By Kunjila Mascillamani
On Thursday, 21st July, York University student, Mustafa Ururyar, was found guilty of sexually assaulting fellow PhD student, Mandi Gray. Ontario Court Justice, Marvin Zuker, read out the verdict, stating that, “It doesn’t matter if the victim was drinking, out at night alone, sexually exploited, on a date with the perpetrator, or how the victim was dressed. No one asks to be raped.” Don’t we have reason to applaud?
This Canadian judgement is an important one, perhaps more so after we have seen cases like that of Brock Turner, who was given a light sentence after her raped a woman at Stanford University, and the judge said that a harsher sentence would have a “severe impact” on him. Brock Turner’s case had witnesses and the sentence was still light: in Gray’s case there were no witnesses, and the sexual assault kit did not detect any obvious physical injuries on her.
Zuker also said in his judgement that how a victim reacted after being raped was irrelevant to the case. Saying that there were many reasons women reported rape later, or did not report it at all, he also said that the woman cannot be expected to remember every detail of the incident.
What Zuker has actually done is to reflect what Gray did by filing a case against her rapist. Canadian columnist Catherine Porter describes the courage with which Gray attended every hearing, and writes that Gray is also currently fighting York University for lacking clear policies and protocols for students or staff who have been sexually assaulted.
Closer home, rape cases have received verdicts where the victim has been asked to marry the rapist. Other judges have said that increasing crimes against women are a result of the way they dressed, or that women could be levelling sexual harassment charges because of ‘self-preservation’. This is why something which should otherwise be a normal court verdict has become a reason for celebration, and as Gray’s statement said, “I am tired of people talking to me like I won some sort of rape lottery because the legal system did what it is supposed to.” An important reminder.