A woman is crowdfunding for £50,000 so that she can bring her alleged rapist to justice. Emily Hunt, who has waived her anonymity so that she can make her story more public, says she was raped by a stranger. One morning in 2015, the mother of one, 28, woke up ‘naked and terrifed’ next to a man she didn’t know.
She reported it to the police, but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), whose job it is to turn police investigations into charges, said that the man, who Emily believes drugged her before raping her at Bethnal Green Town Hall Hotel in east London, could not be charged.
This is because, Emily told The Evening Standard, CCTV footage showed her being ‘very flirty’ and ‘kissing him.’
However, Emily could not remember anything of the day from after 4pm, and says that her ability to consent - the crucial question in any rape claim - was totally hampered by her intoxication. She says the man who raped her was sober.
‘I woke up naked and terrified on a hotel bed next to a man I’d never seen before. I suspected that I been drugged, and, as I found out two days later, I had been raped. I reported it immediately so the police had me, my rapist and the hotel room,’ she said.
‘They found used condoms in the room. The Crown Prosecution Service told me they couldn’t prosecute. One reason was that there is CCTV footage of me being very flirty, kissing him. But I believe I was drugged. In the CCTV I’m literally falling over so it’s very clear that I’m heavily intoxicated.
‘I don’t remember meeting him or any of that. It was impossible for me to have given consent. I was falling over.
‘The police wouldn’t take me for a medical exam because I was too intoxicated to give consent for a medical exam.’
The logic is clear: if you’re too drunk to consent to a medical exam to see if you’ve been raped, surely you’re too drunk to consent to sex?
Emily is now seeking to privately prosecute the man, but it’s going to cost. As she writes on her GoFundMe page: ‘I can pay a (very expensive) barrister to bring charges against my rapist. I can pay someone to do the Crown Prosecution Service's job for them….
‘Given the evidence, this would likely result in jail time for him. But this is a very expensive endeavour and I can't do it my own.’
She has raised £13,805 of her goal, which means she is well on the way to mounting a case. Meanwhile, the CPS sticks by its decision to not prosecute, saying: ‘Having looked carefully at all the available evidence, a specialist prosecutor decided there was insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction in this case.’
They added that a further review upheld the original decision and that ‘While we are of course sympathetic to the complainant, this is not a prosecution we were able to bring to court.’
Let’s see what happens if she can….
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.