I dedicate my song today to Christina Walsh who lives in Dublin, Ireland. Christina celebrates her birthday today. Enjoy your special day, Christina, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.
My song today is ‘Half the Way’. This song was written by Ralph Murphy and Bobby Wood, and recorded by American country music artist, Crystal Gayle. It was released in September 1979 as the first single from the album ‘Miss the Mississippi’. After achieving major Country crossover success in 1977 with ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’, followed by a Top 20 Pop hit and Number 1 Country hit the next year (‘Talking In Your Sleep’), Crystal Gayle attempted this new crossover piece of music.
After signing with ‘Columbia Records’ in early 1979, Crystal Gayle immediately started recording for them. ‘Half the Way’ was the first song recorded under her new record label. The song’s up-tempo sound and Soft-Rock sounding melody enabled the song to reach Billboard's Top 20 chart, peaking at Number 15 in 1979. The song also climbed to Billboard’s Magazine’s Number 2 position on the Country charts, just missing the top spot. Like Crystal Gayle's other previous recordings, the song also hit the ‘Adult Contemporary’ chart. ‘Half the Way’ is one of Gayle's better-known Adult Contemporary hits, reaching the Top 10 at Number 9. Following the success of ‘Half the Way’, Crystal Gayle never achieved another Top 40 Pop hit on her own again.
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One of the many accusations I heard as a young man from some of my peer group and other men I worked with was how this or that woman was a known ‘p…k teaser’. The first time I heard this term and asked what it meant, I was told that it applied to any woman who led a man up the garden path to think he would get more than what he finished up with.
It was 1960, and I was 18 years old when a mill worker told me the meaning of this derogatory phrase about the fairer sex. The time was still highly prejudiced against women, and should any female find herself pregnant outside marriage, she would be considered to have been found ‘wanting’ in her moral upbringing. Both she and her family would be shamed in the community, whereas the man’s part in her becoming pregnant would attract no greater disapproval than the sentiment, ‘Boys will be boys’. Indeed, one of the most sexist statements at the time was, “The hussy went and got herself pregnant!” as though she procreated and conceived a child unaided, and without the involvement of any man in the equation.
Ask any healthy and virile young man at the time who was out to have a good time with any young woman he dated, and they would tell you that the most frustrating thing that could happen to them was to be allowed to go ‘half the way’ in their sexual pursuit and then have ‘Halt’ called by the young woman in question when their passions were at their highest and it was impossible to put their ‘Jack’ back inside the box.
As a Probation Officer serving the Huddersfield Courts in 1970, I can personally testify how hard it was then for any woman claiming ‘date rape’ to succeed, as it was an almost impossible task for the Crown Prosecutor to persuade any jury to convict without a third party witness to the act. In fact, the female complainants who informed the police of a rape having occurred were more likely to be disbelieved by those male detectives receiving her allegations, and most victims of this degrading crime were discouraged from pressing ahead with charges that were unlikely to result in any jury of the day convicting the defendant. It would be more than a decade later before it even became customary for one of the police constables interviewing any rape victim to be a woman officer.
Indeed, it was still a legitimate legal defence of any defendant in any rape trial which ever took place between parties previously known to each other, for the man to claim “She led me on by allowing me to go ‘part way’, and so it was only natural for me to believe that she was up for going ‘all the way‘!
This was a period in time when the deliberating Court in any rape case accepted that any corroborating evidence which indicated that consensual sex had ever previously taken place between the courting couple, was presumption enough by the accused that the woman’s future consent would naturally be forthcoming. There appeared to be no right of the woman to say ‘yes’ and decide to have sex with her man today, and then to say ‘no’ tomorrow when the same man asked for sex again. The legal presumption argued in court by the barristers in the 1960s appeared to suggest that as far as the defendant was concerned, if he had known and dated the woman previously, once his woman had agreed to them having sex once, there was no need for him to ask her again, and every right to expect her answer to have been what he anticipated it to be!
Thank God that there has been much progressive change has occurred over the past 50 years, and yet not enough! Barristers for the defence are still allowed to question women who claim to have been raped about their sexual history, and are allowed to argue that the type of clothes the woman wore on the day of their ‘alleged rape’ enticed and encouraged the man to assume ‘what was on offer’. Paradoxically, the higher the dress hem was above the knee, the lower in character and morals were considered the woman claiming she had been raped.
Even today, the number of convictions for rape barely represents the tip of the iceberg in relation to the number of actual rape allegations which are never proceeded with. Too many women still do not proceed to press charges for rape when there is no corroborating evidence and the case merely involves the man’s word against hers, especially in situations where sexual intercourse is not denied to have taken place by either party. There will always remain room for some doubt to exist in the mind of a male juror when the woman states it was against her will and the man claims that sex was mutually consensual, unless one holds the view that all rape allegations are justified.
