This article is taken from the June 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Find our subscription offers here.
It was late last year, walking to work, when I noticed graffiti on the Dundee High School wall opposite my office. It read, “Fuck Waiton. Rapist sympathiser.” It came alongside an online onslaught and 300 direct complaints made to Abertay University about a group of women I had invited to speak about miscarriages of justice in rape cases in Scotland.
The media kicked into gear, calling the women who came to speak to my fourth-year class a group of rape apologists, and a character assassination started about me and my work. Even coverage in the so-called conservative press was terrible, using cheap innuendos and half-truths to pile on the pressure. After all, what sort of beast would raise questions about rape victims?
Management reacted nervously and started an investigation. A “counter-lecture” by Police Scotland and Dundee Women’s Aid was held at the university within days and a small protest took place at the end of the week demanding that something be done about me.
Few people seemed to be concerned about the message the women were trying to get across to my students — that the Scottish justice system was broken and that hundreds of men had not received a fair trial after being accused of and charged with rape.
Scotland now found itself in the company of countries such as Iran and North Korea where a fair trial was not possible
It was therefore timely that a week after this all started the UK Supreme Court passed its judgment about this precise matter. It read:
The common law of Scotland in relation to the admission of evidence in trials for sexual offences, as currently applied, is liable to result in violations of the rights of the accused under article 6 ECHR.
In other words, alongside the likes of Iran and North Korea, Scotland now found itself in the company of countries where a fair trial was not possible — at least in rape cases. This was the issue I was writing about at the time, and it was the reason I had invited the three women campaigners to speak to my class.
They were members of a group called Justice for Innocent Men Scotland (JIMS). Made up largely of women — mothers, daughters and partners of men who had been found guilty of rape — this was, and is, the most active grassroots campaign that almost inevitably emerged around this issue.
It was almost inevitable because for at least 20 years the Scottish justice system and Parliament has been inviting feminist academics to carry out research into how to change rape trials and specifically, how to increase the conviction rate in rape cases.
It’s not hard to see how things could go so terribly wrong, especially when we now have a climate where simply raising questions about this issue results in such moral outrage.
I had already written in the International Journal of Evidence and Proof about the Scottish government’s failed attempt to abolish jury trials in rape cases. This itself had been justified with constant reference to academic feminist Fiona Leverick who argued that there was “overwhelming evidence” that juries could not be trusted in rape cases because they believe in “rape myths”.
The evidence for this claim is weak. It also suggested to me that there was something deeply worrying and elitist about the approach the Scottish authorities were taking towards the Scottish people who sit on juries. The phrase “basket of deplorables” springs to mind.
Looking further into this matter, I found that appeal court judges had developed a system of justice that excluded more and more evidence from court, particularly about the complainer’s character and sexual history. I guess if you can’t abolish juries, you can at least limit what they can actually hear. The evidence being withheld from juries is mind-boggling and is justified through the idea that the victim in court needs to be protected from harm. Of course, there is no “victim” until the verdict is returned — and herein lies the problem.
In Scotland, the development of a victim justice system has resulted in processes and policies being warped, twisted and manufactured to protect women in rape cases. Understandable and humane as this may appear, the end result has been that limits to evidence has become so extreme in Scotland that even the UK Supreme Court (having a similar understanding of rape myths to us north of the border) had to conclude that since 2013 many accused persons in Scotland have been denied the right to a fair trial. As a result, hundreds, possibly more than a thousand men, could be rotting in prison because this basic human right has been abandoned.
Tragically, despite the Supreme Court ruling, the Scottish government is doing precisely nothing to resolve what should be seen as the biggest legal scandal in Scottish history.
Meanwhile, the press continue to paint a picture, not of moral outrage about this scandal but about all the rapists who are doubly traumatising their victims by demanding a new trial. Even the Tory spokesperson for victims, Sharon Dowey MSP, recently said this was “an extremely unsettling and distressing situation for victims of rape and sexual violence”.
When it comes to the issue of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) there is only one victim narrative that can be heard. Across the political spectrum and our institutions there appears to be a new moral absolute developing and it is one that is profoundly dangerous and one that has degraded our system of justice.
Thankfully, my university’s investigation into this matter is finally over, and I have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Interestingly, of the 300 complaints made to the university, only one came from a student in the class, and I suspect this complaint only came about after the online outrage erupted. Many other students who were in the class defended the lesson and expressed their surprise at the reaction. One had emailed me at the time of the onslaught, noting that our discussions about the potential dangers and authoritarian nature of the victim narrative was being played out in real time by what was happening to me.
Not only had only one complaint come from a student in the class, but 86 per cent of all of the complaints had come from outside of the university. As the Committee for Academic Freedom notes, this “episode points to a worrying direction of travel, in which externally mobilised campaigns, often driven by online reaction, can generate pressure for greater institutional control over academic content”.
There is now a discussion about whether Abertay University should institutionalise trigger warnings and have tighter oversight of external speakers. As it happens, I had told the students about the JIMS speakers before the event, so what trigger warnings would change is unclear. And as the mental health lecturer, Sebastian Monteux — one of the few colleagues at Abertay who defended me publicly — notes, evidence suggests that trigger warnings “do not reduce stress”, nor do they “improve comprehension or learning outcomes”.
For me, the lesson from all of this is that Scotland (and arguably many other Western nations who are developing similar polices and approaches to “victims”) is in serious trouble. Basic liberal principles, from academic freedom to fundamental aspects of law and justice are being undermined by a new progressive morality that is developing around the principle of protecting the vulnerable.
Whether it is students in the classroom or women in a courtroom, a new sense of virtue is developing that increasingly attempts to protect perceived victims from harm. Helped by a view of ordinary people as deplorable others, and pushed by our political class and the press, the new elites have created an incredible situation.
Something has to be done about all of this, indeed somebody needs to listen to women like those involved with JIMS, because they understand from their own (lived) experiences the utter brutality and barbarity of a system that has lost its liberal heart.
After all, all they’re asking for is a fair trial.
