YOU MIGHT HAVE seen a lot of women you follow posting pictures of their underwear to social media over the past week.
The #ThisIsNotConsent campaign was prompted after a 27 year-old man was acquitted in a Cork rape trial during which his teenage victim’s underwear was used as evidence.
On 6 November, the jury spent an hour and a half deliberating to declare the defendant not guilty of raping the 17-year-old in a lane at night.
In her final address, defense barrister Elizabeth O’Connell asked the jurors to take into account the underwear the teenager was wearing.
“Does the evidence out-rule the possibility that she was attracted to the defendant and was open to meeting someone and being with someone?
You have to look at the way she was dressed. She was wearing a thong with a lace front,” she said, according to the Irish Examiner.
Earlier this week, TD Ruth Coppinger, tweeted a picture of some underwear after she said she displayed it in the Dáil Éireann.
Yesterday, rallies organised by ROSA took place in Dublin – where thongs were hung off the spire – and Cork in solidarity with the the 17 year-old at the centre of the case. One attendee in Cork put the number of protesters at 400.
Now, women worldwide are sharing their pictures and firmly letting the world know that clothes do not imply consent, from as far across the world as Canada and the US.
