by Winnie M. Li
In that moment, she is tempted like never before to tell her mom the truth. To tell her what happened.
But she can’t bring herself to say those words. Imagine the devastation they would cause. Her mom’s already this traumatized by a dream. What would the truth do to her?
She forces herself to harden her voice.
“I don’t know,” she lies. “I’m sorry you had to have that dream. But at least it was only that… a dream.”
*
In prison, that weekend. It’s like an escape. From all that staring, the tiny glass box, the microwaved shite pasta he burns his tongue on every day.
Hey, Sweeney, like a celebrity in court, are ya?
You speak yet?
What kind of pussy they got on display there?
He ignores all that. A week ago, he was looking forward to court. A change of scene from inside, you know.
But now he’d rather be here, safe in his cell, not going nowhere.
*
Tuesday of the second week, Quilligan tells him, he’ll be up on the witness stand. So be ready. Know your story.
That fucking story, he knows it back to front and front to back, recited it in his head for months now.
So now is his chance to show all them buffers.
The woman’s been gone since that day Quilligan tried to tear her apart, but he’s been warned she might be back.
“Don’t you worry about her,” McLuhan said. “Just focus on yourself. How you present yourself. Look at the barristers and the judge when you answer their questions. Don’t keep looking down or away, that makes people suspicious.”
’Course, they’re already suspicious.
Puts on a bit of a show. One of them nice shirts he’s been wearing for court. Hates buttoning them, putting on the stiff shoes. But when he looks in the mirror, has to admit he’s like a different person. Hair combed over to the side. He could almost walk into a pub, order a pint, start chatting with the buffers.
Now that he’s here, fancy clothes and all, he don’t think he’s ever seen this many people looking at him before. Everyone just goggle-eyed. See here, a real, live gypo rapist.
Heart starts hammering and he tells himself to calm down, be quiet, not that big a deal.
But the judge ain’t smiling, and neither are them barristers nor anyone in the room.
He’s looking over in the gallery for Da and Michael. At least two friendly faces in the crowd, eh? Da gives him a nod and Michael a wink.
But then, just a few seats over from them, one row closer, he sees her.
The woman. She’s in her TV lawyer clothes again, sitting next to them other women who seem foreign and posh. Her mouth is set. She looks straight at him, no hesitating. The way she did when she left the room last week.
Jaysus, that woman gets on his nerves. He shifts his glance away. Pretend she ain’t there.
Quilligan is clearing his throat, asking him a question.
“Could you please state your full name to the jury?”
This one’s easy.
He opens his mouth. “John Michael Sweeney.”
That’s him, it is.
*
This kid, looking so out of place in his button-down shirt and trousers. The image jars for her. In her mind, he should always be wearing that bright white jumper and the jeans. Here, his attempt to look grown-up, mature in court just seems pathetic.
She still can’t comprehend. I was raped by that? How did I let that happen?
But to dwell on that further would only make her sick.
She can sense Jen twitching and glancing over. Are you okay? That same question, so common these days no one needs to actually say it.
She nods back at Jen. I’m fine.
She flicks her eyes back to the boy, forcing herself to combat the disgust.
At least, I told the truth. What’s he going to come up with?
*
“Tell me, step by step, what happened on the afternoon of April 12th.”
He wants to get this over with, get away from that woman staring at him – your one who knows what actually happened. But Da and Michael told him not to rush through this part.
So he spins it, answering Quilligan’s questions one by one. But all the times he practiced in his cell, he weren’t prepared for the whole world staring.
Still, say what you practiced.
“I noticed she was a good-looking woman, but it was her who came to me first. Said she was lost and needed directions. I could tell by the way she was acting, she was interested in, y’know… getting to know me better. She took off her socks and shoes so she could show me her legs. She didn’t have to, but she wanted me to see them. I knew what that meant…”
All comes out in one go, don’t it.
Whole thing would be a lot easier if that woman weren’t in the front row, giving him that smug eyeful. But her stare hardly moves, and even when he’s not looking, he knows she’s still there, glaring away.
*
She never imagined she could get this angry, simply listening to another person. But she can’t stand up and scream. Instead, she has to remain calm and controlled, while the rage mounts inside of her.
He’s taken every single little fact and detail, and warped them so they point away from his guilt, towards her as the initiator. She can feel her breathing grow heavy and she sinks her nails into the palm of her hand, forming dark half-moons in her skin.
And then she realizes how ridiculously unfair this whole system is. She was the one who was walking along on her own, when he did this to her. And then she has to wait almost a year to sit in front of a room full of strangers, tell them the humiliating truth, stand up to a sleaze-bag barrister trying to paint her as a villain-seductress and then listen to the boy make up this trash about her?
Is this what we have to subject ourselves to, in order to get justice?
She can feel the tears blurring the edges of her vision, and the more she thinks about it the deeper she stabs into her skin.
The tears spill over.
I can cry all I want. Because these tears speak the truth.
*
For fuck’s sake, that woman started crying again. She’s worse than Mam.
