Why don't women get justice for sexual assault? | Rape and sexual assault

I suspect that, like many others who read Alexandra Heminsley's article, my jaw dropped when I read the outcome of the trial (Yes, passersby can save women from sexual assault. But I know first-hand that's not always enough, August 17). First, because someone can be found not guilty based on the impact a guilty verdict would have on their life, not because they committed the crime in the first place. Second, because the judge (who should be removed from office) framed his decision based on such a patriarchal, Victorian view that pregnant women are more likely to be emotionally unstable.

This is reminiscent of times when women were considered “hysterical” and their views and accounts of events could not be trusted. How on earth can someone who holds these views have the privilege of administering justice today? These views are not only abhorrent, but have no place in a functioning justice system. It is no wonder that women continue to be failed by the system.

There should be a way to hold everyone from Justices of the Peace to High Court judges and everyone in between to account for bringing personal beliefs into the courtroom. They have no place where justice should be done on the basis of evidence and the likelihood of guilt, rather than on the basis of anachronistic, outdated beliefs. I hope Jess Phillips reads this, takes note and takes action. Two years after Sarah Everard's murder, nothing seems to have changed.

Alexandra Heminsley, I am so sorry that you have been so miserably let down and I stand with you in solidarity.
Shanti Inglebright
West Molesey, Surrey

At the age of 14, I was attacked by a 16-year-old boy who, egged on by his friends, took a weightlifting bar from our school gym and hit me on the coccyx with it to simulate the sexual act he was clamoring to perform on me. I was hospitalized with severe pain and numbness in my left leg.

Despite him giving a statement to the police, my friends coming forward as witnesses, and him confessing both online and in person, the police took no further action due to fears of “potential repercussions on his future.” To make matters worse, the school “lost” the CCTV footage.

Women are taught from an early age that our trauma is less important than the men who traumatized us. I am 29 now and have been groped, harassed and followed by men, but I have never reported it. I know nothing will happen.
Specified name and address

When I read Alexandra Heminsley's account of her sexual assault and the acquittal of her attacker, what struck me most was the double standard regarding the role of alcohol in sexual assault cases. When a woman is sexually assaulted while under the influence of alcohol, it is she who must suffer the consequences of that condition and she is to blame, whereas a man who commits a sexual assault while under the influence of alcohol is somehow absolved of responsibility because he is drunk.

Why are women held to a higher standard than men? And how dare the judge in this case consider the impact of the punishment on the perpetrator and not the impact of the attacker's acquittal on the victim?
Angela Oviedo
Halstead, Essex