(STILL) INSIDE A RAPE TRIAL: What really happens at court (2/4)

script for Rape on Trial/Ep 2: Tariq's Trial (blog post 2/4)

Rape on Trial is a legal documentary podcast using real-life, fully anonymised cases to critically examine the investigation and prosecution of rape and serious sexual offences in the criminal justice system in England & Wales. 

This blog reproduces the first part of the original written script for Episode  2 which sees us back in the public gallery of a Crown Court somewhere in England & Wales for the final days of Tariq's trial on charges of rape and false imprisonment. 

Topics covered in this episode: agreed facts; the defence case; the defendant's evidence-in-chief; cross-examination of the defendant; judge's directions; split directions; prosecuting counsel's closing speech; defence counsel's closing speech; judge's summary of the evidence and final directions; evidential reasoning and the operation of rape myths and prejudiced stereotypes and assumptions; the jury verdict.

Keywords: criminal law; criminal evidence and procedure; criminal justice; trial procedure; courtroom advocacy; adversarial legal system; comparative law and procedure; common law legal system; legal case study; criminology; forensic linguistics; forensic psychology.

Open Educational Resource - Legal English Listening Practice - Legal English Comprehension Practice - Legal English Vocabulary - Legal English in Real Court Proceedings: Criminal Trial – Academic English - Language of Law - Legal Reasoning - Evidential Reasoning - Forensic Reasoning – Court Translator Practice

Content warning

This podcast explores the workings of the criminal justice system, including the investigation and prosecution of serious offences involving sexual and physical violence. 

Episodes may contain detailed and sometimes graphic accounts drawn directly from case files, witness testimony, and court proceedings, including those involving adult and child victims. 

Listener discretion is advised.

This is the continuation of the script from ep 02 of Rape on Trial. Click here to listen to the episode. Or here to see the first blog post.

Tariq’s evidence-in-chief continues

Half past two. We’re back from lunch and Tariq’s back in the witness box. 

Miss Roberts reminds him that they’ve reached the point where he’s ejaculated on Ruby’s legs. She’s asking now what he did then.

He’s cleaned himself, and Ruby, with tissue. He asked her why she’d asked him to stop and she said she wasn’t feeling that well.

‘I told her, what we had done here, I will pay you’, he says.

He’d told her he didn’t have cash and they should go to the cash machine, he says. He opened the office door, and she followed. No, he didn’t at any stage, prevent her from leaving the office. He didn’t hold the handle to the door. He didn’t put his foot against it. He didn’t ask her to stay.

They went to the cash machine, he explains, they passed people on the street, at the pedestrian crossing. ‘She’s behind me’, he says, ‘speaking, smiling and everything’s good. All the way we are speaking.’

Ruby was a couple of metres behind him when they first left the office, he says, ‘but then she comes hurrying to me, to get closer to me’.

‘What happens when you get to the cash machine?’ asks Miss Roberts.

‘I want you to show the video at the cash machine’, says Tariq. ‘She’s standing here near me, you will see her, she’s looked at my PIN. I am thinking, why is she looking at my screen? And I think, why is she looking at that. And then I ask her what she wants. Ten? Twenty? And she says twenty will be fine.’

Then, he says, he walks her to the bus stop and waits with her.

They made arrangements for her to come back to the office later in the week.

She sent him a couple of messages later that night but she deleted them before he saw them. He messaged her asking what she’d deleted. Later, he sent some more messages about the job.

‘So, the next thing that happens is the police arrive at your address?’ says Miss Roberts.

‘Yes’, says Tariq.

‘Then what happens?’

That high pitched shriek is back: ‘There are four police officers there, and they tell me they arrest me for rape.’.

He’s crying and gabbling again.

‘It was crazy and shocking’, the interpreter eventually says. ‘I didn’t do it.’

He’s taken to the police station, Tariq says, he’s got a solicitor and an interpreter. He answers all the officer’s questions. He’s admitted they had sex, given the police his phone and its PIN number. ‘I told them everything’, he says, ‘I didn’t have anything to hide.’

In the same way that she put the defendant’s case to Ruby in cross-examination, Miss Roberts puts the prosecution case to Tariq now:

‘We have heard from Ruby that she did not consent’, she says simply, ‘is that right or wrong to you?’

