The National Education Union general secretary speaks to Ben Chacko on growing calls to protect children from a toxic online culture
Latest editorial
Campaigning to end ‘Not Proven’ verdicts
EVE LIVINGSTON on the the campaign to end the arcane legal verdict that is letting Scottish rapists off
Sandy Brindley, chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, leaves the Personal Injury Court in Edinburgh, last June, following the start of the trial of Stephen Coxen, who is being sued for £100,000 in damages by a woman he was previously cleared of raping in St Andrews in 2013
While Iranians take to the streets en masse to protest sky-high inflation, Trump and Netanyahu are threatening military intervention. The Iranian population is trapped between a repressive regime, a suffocating economic war from the outside, and a history of dark alliances, argues MARC VANDEPITTE
Unison Scotland’s BRENDA AITCHISON says her union won’t tolerate further cuts to public services
The Danish Communist Party’s Lotte Rortoft-Madsen assesses the fallout from US threats to annex the huge Arctic island
Trump threatens war and punitive tariffs to recapture Iranian resources – just as in 1953, when the CIA overthrew Mossadegh and US corporations immediately seized 40% of the oil, says SEVIM DAGDELEN
Once derided by Farage as a ‘fraud,’ Jenrick has defected to Reform, bringing experience and political ruthlessness to the populist right — and raising the unsettling prospect of a Farage-led movement with a seasoned operative pulling the strings, says ANDREW MURRAY
For hundreds of years, Scotland has been one of the only countries in the world – and the only in Europe – to present three possible verdicts in criminal trials: guilty, not guilty, or not proven.
Now a campaign spearheaded by rape survivors and charities seeks to change that, calling for the abolition of the controversial “not proven” verdict which they argue is disproportionately used in rape cases.
The campaign was born when a woman known only as Miss M successfully sued Stephen Coxen, her accused rapist, in a civil court in 2015 following a not proven verdict in a criminal trial. It was the first civil damages action for rape following an unsuccessful criminal prosecution in almost a century.
Similar stories
Former judge ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the details and controversy of Lucy Letby’s trial and appeal in the context of famous historical wrongful convictions that prove both the justice system and legal activists make errors
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the government’s proposals to further limit the right of citizens to trial by jury
