One Law For the Rest of Us

by Peter Murphy

  Even before this morning I hated being Woman A. It felt less like a gift of anonymity than a wilful suppression of my identity: like an army recruit, or a prisoner, who must submit to being defined by a number instead of a name. It felt like one more violation, one more assault on my identity as a person. I was anonymous in the same sense I’d been anonymous when I stood before those men in that impersonal grey school nightdress and my bare feet. They didn’t know, or care, who I was. If they’d known, I don’t think they could have behaved in that way towards me. In certain circumstances anonymity is, if not a necessary condition, a kind of permission for the most dehumanising and shameful treatment to which men and women can be subjected. In a sense, it’s the ultimate license to abuse. That’s why you have identically dressed enemy prisoners starving behind the barbed wire fences of prison camps; identically naked victims marching slowly towards gas chambers; and identically featureless houses in the dead of night waiting for the bombs to fall and wipe out all trace of the lives that once inhabited them. If you stop to think of the victims as people, even for a moment, you couldn’t do it.

  I like Ben Schroeder and Ginny Castle: I admire their knowledge and skill; and I’m grateful for their compassion. Their preparation and reassurance have made the ordeal of giving evidence easier than it would otherwise be, as has Emily’s courage. But nothing can prepare you for the experience of entering this most formal of settings, in which it is decreed that the ritual of public judgment shall be performed. The barristers you’ve had coffee with are now wearing wigs and gowns and grave expressions; there is a solemn judge, similarly attired; and there is another barrister, one you don’t know, whose job it is to tear you apart, to destroy you if he can – nothing personal, you understand, he’s just doing his job, all part of the ritual. Nothing can prepare you for the sight of the jury, twelve men and women – in my case men, by a clear majority of nine to three – to whom you have to speak in excoriating detail of events you have remembered but wish you could forget; to whom you have to speak of things that, if compelled to speak of them at all, you would choose to whisper in the dead of night, over a shared pillow, to your most intimate partner. These twelve of your fellow citizens, who do not know you, but before whom you must stand as naked as if you had to leave every stitch of clothing at the door of the court: which I think, in some odd way, might actually make the ritual of public judgment easier to endure.

  I am not on trial. I must remember that. I am not on trial. I repeat the words Julia has whispered in my ear as a mantra, as the usher escorts me to court from the small, claustrophobic room in which I’ve been contained ever since returning from a lunch my stomach is struggling to keep down. There were some legal issues, the usher explains, without explaining. The judge had to hear from counsel without the jury; but they’re ready for you now. Hear about what? Legal issues? About me? I am not on trial. Am I?

  Once I’m in the witness box and I’ve taken the oath, I dissociate by using my mind to analyse Ben’s approach to my examination-in-chief. I do this to avoid the gaze of the jury and opposing counsel, and to alleviate my anxiety as far as I can. I’m not anxious about my ability to give evidence, as such. Barristers aren’t allowed to prepare witnesses in detail, Ben tells me, in case there’s a suspicion that the witness is being coached. But I’ve had my witness statement to read as often as I’ve needed to; I know he’s using the statement as a guide, and so I have a good idea of what to expect. Most importantly of all, I know I’m telling the truth, which is the best reassurance any witness can have. So it’s not a matter of worrying about the evidence itself. It’s far more to do with the hostile, adversarial atmosphere in which the ritual demands that my evidence shall be presented.

  I release my mind to study intellectually how Ben presents my story to the jury. The first analogy that comes to me is that he’s like an accomplished film director, who knows how to use colour and black-and-white, light and shade, long shots and close-ups, and how to increase or decrease the pace of the dialogue, so as to draw attention to the landscape and events he wants us to understand. For example, we skate quite quickly through my early childhood, school and play, my relationship with Joan and my parents. But with the outbreak of the war, we slow right down. He takes me at leisure through my recollection of the nightly air raids, the devastation of the East End I saw all around me, and the curious circumstance of our determination to ride it out at home instead of seeking the safety of the underground stations. When we reach the moment at which Joan and I are evacuated, and (cleverly skipping forward in time slightly to complete the scene) the moment when we receive news of the death of our parents and the destruction of our home, we don’t skip a single detail, either of the events or of my feelings about them. I start to wonder whether the camera will ever move on to another subject. But then, suddenly, we’ve left the war and London behind, and we’re in a sun-filled bus rolling though a bucolic landscape towards a new life in a strange place.

