Snow is swirling, landing gently on the courthouse steps. Prosecutor for twenty years and I can’t go up the goddamn steps. I pace and light another cigarette. Policy is that those who wish to smoke may do so nine meters away from the building. With me it isn’t policy compliance but an actual inability in this moment. Any time my high heel touches the step, dread surges up through me, my breath going out like a long sigh.

 

In the pauses between questions, up on the stand, they hold their breath. You can see their bodies are taut. Trauma survivors hold their bodies like they’re compressed; teeth gritted, clenched up, bracing themselves for what’s coming next. They’ve been holding themselves like that since it happened, steadying themselves against the unstoppable. Small selves stiffened with fear have grown into adults coiled like springs and always alert. Exhausting, this always-alertness. Incessant vigilance of the fearful who can never drop their guard. No safe space to take the protective armour off so it becomes part of them, keeps the body rigid, held in place between soft clammy skin and a quick-beating heart.

 

Many have eating disorders, rake-thin, a way to control just one aspect of themselves. The smell of vomit lingers in the room they wait in before testifying; no matter how much disinfectant, how much air freshener, always the smell of sick wafts as you pass by. Others have a certain look, like they have the same facial features from years of clenching their jaws, grinding their teeth, keeping all the emotion down.

 

There are no mirrors in the bathroom next to the courtroom, only in the ones much further down, on the other end of the building. Most cannot bear to look in the mirror. True in general of some who don’t like to see their reflection, prefer not to look too close at themselves for fear of crumbling and not being able to continue the pretence of ‘I’m fine, really!’. Others might be shocked at their appearance, eyes puffy, red-faced, mascara running—they didn’t expect to be in such a state so the thought of using something waterproof never crossed their minds.

 

Courts expect so much from the wounded, to rip their guts and let it all spill out, some trials lasting weeks on end. I’ve witnessed so much that is harrowing, year upon year, pain mounting upon pain. Women who ‘didn’t feel they deserved wearing white’ on their wedding day, men who jumped in fright at a hand placed on their shoulder, realising moments too late that it wasn’t the hand of their attacker—no priest in the room, no longer a child. We learned tricks from psychologists to use during adjournments like putting their fingers in bowls of ice-cubes, so cold they burned, to stop them dislocating or getting lost in memories.  

 

I’ve seen so many people lose identity, become a ‘child molestation survivor’ in headlines, a ‘rape victim’ in whispers of passers-by, a set of initials in a court transcript, a statistic in the ‘reported crime’ numbers in the government report.

 

And God love them for thinking it’s their day in court. It got so bad sometimes, with vicious defence attorneys, people on the stand made noises no humans should make. They’d start to choke on their own phlegm while talking, desperate to make clear none of it was ‘fabrication’, that they were indeed ‘remembering correctly’, were not ‘intoxicated to the point that it could have been anybody’, that the ‘allegations’ are true, still have the scars, can show them. The human body isn’t designed for the stress that underscoring every detail of a rape involves, every aspect of every brutal assault re-lived, re-experienced as they blurt out the words.

 

Seared in my memory was the little girl, seven giving testimony, five when it happened, dressed in a little white dress with ruby red cherries. I remembered thinking the dress was inappropriate, given the connotation. Her piano teacher the abuser, now if she heard piano music playing she’d tremble, feel sick. Her battered teddybear was left on the lacquered bench outside, not allowed to take the toy in with her lest it be prejudicial to the jury. This, back before video-link was allowed, and when the abuser could sit close and vibe the victims as they testified. The girl, ashen faced, touched the dummy-doll between the legs. With the strain of the situation, her nose began to bleed. The judge called a recess, he had to. When she returned, led by the hand a little faster than she’d naturally walk, the dress was almost crimson.

 

Recently, with the #MeToo movement, there’s much discussion, column word count given, celebrities tweeting. But in this courtroom it continues, the humiliation and the denigration. A rival of mine (because she’s good, always gets the client off), held up the lace thong of an eighteen-year-old co-ed in court as ‘evidence’. She said it was proof the young woman consented to the rape. It was apparent, said this (female) counsellor-at-law, that the undergarment meant the woman was ‘open to meeting someone that night’, emphasising, ‘you have to look at the way she was dressed’. The accused nodding, mouthing ‘asking for it’.

That was the last shitty straw on the grimy floor for me. I’ve borne witness to too many monsters being acquitted. One smiled at me with the same frat-boy mouth that spat on his victim before leaving her unconscious, face-down in the dirt. They’ve touched the courtroom doors, ones I too touch, with the same hands they held the throats of their victims, same hands that pushed and punched women down. The thong has hovered in my mind, like a black lacey ghost floating in my peripheral vision. I can’t be part of it anymore, this fucked system. I throw my cigarette in the snow and watch the snowflakes melt away like empathy dissipates when the defence attorney is ‘on fire’. I turn my back and walk away.