I knew of one situation while working in Huddersfield between 1970-95 as a Probation Officer, which showed me the opposite side of the coin. It concerned a man who was imprisoned for the rape of a nurse in West Yorkshire. I will not identify the precise area, in the event that there are still live family members. At the Crown Court trial, the nurse swore that she did not know her rapist who was caught in her stolen car later that same night, whereas the man claimed that they had been in a cohabitation relationship for months and any sex which took place between them that night was consensual. He stated that because of the nature of her job and other factors, they agreed to keep their relationship secret. He also told the sentencing court that he had rowed with the woman on the night in question about the lengthy hours he worked as a long-distance lorry driver, and he admitted to taking her car without consent; believing that he had as much right as her to drive it because he had paid for half of it.
About four years after the man was convicted of rape and had been subsequently sentenced to ten year’s imprisonment in H.M.P Wakefield, I had him transferred to my caseload for future contact visiting. The prisoner was due to have a Parole Report prepared on him by his Probation Officer to go before the adjudicating Parole Board. My report would be one of several reports prepared on the inmate; and along with other reports on him which were prepared by his Landing Officer and an Assistant Prison Governor, all reports would be read in conjunction before the Parole Board decided if a period of parole would be granted. The inmate also had to prepare his own written application to the Parole Board stating if he regretted his offence, and also adding reasons as to why he should be considered as being worthy to be released on Parole Licence instead of serving his full sentence(with the usual one third ‘good behaviour’ remission).
Ever since he had been received into prison to serve his sentence for rape, he had been a model prisoner in every respect bar one; the inmate had always claimed his innocence. He claimed his innocence to his first Probation Officer; he claimed innocence to me, to his Landing Officer, to the Assistant Governor, and to all other inmates. He even claimed his innocence in his written application to the Parole Board. Whether he was innocent or guilty of having raped the nurse, mattered not one jot to the Parole Board. Having been convicted of rape and sentenced for the offence, all of the authorities involved with him thereafter were duty-bound to work with him solely on the basis that ‘he had committed the offence’, whatever anyone naturally felt to the contrary! Any inmate being considered for Parole Licence release who did not admit the offence for which they had been sentenced to prison was considered to ‘be in denial’, and was automatically deemed as being unsuitable to be released.
Like a number of policemen, private detectives, or prosecution barristers who work with criminals day in and day out, some are able to develop a nose for those who are telling the truth or who are lying. As a Probation Officer (who also had the nose to sniff out a truth-teller as opposed to a liar), after one year of monthly prison visits to the inmate at Wakefield Prison, every bone in my body told me he was a decent and truthful person. I could merely report on the facts as presented, including his persistent denial of the offence of rape. Not surprisingly, Parole Licence was not granted, and the prisoner was released (without a licence) after the customary two-thirds stage of his original sentence had been reached.
In the role of a Probation Officer, one comes across a great many shady people who know things about other shady people that the public, the police, or the courts will never get to know of, both inside and outside of prison. For want of a better description, these people are essentially a group of underworlds ‘informant’.
During many a Probation Officer’s close bonds that naturally develop with working long-term with some clients, I would come across information from a number of client sources which essentially led me to conclude that such and such a person had been wrongly charged and convicted, or that they had been ‘fitted up’ by the police, or that they had committed dozens of offences for which they had got away with. While all discussion between Probation Officer and the client is ‘confidential’ (unless a sexual offence against children was admitted), apart from one’s case records, the information would remain ‘confidential’ to the Probation Officer concerned and his Senior Officer and would not be pI dedicate my song today to Christina Walsh who lives in Dublin, Ireland. Christina celebrates her birthday today. Enjoy your special day, Christina, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.
My song today is ‘Half the Way’. This song was written by Ralph Murphy and Bobby Wood, and recorded by American country music artist, Crystal Gayle. It was released in September 1979 as the first single from the album ‘Miss the Mississippi’. After achieving major Country crossover success in 1977 with ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’, followed by a Top 20 Pop hit and Number 1 Country hit the next year (‘Talking In Your Sleep’), Crystal Gayle attempted this new crossover piece of music.