He suddenly sees Mam, standing in that peeler’s station in Kilkenny, crying her eyes out about Michael. Women. That’s all they do.
She’s doing it so they’ll feel sorry for her, and look at them – all them jury throwing glances over at her, but that ain’t fair. This is my turn! My story now. Look at me, you fuckers.
The weird thing is, that woman is still staring at him the whole time. Not looking down, all embarrassed. Just keeps glaring straight at him, with her tears pouring down.
He looks away.
Stay on Quilligan.
“Just to reiterate, Mr Sweeney. At any point, did you use violence on the woman before you engaged in sexual contact with her?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“And at any point did she indicate that she was scared of you? Or didn’t want to engage in sexual contact?”
“No, she didn’t. She was inviting me, like. She was friendly the whole time.”
“So you were surprised when you found out the police were looking for you?”
“Yeah. She obviously wanted sex, so I was real surprised, because I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
“Thank you very much, Mr Sweeney. Now I don’t have any further questions for the time being, but I’m sure my learned friend Mr O’Leary does, if you could just stay there on the stand.”
Now this part, he ain’t looking forward to.
O’Leary clears his throat.
Now them tough questions are gonna come. He feels a line of sweat run down the side of his face. Look him straight in the eye.
You ain’t scared of his questions.
“Mr Sweeney, you described how prior to the day you met Ms Tan, the night before, you were with your friends and you’d had some marijuana, correct?”
“Yes,
I did.”
“Is this a common thing, you taking marijuana with your friends, and other forms of drugs?”
The trial’s about rape, but them jury don’t like drug-takers no matter what. So just lie on this one.
“We just do it once in a while.”
“And as well, would you mind telling the jury, how often do you, for fun, meet new women and engage in sexual conduct with them?”
“Um… that’s once in a while, too.”
“And just to clarify, by this I mean, new women whom you’ve never met before in your life. So in the past, once in a while, you have met women, struck up a nice conversation with them, and within hours or even minutes, engaged in sexual conduct with them?”
“Yes, I have.”
A mumble around the room, but don’t pay no attention to them. They can laugh all they want.
“Can you estimate for me how many times in the past you’ve done this, prior to you meeting Ms Tan?”
What seems okay here? He has no idea.
“Maybe four or five?”
“Four or five.” O’Leary nods. “So here you are, fifteen years of age—”
Quilligan stands up now. “Your Honour, I’m not sure if this is relevant to the case at hand.”
O’Leary don’t skip a beat. “Your Honour, defence counsel were allowed to ask Ms Tan about her previous behavior while traveling on her own, so I think it’s only fair I can ask similar questions of the defendant.”
Your old judge is okay with is.
He cracks his knuckles under the chair.
“These four or five women you’d met before and engaged in sexual conduct with… Where had you met them?”
Now this is gonna take some spinning. But just go on and say something.
“Well, it was all different places. Nightclubs, parties.”
“Had you ever met any of them in a park outdoors, during the day?”
Shite, what to say here?
“Uh, no. I hadn’t.”
“So this was unusual, this situation with Ms Tan. Correct?”
“Yeah, it was different from what I done before.”
“Very well. And you knew right away that Ms Tan was older than you, too. Had these previous four or five women also been significantly older than you?”
Keep spinning…
“Yes, most of them, yeah. A little older.”
“And these previous instances, with these other older women, had it been the same? Had it been them initiating it, or yourself?”
“Well, kinda both. I might start chatting to them, see how they are, and then one thing leads to another, you know.”
“But who would suggest the sexual contact, you or them?”
“Sometimes them, sometimes me.”
Quilligan coughs or something.
“And these other women, you didn’t keep in touch with them afterward?”
“Naw naw, it weren’t like that. It was just, y’know, a bit of fun for the while.”
O’Leary nods. “Fun,” he says and looks around. “I take it you didn’t remember any of their names afterward?”
Oh, he can remember names. Sarah was the first one, that skinny thing walking home from her friend’s party outside Dublin. But he ain’t telling them those names.
“No.”
Quilligan speaks up again. “Your Honour, I don’t think this is—”
“Very well, very well,” O’Leary says, his hands up. “I’ll move on. Let’s take your word for it. By the young age of fifteen, you already have sexual experience with four or five older women, who remain unidentified. So when it came to meeting Ms Tan, did it seem like a situation you were already familiar with? Meeting an older lady, seeing where it would lead?”
“Yeah, I s’pose so. Never done it in a park before, though.”
“So were you scared about having sexual relations with a woman you’d never met before in a park, in the middle of the day?”
“Mm, a little scared we’d get caught.”
O’Leary laughs. “Oh, that’s a nice touch, Mr Sweeney. Well, in reality, it was not consensual sex, Ms Tan had not initiated it. You were forcing yourself on her and of course you were scared you’d get caught because you knew you were committing a crime. You were, in fact, raping her. Isn’t that correct?”
“Ain’t true.”