  Ben wants to make use of me to give the jury a more detailed sense of Lancelot Andrewes School, so he asks the usher to hand me a copy of the plan and a black marker. We begin with the layout of the building, which we take quite briskly, with me marking various points of interest on my copy of the plan, which will shortly be given to the jury. My dissociating mind notes how wise he is to get me physically involved in preparing a piece of evidence like this. For the few minutes it takes, my attention is completely focused on the task I’ve been allocated, and I forget to be anxious. I find that I can even glance at the jury to make my points, while I’m putting an X here and a label such as ‘gymnasium’ there. We also move quickly through the daily school routine of uniforms, assemblies, classes, games, meals, homework, and bedtime. But when we come to the arrangement of the dormitory, the girls I shared it with, especially those like Mary Forbes who became close friends, we’re taking our time again, no rush at all, making sure the jury has every chance to take it all on board.

  Mary, Julia told me before we started, has chosen to remain Woman B. I understand. She has a husband and children in Canada who have only just found out that she was molested as a child, and that she is about to give evidence about it in a court of law in England; and quite apart from the emotional fallout from that new reality, both she and her husband have high-profile legal careers to worry about.

  I assume that from there, we may be going straight to the molestation; but Ben understands that every great film has an unforgettable climax, and he’s not going to waste his most dramatic scene by screening it too soon. So we accelerate again through my academic and sporting achievements at school, such as they were, and my leaving school to continue my studies at Edinburgh. This necessarily includes my experiences with my boyfriends, and my resistance to their fingers.

  My dissociating mind speculates that the jury must be wondering what on earth Ben is up to, asking me to reveal such intimate details of my early relationships. But, of course, every film needs a touch of mystery to baffle the audience until the final climactic revelation, as when Hercule Poirot gathers the protagonists together in the library, or the dining car of the Orient Express, to take tea while he reveals the truth about the dastardly deed. Ben knows this, and towards the end of his film he will step effortlessly into the role of Poirot, and reveal all to the jury. I’d been dreading this part of my evidence. But when it comes, to my immense surprise and relief, I find that these details of my sexual encounters actually have a funny side. It’s the language that does it. I have to relive those humiliations using the correct anatomical terminology, instead of the blunt Anglo-Saxon vocabulary I use when I reflect on them in the privacy of my own mind. My experiences sound comical to me when related in the stilted formal language of the courtroom, and that helps me to get through it; though I don’t see anyone laughing, or even smiling.

  Ben’s camera moves on pitilessly to a house in Edinburgh, and to the lifeless body of a young woman hanging from a staircase, as her sister looks on
, holding a hand-written note. The visual impact of the scene is considerable, and Ben allows it ample time to linger before the jury. The scene requires little in the way of dialogue, but Ben makes sure that the jury hear my feelings, and my interpretation of my sister’s last words; and for the first time, the jury are given a glimpse of the evidence they are going to hear when the scene shifts back, for the last time, to Lancelot Andrewes School in the 1940s, to the evidence that will unlock the mystery.

  My final close-up, and the film’s drawn-out climax, depicts those long nights when I was taken by Father Gerrard to his private library for the amusement of his highly-placed friends, Lord AB, Sir CD, and the Right Reverend EF. When my memory returned, I regained a clear picture of four occasions when this happened. I can’t say on what dates I was abused, and I have a clear sense that the four occasions of which I have total recall are only examples of something that happened to me more often, between the ages of seven or eight and eleven or twelve. I know this because I recovered fragments of those other occasions, occasions when something distinctive caught my attention: perhaps the aroma of a different cigar or cologne; an unusual brightly coloured tie; or some odd phrase someone used when they asked me about school – which they were wont to do before they touched me, presumably to suggest an air of normality, to suggest that in some sick, perverted way, we were having the kind of normal, civilised conversation adults and children have with each other in a clubby drawing room.

  But the four occasions of which I have total recall I remember in glorious Technicolor, and Ben slows the action down, not quite to slow motion, but to a frame-by-frame exposure of this casual obscenity: so that the jury can’t help but see the sense of entitlement of those participating in it; so that they can’t help but see the gradual wilful destruction of any sense of safety, any sense of innocence, any lingering sense of physical and emotional integrity the child in the close-up may once have had.

  By the time Ben decides it’s a wrap, I’m a basket case, and I’m sure I look it. Mercifully, by then, we’ve reached the end of the court day. Anthony Norris’s assault on me will have to await tomorrow. Judge Rees warns me in strong terms not to discuss my evidence with anyone overnight, including my nearest and dearest. I’d already heard that from Ben, and I’ve made arrangements to stay in a hotel overnight, while Ken has taken Emily back home to Ely. I don’t sleep well, and it seems no time at all before the judge is inviting Norris to do what he can to discredit me.

  21

  Wednesday 8 May 1974

  ‘Thank you, my Lady. Mrs Marshall, you told the jury that you recovered your memories in the early hours of the morning, after your daughter Emily had complained to you of having been molested?’