After signing with ‘Columbia Records’ in early 1979, Crystal Gayle immediately started recording for them. ‘Half the Way’ was the first song recorded under her new record label. The song’s up-tempo sound and Soft-Rock sounding melody enabled the song to reach Billboard's Top 20 chart, peaking at Number 15 in 1979. The song also climbed to Billboard’s Magazine’s Number 2 position on the Country charts, just missing the top spot. Like Crystal Gayle's other previous recordings, the song also hit the ‘Adult Contemporary’ chart. ‘Half the Way’ is one of Gayle's better-known Adult Contemporary hits, reaching the Top 10 at Number 9. Following the success of ‘Half the Way’, Crystal Gayle never achieved another Top 40 Pop hit on her own again.
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One of the many accusations I heard as a young man from some of my peer group and other men I worked with was how this or that woman was a known ‘p…k teaser’. The first time I heard this term and asked what it meant, I was told that it applied to any woman who led a man up the garden path to think he would get more than what he finished up with.
It was 1960, and I was 18 years old when a mill worker told me the meaning of this derogatory phrase about the fairer sex. The time was still highly prejudiced against women, and should any female find herself pregnant outside marriage, she would be considered to have been found ‘wanting’ in her moral upbringing. Both she and her family would be shamed in the community, whereas the man’s part in her becoming pregnant would attract no greater disapproval than the sentiment, ‘Boys will be boys’. Indeed, one of the most sexist statements at the time was, “The hussy went and got herself pregnant!” as though she procreated and conceived a child unaided, and without the involvement of any man in the equation.
Ask any healthy and virile young man at the time who was out to have a good time with any young woman he dated, and they would tell you that the most frustrating thing that could happen to them was to be allowed to go ‘half the way’ in their sexual pursuit and then have ‘Halt’ called by the young woman in question when their passions were at their highest and it was impossible to put their ‘Jack’ back inside the box.
As a Probation Officer serving the Huddersfield Courts in 1970, I can personally testify how hard it was then for any woman claiming ‘date rape’ to succeed, as it was an almost impossible task for the Crown Prosecutor to persuade any jury to convict without a third party witness to the act. In fact, the female complainants who informed the police of a rape having occurred were more likely to be disbelieved by those male detectives receiving her allegations, and most victims of this degrading crime were discouraged from pressing ahead with charges that were unlikely to result in any jury of the day convicting the defendant. It would be more than a decade later before it even became customary for one of the police constables interviewing any rape victim to be a woman officer.
Indeed, it was still a legitimate legal defence of any defendant in any rape trial which ever took place between parties previously known to each other, for the man to claim “She led me on by allowing me to go ‘part way’, and so it was only natural for me to believe that she was up for going ‘all the way‘!
This was a period in time when the deliberating Court in any rape case accepted that any corroborating evidence which indicated that consensual sex had ever previously taken place between the courting couple, was presumption enough by the accused that the woman’s future consent would naturally be forthcoming. There appeared to be no right of the woman to say ‘yes’ and decide to have sex with her man today, and then to say ‘no’ tomorrow when the same man asked for sex again. The legal presumption argued in court by the barristers in the 1960s appeared to suggest that as far as the defendant was concerned, if he had known and dated the woman previously, once his woman had agreed to them having sex once, there was no need for him to ask her again, and every right to expect her answer to have been what he anticipated it to be!
Thank God that there has been much progressive change has occurred over the past 50 years, and yet not enough! Barristers for the defence are still allowed to question women who claim to have been raped about their sexual history, and are allowed to argue that the type of clothes the woman wore on the day of their ‘alleged rape’ enticed and encouraged the man to assume ‘what was on offer’. Paradoxically, the higher the dress hem was above the knee, the lower in character and morals were considered the woman claiming she had been raped.
Even today, the number of convictions for rape barely represents the tip of the iceberg in relation to the number of actual rape allegations which are never proceeded with. Too many women still do not proceed to press charges for rape when there is no corroborating evidence and the case merely involves the man’s word against hers, especially in situations where sexual intercourse is not denied to have taken place by either party. There will always remain room for some doubt to exist in the mind of a male juror when the woman states it was against her will and the man claims that sex was mutually consensual, unless one holds the view that all rape allegations are justified.
I knew of one situation while working in Huddersfield between 1970-95 as a Probation Officer, which showed me the opposite side of the coin. It concerned a man who was imprisoned for the rape of a nurse in West Yorkshire. I will not identify the precise area, in the event that there are still live family members. At the Crown Court trial, the nurse swore that she did not know her rapist who was caught in her stolen car later that same night, whereas the man claimed that they had been in a cohabitation relationship for months and any sex which took place between them that night was consensual. He stated that because of the nature of her job and other factors, they agreed to keep their relationship secret. He also told the sentencing court that he had rowed with the woman on the night in question about the lengthy hours he worked as a long-distance lorry driver, and he admitted to taking her car without consent; believing that he had as much right as her to drive it because he had paid for half of it.
