SHE WHO CRIES WOLF

As a personal licence holder and veteran of the pub trade, my good memories are shadowed by alcohol related atrocities and more recently, as a licenced door supervisor, I continue to witness odd behaviour fuelled by alcopops and cut price beer.

The recent court case acquitting certain local gentleman of rape highlights an ongoing cultural dilemma, a by-product of binge drinking and access to excess.

I have been shocked at the quantity of women who have so readily orchestrated dialogue and spoke in detail of a time they were once raped. When I have then awkwardly and sympathetically pursued the conversation and asked if the offender was arrested and jailed, they reply almost too casually 'No, I didn't bother telling the police. It's a long story and anyway, it wasn't worth it'. These odd remarks only allow me to question if some women understand the seriousness of their implications, or do these pitiful women fabricate the story as a means of profiting sympathy and then Freudianly watching the mans reaction to judge his character?

All victims of rape should immediately report the incident to the police for the sake of removing the threat from other women. Similarly however, women who point their finger resulting in an innocent man being arrested and hauled before the courts only later to be found innocent, should be named and shamed so that no other unsuspecting men fall into her web.

I remember the days when the pair formation ritual of meeting a girl, courting, and having sex would occur over a period of weeks and even months. Today it can take place in just a few hours and I am reminded of what David Niven said to Claudia Cardinale in an early Pink Panther movie, the morning after he had got her tipsy on a magnum of champagne, "The majority of women have half a glass too much and let down the barriers a little, then they wake up in the morning riddled with guilt and think they can reclaim their virtue by saying "I can't remember".

SOMERSET COUNTY GAZETTE