  ‘Yes. That’s correct.’

  ‘You recovered memories of four occasions when you claim to have been molested, but you believe you were also molested on other occasions, of which you have no clear memory: is that correct?’

  ‘I have impressions of other occasions: fragments of memory.’

  ‘Yes. Please understand, Mrs Marshall, that I’m using the word “recovered” because that’s the word you used. You understand that I don’t accept that your so-called memories are real?’

  ‘You’re entitled to your opinion.’

  ‘Thank you. I hope you would agree that the members of the jury are also entitled to theirs?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘So I would like to explore this process of recovery with you: and my first question is, not when you recovered your memories, but when you lost them?’

  ‘Lost them? I don’t understand the question.’

  ‘Well, you can’t recover something unless you’ve first lost it, can you? I’m asking you when you lost your memories of being molested?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, let’s see if we can reconstruct it, shall we? As I understand your evidence, the molestation stopped, at least in your case, when you reached the age of eleven or twelve?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And from conversations with other girls, you have concluded that seven to eleven or twelve was the preferred age range for this group of paedophiles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t leave school at eleven, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. In fact, you stayed at school until you left to go to Edinburgh University at the age of eighteen?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct.’

  ‘And because you and your sister had been orphaned during the war, you spent a good deal of time at school even during the holidays, didn’t you?’

  ‘Our friends were very kind and we were often invited to their homes; and we sometimes went to stay with an aunt in Northumberland. But yes, we were at the school during some holidays, or parts of holidays.’

  ‘After the molestation stopped in your case, for how long did you continue to sleep in the same dormitory?’

  ‘Until I was fifteen and went into the lower sixth form. We had study-bedrooms after that.’

  ‘So, that’s between three or four years, of being in the same dormitory?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With much the same group of girls?’

  ‘Yes. Well, one or two girls would have left for various reasons, and sometimes a new girl arrived.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. But you were in a dormitory for three to four years with other girls – girls who had told you that they had also been abused?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Including the girl we’re calling Woman B?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘During those three or four years, did Father Gerrard continue to come in after lights out and take one of the younger girls, in the same way he’d taken you – before, presumably, you got too old?’

  She thought for a long time.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ she replied.

  ‘Really? Because if he was still coming in and taking girls away, that would be bound to remind you of what had happened to you, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it would.’

  ‘It would make it difficult to forget, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In your time at school between the ages of eleven and eighteen, how many times did you walk up and down the staircases to get from one floor to another?’

  She smiled. ‘I couldn’t begin –’

  ‘No, of course you couldn’t. How could you? It was a silly question, wasn’t it? But that’s my point. It must have been thousands of times, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thousands of times, up and down the same staircases you used when Father Gerrard took you downstairs to be molested, and took you back upstairs after you had been molested, wearing nothing but your nightdress and in your bare feet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be possible, would it, for you to walk up and down those staircases without remembering the times when you were molested?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘In those same three or four years, were there occasions when you went to Father Gerrard’s study for one reason or another?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were there times when you went to the business office for one reason or another?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And on those occasions, you would pass Father Gerrard’s private library, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose I must have.’

  ‘Yes. Did you ever go into the private library for any reason, other than when you were taken there to be molested?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you never went inside, but you passed by the door many times?’

  ‘I assume I must have, yes.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be possible for you to pass by that room without remembering what had happened to you while you were inside, would it?
’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  Norris paused for some time.

  ‘What I’m putting to you, Mrs Marshall, is that you could not possibly have passed another three or four years in that dormitory, another six or seven years at school, after you reached the age of eleven, without being reminded constantly of what had happened to you in the private library – if you’re telling the truth, that is.’

  ‘I am telling the truth,’ she replied angrily.

  ‘Then, please answer my original question: when did you lose your memories of being abused?’

  ‘I can’t answer that. But I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘All right. Let’s come to your life after you left school. You gained a place at Edinburgh University?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your sister Joan had already graduated from the same university; she’d decided to stay in Edinburgh; she was living and working in the city: yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Joan, of course, was quite a bit older than you, wasn’t she?’

  ‘About five years older.’

  ‘Yes. In fact, when the two of you first arrived at Lancelot Andrewes, she was already twelve?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Beyond the age of interest to this group of abusers?’

  ‘Apparently so, yes.’

  ‘Well, did Joan ever say that she had been abused?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ever complain to Joan about what had happened to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yes: when? While you were at school? When you were how old? Or was it later, when you were both in Edinburgh?’

  ‘No, while we were both still at school.’

  ‘How often did you talk to her about it?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘More than once?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it was a number of times.’

  ‘And we can assume, can’t we, that if you could talk to her about being abused, you must still have had memories of being abused?’