About four years after the man was convicted of rape and had been subsequently sentenced to ten year’s imprisonment in H.M.P Wakefield, I had him transferred to my caseload for future contact visiting. The prisoner was due to have a Parole Report prepared on him by his Probation Officer to go before the adjudicating Parole Board. My report would be one of several reports prepared on the inmate; and along with other reports on him which were prepared by his Landing Officer and an Assistant Prison Governor, all reports would be read in conjunction before the Parole Board decided if a period of parole would be granted. The inmate also had to prepare his own written application to the Parole Board stating if he regretted his offence, and also adding reasons as to why he should be considered as being worthy to be released on Parole Licence instead of serving his full sentence(with the usual one third ‘good behaviour’ remission).
Ever since he had been received into prison to serve his sentence for rape, he had been a model prisoner in every respect bar one; the inmate had always claimed his innocence. He claimed his innocence to his first Probation Officer; he claimed innocence to me, to his Landing Officer, to the Assistant Governor, and to all other inmates. He even claimed his innocence in his written application to the Parole Board. Whether he was innocent or guilty of having raped the nurse, mattered not one jot to the Parole Board. Having been convicted of rape and sentenced for the offence, all of the authorities involved with him thereafter were duty-bound to work with him solely on the basis that ‘he had committed the offence’, whatever anyone naturally felt to the contrary! Any inmate being considered for Parole Licence release who did not admit the offence for which they had been sentenced to prison was considered to ‘be in denial’, and was automatically deemed as being unsuitable to be released.
Like a number of policemen, private detectives, or prosecution barristers who work with criminals day in and day out, some are able to develop a nose for those who are telling the truth or who are lying. As a Probation Officer (who also had the nose to sniff out a truth-teller as opposed to a liar), after one year of monthly prison visits to the inmate at Wakefield Prison, every bone in my body told me he was a decent and truthful person. I could merely report on the facts as presented, including his persistent denial of the offence of rape. Not surprisingly, Parole Licence was not granted, and the prisoner was released (without a licence) after the customary two-thirds stage of his original sentence had been reached.
In the role of a Probation Officer, one comes across a great many shady people who know things about other shady people that the public, the police, or the courts will never get to know of, both inside and outside of prison. For want of a better description, these people are essentially a group of underworlds ‘informant’.
During many a Probation Officer’s close bonds that naturally develop with working long-term with some clients, I would come across information from a number of client sources which essentially led me to conclude that such and such a person had been wrongly charged and convicted, or that they had been ‘fitted up’ by the police, or that they had committed dozens of offences for which they had got away with. While all discussion between Probation Officer and the client is ‘confidential’ (unless a sexual offence against children was admitted), apart from one’s case records, the information would remain ‘confidential’ to the Probation Officer concerned and his Senior Officer and would not be passed outside the Probation Service.
Without going into detail, over the following year I received through three other criminal contacts I had supervised as a Probation Officer(each of whom could be considered as being independent of each other) sufficient indication that the prisoner who’d been convicted for rape, and the nurse who claimed no prior knowledge of her rapist, had undoubtedly been in a relationship for at least six months, prior to the alleged offence. If it could be proven, it might amount to representing sufficient grounds for an appeal. After consultation with my Senior Officer, and his senior also, I documented what I believed the situation to be to the solicitor and barrister who had initially represented the man at his court hearing. In the solicitor’s reply to me, I was told that the inmate would be automatically released at the two-thirds stage of his sentence anyway and that unless we could provide names of the three independent individuals, plus their willingness to swear sworn statements before an Appeal Court, it would be of little assistance. There was also the fact that the three individuals whose separate accounts appeared to substantiate the prisoner’s assertions, were themselves parties who had criminal records. Upon release, the inmate who was Scottish returned to the area where he had grown up and we lost contact.
I do not say that there are more or fewer rapists than there really are, but I do believe that there are many men and women serving prison sentences for many different types of offences they did not commit but were convicted and sentenced for.
To provide balance to any scales of justice in the matter of alleged rape charges, however, I nevertheless believe that while juries in rape trials continue to be comprised of prejudicial men, and while most judges in the Crown Courts tend to be male, and whilst too many males in society remain sufficiently conditioned to believe it to be wrong for any woman to go ‘halfway’ before saying ‘no farther,’ that women claiming to have been raped will never get a hearing that they fully deserve to receive. Also, their case for greater equality between the sexes will never be helped when police, courts and the general public still believe in the concept of there being p…k teasers who willingly go ‘half the way’ and then complaining when they have not gone the full hog.
