eye on the referendum. The RCC would be a suitable leadership organisation for a major national programme of work if it wished to take on that role, but its financial resources might make it difficult for it to do a significant volume of work.