Mother's heartache at each new case

Published on Sunday 27 May 2007 00:44

FOR Linda Armstrong, every report of a rape case in Scotland brings back memories of that night in September 2001 when her daughter Lindsay was attacked and raped by a boy the family knew.

She said: "You really feel so much for the family. You're there imagining what they are going through."

Lindsay Armstrong's case became notorious for the ordeal the 14-year-old was put through on the stand. Unlike many women, she went to the police. Her case was one of the small minority which actually led to a prosecution, and one of the even smaller fraction which led to a conviction.

But her humiliation on the witness stand, which saw her forced to hold up the underwear she had worn on the night in front of the court, proved to be too much. After the 2002 trial, she took her own life through an overdose of anti-depressants.

Linda Armstrong has responded to the scandal of the way in which Scots law had treated her daughter by setting up a support line for victims of sexual assault and abuse.

But she is sceptical of the plans to control sex offenders who are released into the community, believing that even the draconian new proposals revealed today do not go far enough.

Armstrong wants the sex offenders' register to be open for the public so they can find out whether sex offenders are living near them. She also believes that the presumption should be against releasing all but the least dangerous offenders. She thinks that many of those behind bars are just too much of a threat to ever be allowed into the community.

"The problem with the register is that people don't know who is on it," she said. "The police know but they don't tell the public. We should be informed so that we know who is there. Especially if you have a family, you want to know so that you can take steps to protect them.

"And many of them just shouldn't be released on grounds of public safety. Most of them will offend again, they are dangerous people. The majority just can't stop. Tracking won't stop some of them and what happens when it's decided they no longer need to be tracked?"

In addition to the helpline, Armstrong's campaigning has led to a shake-up in the system of prosecutions in Scotland and in the way that victims of crime and their families are treated. Changes include the setting up of a specialist team of rape prosecutors to ensure more cases come to court in the first place and then result in convictions. Previously, the Crown Office was deeply sceptical about the idea of specialist prosecutors. In addition, advocates depute are instructed to object more frequently to potentially humiliating questioning of the complainer in court.

Scotland's low rate of prosecution attracts frequent criticism from equality campaigners. In 2005-6, 975 rapes were reported to police. But fewer than one in 10, just 88, led to prosecutions in court and fewer than half of the cases resulted in a conviction, with just 38 cases being proved.

One rape victim, who asked to remain anonymous, said the plans for better surveillance of sex offenders were long overdue, and added that they still did nothing to protect victims from the ordeal of meeting their attacker in the streets after release from jail. She was the victim of an attacker with previous sexual convictions who had nevertheless been allowed to roam free in the community.

She said: "It is all very well having these ideas, but they should have been in place years ago. Everyone has known about the problem of these offenders being released and then coming back into the communities where they not only once lived but where, in all probability, they carried out their attack.

"Do the courts and police have any idea what it is like for a woman to walk out of her home knowing that, at any time, she could come face to face with the man who has ruined her life? The man who may have beat her then raped her and has then gone to court and told a pack of lies before making the woman stand up in front of a room full of strangers and discuss their most intimate secrets."

She had further suggestions for how to control offenders, urging much tougher daily and evening controls. "Why can't these individuals be monitored on a day-to-day basis?" she asked. "They should have to register at a police station or observe a curfew. The man who attacked me had been convicted beforehand and everyone had their suspicions about him, but he was free to come and go as he pleased and that is how he ended up attacking me. These people are potential time bombs. For the sake of every woman and every child in our society we need to do something about them."

She continued: "I do not know if this so-called 'naming and shaming' would work, and obviously there are some people who would just take the law into their own hands, which can never be a good idea. But something should be done to prevent what happened to me from happening to anyone else. Even if just one of these ideas is adopted then it could prevent a similar tragedy.

"It always seems to be that things are promised after one of these horrible crimes but nothing ever gets done. Hopefully, someone in power will use their position to implement some law which will stop these people from preying on some of our most vulnerable people."

Lindsay Armstrong Helpline: 01290 338 883. www.lindsayarmstrongsupportgroup.org.uk