Love and peace Bill xx
My song today is ‘Half the Way’. This song was written by Ralph Murphy and Bobby Wood, and recorded by American country music artist, Crystal Gayle. It was released in September 1979 as the first single from the album ‘Miss the Mississippi’. After achieving major Country crossover success in 1977 with ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’, followed by a Top 20 Pop hit and Number 1 Country hit the next year (‘Talking In Your Sleep’), Crystal Gayle attempted this new crossover piece of music.
After signing with ‘Columbia Records’ in early 1979, Crystal Gayle immediately started recording for them. ‘Half the Way’ was the first song recorded under her new record label. The song’s up-tempo sound and Soft-Rock sounding melody enabled the song to reach Billboard's Top 20 chart, peaking at Number 15 in 1979. The song also climbed to Billboard’s Magazine’s Number 2 position on the Country charts, just missing the top spot. Like Crystal Gayle's other previous recordings, the song also hit the ‘Adult Contemporary’ chart. ‘Half the Way’ is one of Gayle's better-known Adult Contemporary hits, reaching the Top 10 at Number 9. Following the success of ‘Half the Way’, Crystal Gayle never achieved another Top 40 Pop hit on her own again.
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One of the many accusations I heard as a young man from some of my peer group and other men I worked with was how this or that woman was a known ‘p…k teaser’. The first time I heard this term and asked what it meant, I was told that it applied to any woman who led a man up the garden path to think he would get more than what he finished up with.
It was 1960, and I was 18 years old when a mill worker told me the meaning of this derogatory phrase about the fairer sex. The time was still highly prejudiced against women, and should any female find herself pregnant outside marriage, she would be considered to have been found ‘wanting’ in her moral upbringing. Both she and her family would be shamed in the community, whereas the man’s part in her becoming pregnant would attract no greater disapproval than the sentiment, ‘Boys will be boys’. Indeed, one of the most sexist statements at the time was, “The hussy went and got herself pregnant!” as though she procreated and conceived a child unaided, and without the involvement of any man in the equation.
Ask any healthy and virile young man at the time who was out to have a good time with any young woman he dated, and they would tell you that the most frustrating thing that could happen to them was to be allowed to go ‘half the way’ in their sexual pursuit and then have ‘Halt’ called by the young woman in question when their passions were at their highest and it was impossible to put their ‘Jack’ back inside the box.
As a Probation Officer serving the Huddersfield Courts in 1970, I can personally testify how hard it was then for any woman claiming ‘date rape’ to succeed, as it was an almost impossible task for the Crown Prosecutor to persuade any jury to convict without a third party witness to the act. In fact, the female complainants who informed the police of a rape having occurred were more likely to be disbelieved by those male detectives receiving her allegations, and most victims of this degrading crime were discouraged from pressing ahead with charges that were unlikely to result in any jury of the day convicting the defendant. It would be more than a decade later before it even became customary for one of the police constables interviewing any rape victim to be a woman officer.
Indeed, it was still a legitimate legal defence of any defendant in any rape trial which ever took place between parties previously known to each other, for the man to claim “She led me on by allowing me to go ‘part way’, and so it was only natural for me to believe that she was up for going ‘all the way‘!
This was a period in time when the deliberating Court in any rape case accepted that any corroborating evidence which indicated that consensual sex had ever previously taken place between the courting couple, was presumption enough by the accused that the woman’s future consent would naturally be forthcoming. There appeared to be no right of the woman to say ‘yes’ and decide to have sex with her man today, and then to say ‘no’ tomorrow when the same man asked for sex again. The legal presumption argued in court by the barristers in the 1960s appeared to suggest that as far as the defendant was concerned, if he had known and dated the woman previously, once his woman had agreed to them having sex once, there was no need for him to ask her again, and every right to expect her answer to have been what he anticipated it to be!
Thank God that there has been much progressive change has occurred over the past 50 years, and yet not enough! Barristers for the defence are still allowed to question women who claim to have been raped about their sexual history, and are allowed to argue that the type of clothes the woman wore on the day of their ‘alleged rape’ enticed and encouraged the man to assume ‘what was on offer’. Paradoxically, the higher the dress hem was above the knee, the lower in character and morals were considered the woman claiming she had been raped.
Even today, the number of convictions for rape barely represents the tip of the iceberg in relation to the number of actual rape allegations which are never proceeded with. Too many women still do not proceed to press charges for rape when there is no corroborating evidence and the case merely involves the man’s word against hers, especially in situations where sexual intercourse is not denied to have taken place by either party. There will always remain room for some doubt to exist in the mind of a male juror when the woman states it was against her will and the man claims that sex was mutually consensual, unless one holds the view that all rape allegations are justified.
