Finally got myself a minute to put up the judgment on the rehearing of the notorious Tolson appeal case from I think Jan/Feb this year. It was heard by Mrs Justice Judd. I attended most of it - judgment here https://bit.ly/3fJZmmA 

Recap on thread from earlier today: the two rape allegations that Tolson dismissed in such outrageous terms were found to have happened. All the mother's other domestic abuse allegations but one were also found as fact.

None of the father's allegations against her were found.

Observations from watching the trial: it was clearly incredibly distressing and embarrassing for the woman to give evidence of the kind of abuse she described, and excruciating, really, to see her being cross examined on it for hours.

She broke down several times. My comment to myself at the time was that it felt like watching a helpless creature being tortured. I'm sure that to people involved in family law this may seem overblown. It was, nevertheless, the image that came to my mind and hasn't left me.

This is all the while acknowledging that the judge managed the case incredibly carefully and considerately throughout, and the cross examination, while extremely direct and relentless, was not in tone or language abusive.

However, much like the reaction to the cross examination of Frances Andrade (who killed herself following it - I do not say directly because of it), I cannot see how to subject anyone who *has* been raped and domestically abused, who is clearly already vulnerable...

..because of previous experiences, my reaction is that this process in itself cannot be other than highly traumatic and inherently abusive, whether it it intended to be or not.

And so watching this extremely well-managed trial, I'm left wondering if seriously, this is the best we can do to protect victims of domestic abuse and, lets not forget, their children, who have already endured fear (sometimes for their lives) sexual assault and powerlessless.

It was acknowledged at the very start of the trial that the evidence would be highly sensitive. Both mother and father applied for journalists - me and Brian Farmer - to be excluded as it the parties believed it might affect their ability to give evidence.

We both completely got that. But we argued that in this case (perhaps particularly so), it was vitally in the public interest that we were able to observe the conduct of the trial, and we explicitly said we had a role to hold the judge to account.

Mrs Justice Judd in her ruling on the issue asked us to turn off our cameras, and said she would see how things went as the hearing progressed. As it turned out, from what I could tell, it seemed to go fine.