Opinion: Victims and justice

Dr Stuart Waiton, a senior lecturer in criminology at Abertay University, gives his thoughts on the Goodwillie case.

The footballer David Goodwillie is no longer simply ‘David Goodwillie’, he is the ‘rape shame footballer David Goodwillie’.

Goodwillie has signed for Clyde FC resulting in Clyde fans writing letters of outrage to the club and the Scottish National Party MSP, John Mason, announcing that his Christian values means he can no longer attend Clyde games.

The problem is that Goodwillie has not been found guilty of rape in a criminal court; he has faced no jury. Rather he has been convicted in a civil court, the first case of its kind in Scotland. And so, with the say so of one individual, on the balance of probabilities and with no need for corroborating evidence a man has become a ‘rape shame’, he has been branded a rapist, fined and thrown out onto the streets. No wonder some members of the public have reacted in the way they have.

Justice has shifted in the last two decades towards a form of ‘victim justice’, where the priority for the criminal justice system has increasingly become one that attempts to engage, empathise with and appease ‘victims’. So one-sided has this process become that we are starting to get senior criminal justice professionals talking about and labelling people as ‘victims’ before anyone has been convicted of an offence. We must not ‘doubly traumatise’ people who have experienced abuse in their life, we are told. But surely, serious abuse, violence or rape must be proven in a criminal court before we start labelling victims and equally, labelling criminals – labelling men, for example, as rapists.

It is worth bearing in mind that victim justice does not empower ‘victims’, it simply gives more power to the state to criminalise more people.

A lack of evidence meant that Goodwillie’s case did not go to a criminal court but that didn’t stop the growing victim industry from kicking into gear, with the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority awarding the woman in question £11,000 before the civil court case had even taken place. And so the branding of Goodwillie began based on no court appearance: the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority must be held to account over this.

Self-professed liberals feel morally good when they pronounce about the lack of rape convictions. But as the Goodwillie case demonstrates, all this amounts to is the undermining of justice and due process and the promotion of an emotional form of injustice that is more medieval than modern, more brutal than caring and more reactionary than rational.

Goodwillie’s metaphorical lynching may destroy his career, which is outrageous in itself but it would come as no surprise if an outraged member of the public took it upon themselves to enact their own form of violent justice against a branded rapist who is walking around free.

For justice to survive in Scotland the legal profession must take a stand against this use and abuse of civil law.