I knew of one situation while working in Huddersfield between 1970-95 as a Probation Officer, which showed me the opposite side of the coin. It concerned a man who was imprisoned for the rape of a nurse in West Yorkshire. I will not identify the precise area, in the event that there are still live family members. At the Crown Court trial, the nurse swore that she did not know her rapist who was caught in her stolen car later that same night, whereas the man claimed that they had been in a cohabitation relationship for months and any sex which took place between them that night was consensual. He stated that because of the nature of her job and other factors, they agreed to keep their relationship secret. He also told the sentencing court that he had rowed with the woman on the night in question about the lengthy hours he worked as a long-distance lorry driver, and he admitted to taking her car without consent; believing that he had as much right as her to drive it because he had paid for half of it.
About four years after the man was convicted of rape and had been subsequently sentenced to ten year’s imprisonment in H.M.P Wakefield, I had him transferred to my caseload for future contact visiting. The prisoner was due to have a Parole Report prepared on him by his Probation Officer to go before the adjudicating Parole Board. My report would be one of several reports prepared on the inmate; and along with other reports on him which were prepared by his Landing Officer and an Assistant Prison Governor, all reports would be read in conjunction before the Parole Board decided if a period of parole would be granted. The inmate also had to prepare his own written application to the Parole Board stating if he regretted his offence, and also adding reasons as to why he should be considered as being worthy to be released on Parole Licence instead of serving his full sentence(with the usual one third ‘good behaviour’ remission).
Ever since he had been received into prison to serve his sentence for rape, he had been a model prisoner in every respect bar one; the inmate had always claimed his innocence. He claimed his innocence to his first Probation Officer; he claimed innocence to me, to his Landing Officer, to the Assistant Governor, and to all other inmates. He even claimed his innocence in his written application to the Parole Board. Whether he was innocent or guilty of having raped the nurse, mattered not one jot to the Parole Board. Having been convicted of rape and sentenced for the offence, all of the authorities involved with him thereafter were duty-bound to work with him solely on the basis that ‘he had committed the offence’, whatever anyone naturally felt to the contrary! Any inmate being considered for Parole Licence release who did not admit the offence for which they had been sentenced to prison was considered to ‘be in denial’, and was automatically deemed as being unsuitable to be released.
Like a number of policemen, private detectives, or prosecution barristers who work with criminals day in and day out, some are able to develop a nose for those who are telling the truth or who are lying. As a Probation Officer (who also had the nose to sniff out a truth-teller as opposed to a liar), after one year of monthly prison visits to the inmate at Wakefield Prison, every bone in my body told me he was a decent and truthful person. I could merely report on the facts as presented, including his persistent denial of the offence of rape. Not surprisingly, Parole Licence was not granted, and the prisoner was released (without a licence) after the customary two-thirds stage of his original sentence had been reached.
In the role of a Probation Officer, one comes across a great many shady people who know things about other shady people that the public, the police, or the courts will never get to know of, both inside and outside of prison. For want of a better description, these people are essentially a group of underworlds ‘informant’.
During many a Probation Officer’s close bonds that naturally develop with working long-term with some clients, I would come across information from a number of client sources which essentially led me to conclude that such and such a person had been wrongly charged and convicted, or that they had been ‘fitted up’ by the police, or that they had committed dozens of offences for which they had got away with. While all discussion between Probation Officer and the client is ‘confidential’ (unless a sexual offence against children was admitted), apart from one’s case records, the information would remain ‘confidential’ to the Probation Officer concerned and his Senior Officer and would not be pI dedicate my song today to Christina Walsh who lives in Dublin, Ireland. Christina celebrates her birthday today. Enjoy your special day, Christina, and thank you for being my Facebook friend.
My song today is ‘Half the Way’. This song was written by Ralph Murphy and Bobby Wood, and recorded by American country music artist, Crystal Gayle. It was released in September 1979 as the first single from the album ‘Miss the Mississippi’. After achieving major Country crossover success in 1977 with ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’, followed by a Top 20 Pop hit and Number 1 Country hit the next year (‘Talking In Your Sleep’), Crystal Gayle attempted this new crossover piece of music.