‘It’s not correct’, says Tariq.

‘It’s not correct when she says those things in her interview?’ Miss Roberts confirms.

‘No.’

Some CCTV footage is now played on the court’s screen, while Tariq is still on the stand.

It’s footage from the street where Tariq’s office and the cash machine is. It shows Ruby walking directly behind Tariq as they walk down a road past a restaurant. Miss Roberts points out that they’ve passed a couple of men as they walked.

‘One last question’, she says, ‘we’ve heard from the police about there being a camera in your office?’

‘Yes’, says Tariq. He got it from a friend. The day after Ruby’s interview. He’d put it up on the wall but couldn’t link it to the Wi-Fi.

‘So you got it the following day?’

‘Yes’, says Tariq. ‘So I can see who comes to the office.’

Now, I know having an interpreter inevitably slows things down, but it’s worth flagging up that, so far, Tariq’s spent just over two hours testifying. There was a break for lunch in the middle, but he has spent two hours answering Miss Roberts’ questions. And he’s not done. His evidence in chief is done. But now it’s time for cross-examination.

Which starts immediately. And Mr Neil does not tread lightly.

Cross-examination of the defendant

‘Tariq’, says Mr Neil, ‘good afternoon. I won’t keep you very long. Just help me with this: first of all, when you wiped Ruby down after the consensual sex you say you had on the floor, do you say that was an affectionate, attentive thing you were doing to a lover after sexual intercourse?’

‘Yes, of course,’ says Tariq. ‘I didn't see her response. If it is not her feeling good with me, I'm not doing that; it’s not good doing sex with someone who doesn’t want you. I don’t need to force anyone.’

Mr Neil cuts him off: ‘I wonder if you could confine yourself to answering the questions that I put, alright?

And I was talking about you wiping her down, she was in a mess, after happy, consensual sex, albeit that she told you to withdraw, on your evidence, eventually, yes?’

‘Yes.’

He directs Tariq to the transcript of his police interview in front of him on the witness stand.

During this interview, says Mr Neil, Tariq had explained his actions differently to police:

‘You say you ejaculated quickly, says Mr Neil. I’ll read it out to you: “when I do that, when I started, I give my sperm quickly and she feel that sperm is come and she says stop. I already finish, so I stop. I didn’t at all because I already finish. She want to stand up and I say wait, wait, because sperm is on her. I don't want mat to be dirty. I said, wait, wait, I have tissue and I clean her." Can you just explain that answer please?’ asks Mr Neil, ‘because it seems to me that you're preoccupied with the prayer mat. Is that right?’

‘No, I want to stand her. If she stands up the mat will be dirty, if she stayed, I can clean her—so she will be clean and the mat will be clean. I don’t let her stand up because her clothes will be dirty…’

‘So you wouldn’t let her stand up?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You did say that, Tariq’, says Mr Neil. ‘So after tender, consensual sex, you become irritated with her? “Wait! Wait!” You say it twice according to the interview.’

‘Yes’, says Tariq.

‘Are you agreeing you were irritated with her?’

No, he’s not.

Mr Neil moves on to the exchanges relating to the job ad and the training. He’s going through the text messages, with Tariq and then Mr Neil asks: ‘Why does she need to do the training course if she’s already been on a proper training course at college, please?’

Because he’ll give her a certificate and it will be on her CV, Tariq explains.

‘Nowhere in this exchange do you tell her you can’t yet pay her?’

‘No’, says Tariq. ‘I didn’t tell her.’

‘Any particular reason you don’t tell her that you can’t pay her yet?’ asks Mr Neil

Tariq explains that he told her to just come to help assist him, and, that when she came, then he told her he wouldn’t be able to pay her until he was operational.

There’s some toing and froing about whether or not Tariq described her as being disappointed by this—he did—but Tariq’s now saying he didn’t say that.

Mr Neil proceeds to read every relevant part of Tariq’s police interview and his answers in court today to demonstrate every instance where Tariq describes Ruby as being disappointed when she realised there wasn’t a paid position available.

Mr Neil then asks Tariq why, if he couldn’t pay Ruby, he’d offered Selena a job at £9 an hour?

‘Well, I dropped Selena’s application’, says Tariq, ‘because she only wanted to work weekends.’

‘Yes, but, you were going to pay her, but not Ruby?’ fires back Mr Neil.

