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A criminal trial in Ireland, in which the lawyer of a woman accused of the crime under the name of a woman under the influence of a woman.
During the closing argument, the defense lawyer asked the jury to consider the subject of the 17-year-old woman at the time prosecutors said she was raped in a muddy alleyway by a 27-year-old man.
"Does the evidence out-rule the possibility that it was attracted to the defendant and was open to meeting someone and being with?" The lawyer asked, according to The Irish Times. "You have to look at the way she was dressed. She was wearing a thong with a lace front. "
The man is acquitted, and the case has been drawn up for national accountability and consent. Hundreds of women and men on the front page of the day on Wednesday.
In Dublin, women's hung thongs on clotheslines along sidewalks in the city center. In Cork, ugly lingerie protesters across the steps of the courthouse.
"My issue is not just the barrister; it's the system that allows it, "said Mary Crilly, director of the Cork Sexual Violence Center and one of the speakers at the protests.
What a woman wears, Ms. Crilly said, is her business and does not indicate interest or consent. "It's never her fault," she said. "We're allowing the perpetrators to get away."
On Tuesday, Ruth Coppinger, a member of the Irish Parliament, has taken a break from the fight against terrorism.
"We felt it was necessary to make the point that it was incongruous to have a thong shown in Parliament, and it was incongruous for a woman in a trial," Ms. Coppinger said. "If we sit in Parliament, we will not get it."
Ms. Coppinger said she would have expected the room to be out of shouts and objections when she pulled out a pair of her underwear, as it often does when she "brings the realities of life into the stuffy and conservative environment of parliament."
Instead, there was silence.
The Taoiseach, or Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, has been reacted, saying it was "never the victim's fault," regardless of the setting or other factors like clothing.
A day later, Ms. Coppinger led protests in Dublin and called for changes to a legal system. Small fraction of rape cases are convicted.
"How do you want to pursue a case in Ireland?" Ms. Coppinger said.
Women also shed their frustration on social media, where they posted photos of colorful underwear with the hashtag #ThisIsNotConsent.
Ms. Crilly, who has worked on the subject of rape survivors for 35 years, said it was a cultural change in women's status in Ireland had been slow, it was happening.
For decades, Ireland was a socially conservative society ruled by the norms of the Roman Catholic Church, and women's rights often took a back seat. In recent years, socially liberal policies have begun to flourish.
But women's status in society changes, the laws have not always kept pace.
Ms. Crilly pointed to the overturning of Ireland's abortion in May as a historic moment for women. In a landslide, voters republished language in the country.
"I did not think I would see that in my lifetime," Ms. Crilly said.
This cultural reckoning has also been made with the help of boxes of sexual assault. There have been similar challenges in Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, less than 2 percent of cases leading to conviction, according to a recent report from the Criminal Justice Inspection.
This spring, which has been discussed in Northern Ireland, where they have been accused of raping a woman at a house party.
The prosecution 's case included accounts of a taxi driver who testified that the woman had been sobbing on her back home. A doctor told the court that he had observed laceration in her bleeding vagina.
But defense experts argued that this was not proof that she had been raped, or even that she had had sex.
The defendants said the encounter had been consensual, and denied having vaginal sex with the woman. In private WhatsApp messages, they referred to the events of the night as "spit-roasting" and "a merry-go-round."
The jury acquitted the men, and the fallout reverberated across the island.
"The whole country was horrified by that case day by day," said Clíona Saidléar, the director of the Rape Crisis Network Ireland. Activists and others rallied on social media, using the hashtag #IBelieveHer, and at least 1,000 in Dublin.
Ms. Saidléar said social media had been instrumental to grass-roots organizing for women's rights in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
"These women know how to organize, " Ms. Saidléar said. "They are not passive in the face of this insult, of this demonstration of patriarchy in our courts."
