Charge of Rape.

On Saturday, March 29, 1828, The Times in London published an article about rape. In this article, a 17 year old girl was walking home after work, around 8PM, when a prisoner grabbed her and forced her to walk with him. She fought him and tried to resist, but there was no one around to hear her. He took her to an empty field and raped her, all with her yelling for help. When he finished having his way with her, he told her not to tell anyone because it would make her look bad, which unfortunately could be seen as good advice during this time period. She found a passerby who took her home, where she promptly told her mother. According to a male witness, however, she was not alone on the street that she was grabbed on, so more people would have seen this unfold, and the woman was speaking kindly to the man before taking her. During the trial, because of this one male witness' testimony, the charges against the prisoner were dropped because there was now conflicting testimony's, and the woman apparently did not show any reluctance to go with the prisoner. The prisoner claimed that the woman also did not seem to be against his wishes, so ultimately the verdict came back as not guilty.

Besides the obvious problem with victim blaming and doubting, it is important to see that the judge was able to completely dismantle the woman's truth just by hearing a story from one random man. This shows how much more valued the man's testimony was compared to the woman's, which was common during this time. Even the prisoner's testimony was taken more seriously than the woman's, despite him having a history of crime, simply because he was a man.The article even goes as far to suggest that the woman probably wanted to have sex with the prisoner, but pretended to resist because she knew she was supposed to do that to maintain an image of being proper. This is completely trying to blame the victim, and her story is completely thrown aside in favor of the male narrative. The prisoner was able to get away with raping an innocent woman simply because he was a  man.