After signing with ‘Columbia Records’ in early 1979, Crystal Gayle immediately started recording for them. ‘Half the Way’ was the first song recorded under her new record label. The song’s up-tempo sound and Soft-Rock sounding melody enabled the song to reach Billboard's Top 20 chart, peaking at Number 15 in 1979. The song also climbed to Billboard’s Magazine’s Number 2 position on the Country charts, just missing the top spot. Like Crystal Gayle's other previous recordings, the song also hit the ‘Adult Contemporary’ chart. ‘Half the Way’ is one of Gayle's better-known Adult Contemporary hits, reaching the Top 10 at Number 9. Following the success of ‘Half the Way’, Crystal Gayle never achieved another Top 40 Pop hit on her own again.
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One of the many accusations I heard as a young man from some of my peer group and other men I worked with was how this or that woman was a known ‘p…k teaser’. The first time I heard this term and asked what it meant, I was told that it applied to any woman who led a man up the garden path to think he would get more than what he finished up with.
It was 1960, and I was 18 years old when a mill worker told me the meaning of this derogatory phrase about the fairer sex. The time was still highly prejudiced against women, and should any female find herself pregnant outside marriage, she would be considered to have been found ‘wanting’ in her moral upbringing. Both she and her family would be shamed in the community, whereas the man’s part in her becoming pregnant would attract no greater disapproval than the sentiment, ‘Boys will be boys’. Indeed, one of the most sexist statements at the time was, “The hussy went and got herself pregnant!” as though she procreated and conceived a child unaided, and without the involvement of any man in the equation.
Ask any healthy and virile young man at the time who was out to have a good time with any young woman he dated, and they would tell you that the most frustrating thing that could happen to them was to be allowed to go ‘half the way’ in their sexual pursuit and then have ‘Halt’ called by the young woman in question when their passions were at their highest and it was impossible to put their ‘Jack’ back inside the box.
As a Probation Officer serving the Huddersfield Courts in 1970, I can personally testify how hard it was then for any woman claiming ‘date rape’ to succeed, as it was an almost impossible task for the Crown Prosecutor to persuade any jury to convict without a third party witness to the act. In fact, the female complainants who informed the police of a rape having occurred were more likely to be disbelieved by those male detectives receiving her allegations, and most victims of this degrading crime were discouraged from pressing ahead with charges that were unlikely to result in any jury of the day convicting the defendant. It would be more than a decade later before it even became customary for one of the police constables interviewing any rape victim to be a woman officer.
Indeed, it was still a legitimate legal defence of any defendant in any rape trial which ever took place between parties previously known to each other, for the man to claim “She led me on by allowing me to go ‘part way’, and so it was only natural for me to believe that she was up for going ‘all the way‘!
This was a period in time when the deliberating Court in any rape case accepted that any corroborating evidence which indicated that consensual sex had ever previously taken place between the courting couple, was presumption enough by the accused that the woman’s future consent would naturally be forthcoming. There appeared to be no right of the woman to say ‘yes’ and decide to have sex with her man today, and then to say ‘no’ tomorrow when the same man asked for sex again. The legal presumption argued in court by the barristers in the 1960s appeared to suggest that as far as the defendant was concerned, if he had known and dated the woman previously, once his woman had agreed to them having sex once, there was no need for him to ask her again, and every right to expect her answer to have been what he anticipated it to be!
Thank God that there has been much progressive change has occurred over the past 50 years, and yet not enough! Barristers for the defence are still allowed to question women who claim to have been raped about their sexual history, and are allowed to argue that the type of clothes the woman wore on the day of their ‘alleged rape’ enticed and encouraged the man to assume ‘what was on offer’. Paradoxically, the higher the dress hem was above the knee, the lower in character and morals were considered the woman claiming she had been raped.
Even today, the number of convictions for rape barely represents the tip of the iceberg in relation to the number of actual rape allegations which are never proceeded with. Too many women still do not proceed to press charges for rape when there is no corroborating evidence and the case merely involves the man’s word against hers, especially in situations where sexual intercourse is not denied to have taken place by either party. There will always remain room for some doubt to exist in the mind of a male juror when the woman states it was against her will and the man claims that sex was mutually consensual, unless one holds the view that all rape allegations are justified.
I knew of one situation while working in Huddersfield between 1970-95 as a Probation Officer, which showed me the opposite side of the coin. It concerned a man who was imprisoned for the rape of a nurse in West Yorkshire. I will not identify the precise area, in the event that there are still live family members. At the Crown Court trial, the nurse swore that she did not know her rapist who was caught in her stolen car later that same night, whereas the man claimed that they had been in a cohabitation relationship for months and any sex which took place between them that night was consensual. He stated that because of the nature of her job and other factors, they agreed to keep their relationship secret. He also told the sentencing court that he had rowed with the woman on the night in question about the lengthy hours he worked as a long-distance lorry driver, and he admitted to taking her car without consent; believing that he had as much right as her to drive it because he had paid for half of it.