Tariq’s evidence here is a bit confusing, but he seems to be saying that he’d changed his mind about the services his company was going to provide. So, at the time he was talking to Selena, he would have been in a position to pay her but that had changed, by the time he saw Ruby.

Mr Neil now points out that it had taken Tariq four full days to respond to Ruby’s message after he’d had her CV. ‘Why the delay?’ he asks.

Because he’d changed his mind about the company, says Tariq.

‘Can I put a suggestion to you?’ asks Mr Neil. ‘You weren’t going to get back to Ruby until you saw her status page, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is correct?’ Mr Neil sounds surprised by Tariq’s response.

‘Yes’, says Tariq. ‘When I see this video, I remember that she had texted me. When I remembered that she’d sent it to me before, then I contacted her.’

‘Because you found her physically attractive?’ says Mr Neil.

‘Not exactly that’, says Tariq.

‘Not exactly that?’ repeats Mr Neil. ‘Well, you tell me what then?’

Tariq repeats that it’s because the video caused him to remember the application.

Mr Neil then asks again if Tariq found Ruby physically attractive.

‘I’m not very interested about that’, he replies.

They then go through the text exchanges. Mr Neil compounding the point that at no stage in the messages has Tariq made it clear that there isn’t a paying job available, that the company barely exists and so on.

He asks Tariq to explain, again, why he responded to Ruby by commenting on the picture, rather than through the message thread.

‘It’s just easier than scrolling through the message list’, says Tariq.

‘Now you’re dealing here with, predominantly, young women who are applying for positions, yes?’ asks Mr Neil.

‘Yes’, agrees Tariq.

How many women does he think contacted him at this time?

‘About three’, says Tariq.

‘So there are about three people ahead of Ruby in the conversation list?’ says Mr Neil.

‘Yes’, says Tariq.

‘So there’s no advantage to using the status button rather than the conversation list?’

Again, there’s a lot of toing and froing on this point and it isn’t something that Tariq agrees with. But Mr Neil’s point has been made.

He asks Tariq how many times he watched Ruby’s video and viewed her photos, then it’s on to the, quote, training and the promised certificate.

This, Tariq confirms, would simply have been a piece of paper with the company stamp on it. Which, according to Mr Neil, wasn’t worth very much. Tariq doesn’t agree.

They talk then, about the content of the so-called training, and that Tariq’s asked Selena to let her friends know about the job and the training.

‘Alright, let me cut to the chase’, says Mr Neil. ‘This training is a ruse, isn’t it? To attract young females and, in particular, to attract Ruby into your office. There was no real prospect of you offering her a job, but you wanted her there because you were sexually attracted to her, yes?’

‘If I was, if it was really that way, I would have told Ruby, I will pay you £9 an hour’, says Tariq.

‘No’, says Mr Neil. ‘You see, you didn’t tell her anything about not being paid because that would have put her off coming, wouldn’t it?’

Tariq, apparently, disagrees.

‘In Ruby’, says Mr Neil, ‘you saw a sexual opportunity, didn’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Why offer to pick her up to take her to the office?’ asks Mr Neil.

‘Because, if I work with you’, says Tariq, ‘if it is on my way, go with me. I work in health care assistance. My girls, men, they don’t have cars. They ask me for lifts when we finish work. You say this is about sex. I leave work at night with disabled people, with nurses, with health care assistants. They are hugging. Because they want to hug me and dance with me. Why not I do something with them?’

‘On the eve of the interview, you tell Ruby not to forget to come. And then you ring her, after you’ve texted her. You’re pretty keen to have her there, aren’t you?’

Tariq doesn’t answer.

It’s ten past four. They’ve been at this for nearly 70 minutes.

The judge asks Mr Neil whether he’s going to finish cross-examination today.

No, he replies.

It’s decided that this is an appropriate point to stop for the day, and court adjourns until tomorrow.

The judge and jury have already left court and Mr Neil and Miss Roberts are packing up their bags, as am I.

Mr Neil says something to defence counsel that I don’t quite catch—but I do hear her response. ‘Well, I think he’s just convicted himself’, she says.

Read posts 3 and 4 for the remainder of the script.

This episode script from Rape on Trial is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (CC BY‑ND 4.0). © Dr Candida Saunders.