The tone of the book is chatty and informal, the vocabulary is complex at times but nothing a dictionary can’t fix, and overall this book gave me a true appreciation of justice as opposed to simply the letter of the law- I couldn’t recommend it enough. It is perhaps not fair to pull Kennedy up by citing the case of multiple rapist and paedophile Karen White who was housed in a female prison and subsequently sexually assaulted two female inmates, since it was made public after Eve Was Shamed went to print, but this situation was surely foreseeable.

At present the law treats everyone the same even though our prejudices and engrained beliefs are unavoidable and still prevalent (just see the chapters on the “perfect” women victim). Kennedy does a reasonable job of looking at this issue through a more intersectional lens, particularly in terms of race and class. The text looks at the experience of women in the British justice system, each chapter covering a specific topic including: the experience of female lawyers, rape and domestic violence, the impact of race on the experience of female defendants, and the law of manslaughter and how it’s applied to the different genders.The gross acceptability of rape in our culture (unless a woman is leapt upon in an alley by a stranger with a knife) is leveraged to the full by defendants. Because, honestly, we cannot argue that all men react in the same way to the same event, especially when talking about their feelings. Eve Was Framed is an eye-opening analysis of the disadvantages that women face in the criminal justice system.

They are at least reading copies, complete and in reasonable condition, but usually secondhand; frequently they are superior examples.I would say some of the points did tend to tar everyone with the same brush, but the author did (very often) make side notes of impartiality. Those most susceptible to this injustice are women, the young, the working class, immigrants, the Irish, black people and homosexuals. That said, it did leave me wanting to read more from this author, to understand the further issues within the system and what can be done to help and to see how attitudes have changed in the years since this book was published.

in 1991] a retired Appeal Court judge explained that if it were open to wives to bring prosecutions against rape, albeit against a background of domestic violence, it would prohibit any chance of rehabilitation of the marriage and would have a deleterious effect on children - as though rape itself, rather than the prosecution, might not already have had that effect. It’s a devastating critique of an institutionally sexist system where sex, class, and race intersect and women are judged by the judiciary / jury / society based on higher standards than men. Kennedy envisages the speech for the prosecution, the defence’s response, and wittily comments “transportation from Paradise is one thing, but a sentence of eternal damnation when the conviction has to be based on the uncorroborated testimony of a co-accused must surely constitute a breach of human rights!ACT Contact / FAQ About Events / Videos Merch / Subs Sign in/up Eve Was Framed : Women and British Justice Kennedy, Helena More by this author.