Fergus Finlay: Courageous Nikita Hand went into court as a victim but came out as a hero

But I have to write about courage this week, because courage is all I have been able to think about for the last few days. The thoughts I’ve been having are a mixture of inspiration, admiration, hope, and despair. I want Nikita Hand’s unbelievable courage to make a profound and lasting difference. I hope beyond hope that it will. I despair that it mightn’t.

You know, I’m not even sure what courage is. I know I’ve never been particularly courageous, certainly not in a physical way. It might come as a surprise to people who know me, but I hate confrontation of any kind. On the other hand, I’ve always believed that there are moments of clarity in your life, when you know what the right thing to do is, and you believe you have no choice but to do it, even though the consequences might be horrendous. That might be a working definition of courage, I guess.

That courage was so visible in everything Nikita Hand did. You could reach out and touch her courage. For six years after a night she will never forget, she fought for justice. She failed and failed again. Two attempts to secure a criminal trial were rebuffed, and eventually she was left with no alternative but to take on a rich and powerful man, a man with no guilt or shame, in a civil court. And to do so in the knowledge that if she lost she would be utterly destroyed.

Then things started to happen. We still don’t know all the details, but there is no doubt that gross intimidation surrounded that civil action from the very beginning. Nikita was forced to lay her intimate life bare in the courtroom, under a direct and pretty merciless cross-examination. She was forced to live through a story about herself, in front of her entire family, that was designed to shame her as much as was humanly possible.

She was supported, of course, by friends and family. (Full disclosure: I should add here that I work on a voluntary basis with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, and I am prouder than I can say of the professionalism, empathy and, yes, courage our colleagues showed in standing by Nikita’s side day after gruelling day.) But when you’re looking into the eyes of a highly-skilled barrister, whose job is to reveal everything bad he can find about you, when you know it is going to last for three or four intensely painful days, in those moments you are alone. And terrified.

I think the prospect, never mind the reality, would have broken me. But it didn’t break her. Hard as it must have been, she told the truth. And the truth, because of her courage, was believed. Nikita Hand may have walked into that court a victim. She came out of it a hero. I hope she knows that by an odd coincidence there was a fundraising event for the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre going on in a Dublin hotel at the moment the verdict came through. The verdict — and Nikita in her absence — were both greeted with a sustained standing ovation.

But her case is yet another example of how hard it is to once and for all break through the veil of misogyny that surrounds the issue of consent, and indeed any assault against a woman. It’s not a veil, actually, it’s a brick wall.

It’s only a few months since I wrote here about Natasha O’Brien, who was beaten on a street in Limerick by a soldier. She had tried to stop him shouting homophobic abuse. He beat her unconscious, then boasted about it, and was then given a suspended sentence to “protect his career” in the army. If she had shut up that would have been the end of that.

But she didn’t. Instead she made herself a champion for people everywhere fighting against misogynistic violence. I had a chance to meet her very briefly and to thank her for her courage. Long, I hope, may she continue to speak out. And more important, long may she be heard.

It’s not that long ago in Ireland that women had no choice but to remain silent. That was the law. If a woman was attacked in this country and savagely raped, her identity would never be revealed. It’s 30 years now since Lavinia Kerwick was raped, and her rapist walked free after a suspended sentence was imposed.

Lavinia was forced to sit in silence in the court as glowing testimonials were given to the man who had raped her. We should never have heard of her, because in those days the names of women who had been sexually assaulted were never released by the courts. To protect the women, it was said, but also, as it happens, to ensure their silence.

Lavinia Kerwick changed all that by taking her courage in her hands and insisting on her right to be heard by abandoning the anonymity the courts had bestowed on her. Her courage changed everything for a lot of women, even though it didn’t change enough. And her fragile health has paid a heavy price ever since.

Louise O’Keeffe paid a heavy price too. Abused as a child by a teacher paid by the State, she fought for years and years, eventually being forced to go to Europe, for justice and redress. And the State, our heartless State, fought her back, even demanding tens of thousands in legal fees from her — even though the teacher who abused her ended up in jail.

There is Grace, an abused woman with intellectual disabilities, (and there are others alongside Grace) still waiting for justice through a never-ending Commission of Enquiry that has cost millions of euro and produced nothing except a good living for lots of lawyers. There are the Women of Honour in the Irish Defence Forces, still campaigning for the truth and for justice with no end in sight.

The thing they all have in common is this. Courage. Endless courage. The willingness to see the thing that has to be done, and the determination to fight on to see it done, whatever the cost to them.

Over my lifetime in this newspaper, I’ve written about all of them. In common with many others, I’ve tried to highlight their courage. In admiration and despair.

Because after it all — and in the certain knowledge there will be more to be written — I’m left with only questions. Why? Why is abuse tolerated? Why is consent ignored? Why must we rely on the courage of brave and often alone women to speak out? Why are we so incapable of learning?