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#ThisIsNotConsent: women share G-string underwear photos online, enraged by rape case in Ireland

  • A lawyer had said that the lacy G-string underwear worn by a teenage rape accuser suggested she was ‘open to being with someone’

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Irish MP Ruth Coppinger brandishes a pair of underwear in the Irish parliament on Tuesday, addressing the furore associated with the #ThisIsNotConsent protest. Photo: Oireachtas TV

There’s not much about that night that’s not contested.

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A 17-year-old from Ireland says she was raped by a 27-year-old man she met out at a club. She said he dragged her through the mud and then had sex with her even after she asked him to stop. A witness said he saw the pair on the ground, and that the man had his hand on the victim’s throat. After the incident, the woman said, she told the man, “you just raped me.”

“No,” the defendant said he replied. “We just had sex.”

He painted a much different picture of the evening, saying that the pair had kissed and then gone outside to lay down in a muddy area nearby, at which point they had consensual sex. (No witnesses confirmed that the pair had kissed.)

The woman pressed charges, and the case went to trial. Both sides framed it as a question of consent.

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“You have heard her say she did not consent. You have heard him say she did consent,” Tom Creed, a lawyer for the plaintiff, told the jury. “If you are satisfied she did not consent and that he knew she did not consent, then you convict. She is quite clear she did not consent. She said she never had sexual intercourse before.”

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