Taxi rapist Raymond Shorten will rot in prison – it’s time

CCTV footage from the second robbery showed Shorten parking his taxi at the spot indicated by his victim, getting into the back seat and getting out again six minutes later. He claimed he had stopped to check her address when the drunken young woman woke up out of the blue, leaned forward and kissed him. As one does. He was “flattered that a younger woman was interested” – he is too modest – and dared to ask her if she wanted to have sex. Of course she said yes, because a six-minute quickie with a beer-bellied, middle-aged taxi driver in the back of his taxi has been the stuff of romantic novels since the dawn of time, except that in Mills & Boon’s terms it would have been called Cliff or Brett, not simply Ray. Then she insisted on paying her fare, even though he had deliberately racked up a 70 euro bill by driving around her neighborhood while she was sleeping in the car. He was sorry, he told police.

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Seriously, that’s the story Shorten clearly expected the jury to believe. That’s the story taxpayers funded his legal aid for, in a trial that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare and run. And that’s the story that was told to both women under cross-examination as Shorten watched. The second woman, whose mother paid the $70 fare as she returned home distraught and tearful with dishevelled clothes, was asked if she remembered being “happy” with Shorten in the back of his taxi, “smiling” and “having a good time”.

Her mother thought she didn’t look like someone who had been having fun when she came home that night, the court heard. After Shorten pocketed the money and left, the 19-year-old broke down and told her she had been raped by the taxi driver. “So, him?” her mother asked – even in print, her words convey disbelief and disgust.

Sexual crimes, psychologists say, are more about power than sex. Donald Trump boasted about being able to grab women “by the pussy” because “when you’re a star, you can do anything.” Rape is a weapon of war, as used by Russian soldiers in Ukraine and Hamas in Israel, and it thrives in cultures where misogyny is rife and male authority or impunity is assumed. Shorten, an unattractive and demonstrably inadequate man, felt somehow degraded by the youth and beauty of two women who would not have looked at him a second time had they been sober and awake, and exercised his power to punish them by raping them – and probably many others as well.

However, on some level he must have believed that he deserved their attention, that with his ridiculous quiff and stupid tattoos he was actually a great guy, that he had a right to be desired by beautiful young girls and that a jury would surely accept the logic of his position. He was so confident he would be acquitted that he told the police he would watch the Euros at home.

On some level, I suspect that many men who make unwanted advances towards women, or who sexually harass or rape them, convince themselves that their victims secretly welcome their attentions. It has always surprised me when I watch shows like First Dates Irelandto see how little effort some men put into getting ready for their dates, as if the mere fact of their masculinity was gift enough.

But gender-based violence is always an expression of misogyny, it’s always about the assumption of male authority, it’s always about the expectation of impunity. At heart, many men still believe that because they make the rules, they will get some leniency from other men, like the police and judges, and often they’re right. Domestic violence is not punished nearly as harshly as it should, and too many men get away with suspended sentences after hitting or abusing women. That’s why the sentence Judge Paul McDermott handed down to Shorten last week was a watershed in the prosecution and prevention of crimes against women in this country. Sentences of 30 years, his total sentence after the judge imposed consecutive terms, are almost unheard of in our jurisdiction, where the average life sentence for murder is just 20 years. But it sends a message that has long needed to be heard.

Changing the defamation law is common sense

Several years ago I was involved in a libel suit against this newspaper. Without rehashing the details, the case was fully defended before a judge and jury. The judge concluded his instruction to the jury by saying, “Use your common sense.”

About an hour later, the parties received word that the jury would return with a question. This is always a significant moment because the nature of the question can indicate which direction the jury will go.

For example, if they want to know whether there is a cap on the amount of compensation they can be awarded, that does not necessarily bode well for the defense.

This time, however, they had a question that left the poor judge literally gaping and staring at the two lead attorneys like a startled salmon. The jury had asked, “What is common sense and how do we use it?”

FYI, Justice Minister Helen McEntee’s announcement last week that jury trials in libel cases would be abolished was only a sensible move. This move is long overdue because it will help remove the uncertainty that is being weaponised by wealthy slapp litigants (strategic public participation lawsuits) to terrorise the traditional media, which already struggles with virtually unregulated online competitors.

A slapp letter is designed to intimidate an editor into stopping an unwanted investigation or settling a frivolous case to avoid facing trial. The memory of the €10 million compensation in the “naked sleepwalker” case of 2010 is still the stuff of every editor’s nightmares.

And the current system is unfair to jurors, too: even the smartest members struggle with crash courses in defamation law, which require them to understand the precise legal definitions of public interest, justification, truth and honest opinion.

To be fair, the members of each jury probably thought they knew what those terms meant before the lawyers started using them. Precedent counts for nothing with juries, but their decisions, however unpredictable, are hard to overturn, meaning it would have been challenging to design a legal process that was inherently more unfair or oppressive.

But this is far from ideal and the fact that a litigant does not have to prove serious harm to receive compensation, as is the case in the UK, is a glaring omission. To make a claim for a broken leg, the new damages guidelines require you to provide x-rays to receive €20,000 in damages; if feelings are hurt, your testimony alone could be enough to secure you six-figure compensation.

Much has been done, to quote McEntee’s coalition partners in another context, and much remains to be done.