What should criminology students learn about rape? The treatment of Stuart Waiton, a sociology lecturer at Abertay University, shows that questioning the current practices of the legal establishment and challenging the views of feminist campaigners are now deemed off-limits. Encouraging students to think critically about Scotland’s rape laws has led to Waiton being vilified on social media, becoming the target of slanderous graffiti and subject to national press speculation. Now he is the focus for a planned student protest.
We have been here before. Four years ago, philosophy professor Kathleen Stock resigned from the University of Sussex after students, offended by her gender-critical views, harassed and intimidated her for simply doing her job. Stock’s case made clear the parlous state of academic freedom in British universities. It led to the University of Sussex being fined by the Office for Students over concerns that it had not acted in line with legal requirements, most notably, in relation to freedom of speech and equality matters. Sadly, as Waiton’s case shows, little has been learned. University managers are still reluctant to intervene and defend academics facing the wrath of angry students.
Yet just as Stock was right to question gender ideology, so Waiton is also right to question Scotland’s rape laws (which he has done in both his academic work and in the press, including on spiked). Over recent decades, lawyers and feminist campaigners have grown increasingly concerned that juries in rape cases may be influenced by ‘rape myths’ – for example, that a woman who dresses or acts provocatively consents to having sex, or that women routinely lie about being raped. In a bid to secure more convictions, legal processes have been introduced to counteract the impact of these myths in rape trials. So, in Scotland, ‘rape-shield’ legislation means that evidence relating to the character or past sexual history of an accuser cannot normally be heard in court.
