Before being a judge, I represented a rape victim who was deaf and unable to speak. She was so badly traumatised that, in a cry for help, she took a kitchen knife out in public and tried to kill herself. She was arrested and brought to court. She did not get bail.
The probation officer – before even meeting me – told me she had decided to oppose bail. A cruel pre-judgment: custody would immediately end her job and change her life. Law has no feeling; it embodied the passive-aggression of society to disabled people and women: it processed her, like meat for dogs.