About four years after the man was convicted of rape and had been subsequently sentenced to ten year’s imprisonment in H.M.P Wakefield, I had him transferred to my caseload for future contact visiting. The prisoner was due to have a Parole Report prepared on him by his Probation Officer to go before the adjudicating Parole Board. My report would be one of several reports prepared on the inmate; and along with other reports on him which were prepared by his Landing Officer and an Assistant Prison Governor, all reports would be read in conjunction before the Parole Board decided if a period of parole would be granted. The inmate also had to prepare his own written application to the Parole Board stating if he regretted his offence, and also adding reasons as to why he should be considered as being worthy to be released on Parole Licence instead of serving his full sentence(with the usual one third ‘good behaviour’ remission).
Ever since he had been received into prison to serve his sentence for rape, he had been a model prisoner in every respect bar one; the inmate had always claimed his innocence. He claimed his innocence to his first Probation Officer; he claimed innocence to me, to his Landing Officer, to the Assistant Governor, and to all other inmates. He even claimed his innocence in his written application to the Parole Board. Whether he was innocent or guilty of having raped the nurse, mattered not one jot to the Parole Board. Having been convicted of rape and sentenced for the offence, all of the authorities involved with him thereafter were duty-bound to work with him solely on the basis that ‘he had committed the offence’, whatever anyone naturally felt to the contrary! Any inmate being considered for Parole Licence release who did not admit the offence for which they had been sentenced to prison was considered to ‘be in denial’, and was automatically deemed as being unsuitable to be released.
Like a number of policemen, private detectives, or prosecution barristers who work with criminals day in and day out, some are able to develop a nose for those who are telling the truth or who are lying. As a Probation Officer (who also had the nose to sniff out a truth-teller as opposed to a liar), after one year of monthly prison visits to the inmate at Wakefield Prison, every bone in my body told me he was a decent and truthful person. I could merely report on the facts as presented, including his persistent denial of the offence of rape. Not surprisingly, Parole Licence was not granted, and the prisoner was released (without a licence) after the customary two-thirds stage of his original sentence had been reached.
In the role of a Probation Officer, one comes across a great many shady people who know things about other shady people that the public, the police, or the courts will never get to know of, both inside and outside of prison. For want of a better description, these people are essentially a group of underworlds ‘informant’.
During many a Probation Officer’s close bonds that naturally develop with working long-term with some clients, I would come across information from a number of client sources which essentially led me to conclude that such and such a person had been wrongly charged and convicted, or that they had been ‘fitted up’ by the police, or that they had committed dozens of offences for which they had got away with. While all discussion between Probation Officer and the client is ‘confidential’ (unless a sexual offence against children was admitted), apart from one’s case records, the information would remain ‘confidential’ to the Probation Officer concerned and his Senior Officer and would not be passed outside the Probation Service.
Without going into detail, over the following year I received through three other criminal contacts I had supervised as a Probation Officer(each of whom could be considered as being independent of each other) sufficient indication that the prisoner who’d been convicted for rape, and the nurse who claimed no prior knowledge of her rapist, had undoubtedly been in a relationship for at least six months, prior to the alleged offence. If it could be proven, it might amount to representing sufficient grounds for an appeal. After consultation with my Senior Officer, and his senior also, I documented what I believed the situation to be to the solicitor and barrister who had initially represented the man at his court hearing. In the solicitor’s reply to me, I was told that the inmate would be automatically released at the two-thirds stage of his sentence anyway and that unless we could provide names of the three independent individuals, plus their willingness to swear sworn statements before an Appeal Court, it would be of little assistance. There was also the fact that the three individuals whose separate accounts appeared to substantiate the prisoner’s assertions, were themselves parties who had criminal records. Upon release, the inmate who was Scottish returned to the area where he had grown up and we lost contact.
I do not say that there are more or fewer rapists than there really are, but I do believe that there are many men and women serving prison sentences for many different types of offences they did not commit but were convicted and sentenced for.
To provide balance to any scales of justice in the matter of alleged rape charges, however, I nevertheless believe that while juries in rape trials continue to be comprised of prejudicial men, and while most judges in the Crown Courts tend to be male, and whilst too many males in society remain sufficiently conditioned to believe it to be wrong for any woman to go ‘halfway’ before saying ‘no farther,’ that women claiming to have been raped will never get a hearing that they fully deserve to receive. Also, their case for greater equality between the sexes will never be helped when police, courts and the general public still believe in the concept of there being p…k teasers who willingly go ‘half the way’ and then complaining when they have not gone the full hog.
Love and peace Bill xx
