Hearing All That Is Expressed: A Feminist Listening to the Silencing of Rape Complainants While Giving Evidence

Abstract

In this article, I bring a feminist ear to 30 Aotearoa/New Zealand rape trials to explore what they reveal about courtroom listening to adult female complainants. Listening for all complainant expression exposes myriad instantiations of complainants being silenced and misheard, and their words refused, dismissed and reframed. From these, I identify three practices of silencing that demonstrate not only a failure to hear and listen, but also the double abandonment of ‘ethical loneliness’ in which institutions that are meant to hear and care, force speech under the guise of listening, but then fail to respond and to protect. This feminist listening draws attention to the ethical and social dimensions of why many rape complainants experience giving evidence at trial as re-victimising. I argue that it suggests the potential benefits of in-court observation programmes and that the practices of rape trial questioning need close examination and reform.