An Open Letter to Women’s Organisations in Scotland

Protecting complainers and admitting innocent men exist are not mutually exclusive

This is a request for three simple sentences.

Not a debate. Not a panel. Not another carefully worded statement that says everything except the thing everyone can see.

Just three sentences.

Because right now, anyone who defends an accused person, or questions how a rape conviction was reached, is treated as if they’re attacking women. That reaction is understandable, given history. But it has drifted into something else.

It has become a refusal to admit that the system can be wrong. And that refusal is not justice. It’s faith.

The three sentences

If an organisation campaigns for justice, safety, dignity, and rights, it should be able to say all three of these out loud:

The Core Principles

  1. Wrongful convictions happen, including in rape cases.
  2. Fair trial rights are not misogyny.
  3. The state must prove guilt, and the accused must be allowed to test the case properly.

If these three sentences cannot be endorsed, then there should be honesty about what is being asked for instead.

Because what it looks like, from the outside, is a campaign for conviction culture. Not truth.

Why this matters now, not in theory

Scotland already has strict “rape shield” rules, sections 274 and 275 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. They exist to protect complainers from irrelevant and degrading sexual history attacks, and that aim is legitimate.

But those rules have a second edge.

They can also stop a jury hearing context that matters, especially where credibility and interpretation are central. This is not a fringe complaint. In Daly v HMA / Keir v HMA, the UK Supreme Court addressed how Scotland’s approach to these rules can, if applied too rigidly, collide with Article 6 fair trial rights.

So this is not a culture-war point. It’s a live rule-of-law point. And it leads to the public’s laziest, cruellest question:

“If he was innocent, why couldn’t he prove it?”

In many sexual cases, “proof of innocence” means proving a non-event. That’s logically impossible. The system is meant to work the other way round. The state must prove guilt.

The part the public never gets told

There are cases where there is:

  • no physical evidence
  • no injury evidence
  • no forensic “smoking gun”
  • no witnesses because the alleged conduct is private

In those cases, everything can turn on credibility, interpretation, and what the jury is allowed to hear. This is not a moral judgement on complainers; it is the practical reality of how these cases run.

So when people say, “He must have done something or he wouldn’t be convicted,” what they really mean is, “The system is trusted to always get it right.”

That trust is not earned by slogans. It’s earned by safeguards. And if key defence material is excluded, and “pattern logic” fills the gap, safeguards can fail.

The “pattern” problem nobody wants to touch

Scots law has a doctrine of mutual corroboration, often referred to as Moorov, where separate allegations can sometimes support each other if they are sufficiently connected in time, character, and circumstance, and presented as a course of conduct.

When used carefully, it has a logic. When stretched, it can become a substitute for proof. “Similar” starts to feel like “confirmed”.

If 274/275 rulings narrow what the defence can lead, the jury may never see the full context needed to test whether the alleged “course of conduct” is real, or whether it’s being constructed out of generic relationship conflict.

This is where the phrase “case creation” originates. Not because every officer is corrupt, but because the structure can reward a certain kind of narrative building. A system does not need villains to produce injustice. It only needs incentives, fear, and a culture that punishes doubt.

What is being asked of women’s organisations

There is no request here to “disbelieve women”. The request is to stop pretending the only options are to believe complainers completely or betray women. That framing is dangerous.

Refusing to acknowledge wrongful convictions creates three harms at once:

  • The risk of convicting the wrong person increases.
  • The real offender is left free.
  • Trust in reporting and prosecution is destroyed when the system gets exposed.

If the goal is women’s safety, the focus should be on accuracy. Not just outcomes.

A Simple Public Commitment

“We support complainers and we support fair trials. Wrongful convictions happen, including in rape cases. We recognise that safeguards exist for a reason, and that the accused must be able to test the evidence properly. Protecting complainers and protecting the right to a fair trial are not in conflict. They are both part of justice.”

That is the standard required for justice.

No one is asking for a campaign for acquittals. Only an admission of reality, and an end to treating fair trial concerns as an attack.

If there is disagreement, specify where

If an organisation cannot endorse the three sentences at the start, then the following should be answered plainly:

  • Which sentence is rejected?
  • And what should Scotland’s justice system become instead?

At the moment, silence reads like consent. And the cost of that silence is paid by more than one group. It’s paid by the wrongly convicted, but also by complainers who deserve a system that is trusted because it is rigorous, not because it is unquestioned.

Justice without humility turns cruel.
And a movement that cannot admit error stops being a movement for justice.
It becomes a demand for obedience.

Discuss on X with @AccusedScots