“We have thirty-nine separate injuries on Ms Tan to corroborate her claim. Members of the jury, I am holding up Exhibit TM-3, Doctor Phelan’s report, which I believe you can find in the book in front of you.”
“Well, she liked it raw.”
“Mr Sweeney, I don’t know if you realise how ridiculous you sound. Here you are, claiming Ms Tan ‘liked it raw’ as you say. That she wanted to have sex with you, a boy half her age, outdoors, in the mud, on the ground, in the middle of the day, and she didn’t mind all the bruises and injuries you inflicted on her, because that was all part of the sex. Is that correct?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Mr Sweeney, this is absolute rubbish. You’ve heard what Ms Tan has to say. How can you possibly expect us to believe this when witnesses have testified how traumatised she was after the incident, when photographs prove how many injuries she received, when her account of the event has been entirely consistent and reasonable throughout the entire legal process—”
“She ain’t telling the truth.”
“Allow me to ask a question first, Mr Sweeney.”
That same hard tone, the same way all them peelers and teachers ever spoke to him. He clenches his jaw.
“Please explain what you mean when you say Ms Tan ‘liked it raw’? How do you know she actually wanted it? Clearly, if you’re as experienced as you claim to be, you can enlighten us and describe what signs indicate that a woman is interested in having sex with you.”
“You want me to tell you?”
“Yes, more specifically. Tell us what Ms Tan did to give you the impression that she actually wanted to have sexual relations with you.”
O’Leary’s making fun of him. He’d headbutt the fucker in a flash, if there weren’t everyone else around.
“Well, she came on to me. She was laughing and smiling, like.”
“Mr Sweeney, a woman can laugh and smile, that doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to have sexual intercourse.”
“That was just at the beginning. Then…”
Come on, you fucking did this at the peelers the first time. Say all that same stuff again.
But his mind’s going blank, with all them buffers staring at him, and your man railing away, and her just sitting in the front row, streaming tears down her face, and fixing him the look of death.
“It’s all in what I told the police before.”
“Yes, we know that some of it’s in your police statement, but I’m asking you now, in front of the jury, while you’re under oath, to repeat some of that and if possible, provide more detail. Could you please describe to us, what Ms Tan specifically did or said, to give you the impression she wanted to have sex with you.”
He wants to be sick. But he looks over at Michael, who nods.
It’s her word against mine.
“Like I said, she started by laughing and smiling at me a lot. She was the one who asked me for directions. And when a woman speaks to you first, you know she’s keen. Then she kept talking to me. Then, we were getting to a part of the Glen with no people around, and she didn’t mind being there with just me. Any other woman who didn’t want to be with me coulda just left.”
He goes on: she showed him her legs, she asked him to walk with her.
“That’s interesting, because Ms Tan says the exact opposite. She says you asked her, if you could accompany her on her walk. And she told you she just wanted to be on her own.”
“Well, I’m telling the truth, I am.”
“And then what else? There’s still a big difference between wanting to go on a walk with you and wanting to have sex with you.”
Jaysus, around and around with your
man. Same kinda questions the peelers asked him, but O’Leary dresses them up with fancy words, like he’s presenting some comedy act to the jury.
“Did she specifically say, ‘I want to have sex with you?’”
“No, but come on, women don’t say that. They just tell you with what they do. So she kept kissing me, starting to feel me, take me clothes off.”
With the peelers, he was even starting to enjoy this part himself. But here, with all them staring at him, it’s not much fun. He keeps talking, though.
“I think I even said ‘What you mean, right here? In these woods?’”
“Mr. Sweeney, just to clarify. You specifically asked her, ‘What you mean, right here? In these woods?’”
“Yeah.”
“And what did she say?”
“She didn’t say much, just smiled at me and kissed me some more and kept on going.”
O’Leary nods. “Now, that’s interesting. Because it’s not in your police statement.”
Shite. Got a little carried away there.
“I can’t remember everything all the time.”
“Mr Sweeney, you did not provide this key detail to Detective Morrison that day. Why didn’t you?”
“Well, like I said, I didn’t remember this bit at the time. I was high on drugs when this happened with her, I don’t remember everything.”
“You can’t remember. That’s very convenient for you.”
O’Leary stops, looks down at his papers. Starts asking about them removing their clothes. Honestly, who remembers this shite in real life? When you’re having sex, no one seems bothered by who took what off and when.
“So’s… Yeah, we’re standing up, kissing, feeling each other, all that. Then I say, ‘Are you sure, right here?’ And she don’t say nothing, but ’cause she’s still kissing me and taking my clothes off, I know she wants to.”
“And how do feel about all this, at that moment? What are you thinking?”
“Just well, scared we might get caught, but yeah, if this beour’s game. Then happy days, y’know?”
Quilligan shoots him a warning look. Maybe he went too far saying that.
Now O’Leary wants to know how they ended up on the ground. In the pornos, your housewife would take the plumber by the hand, lead him into the lounge, and then just lie back on the sofa and pull him over. So that. That’s what she done. She pulled him down to her.