Ravi:

Hello.

Pip:

. . . who has been watching the trial unfold from the public gallery. So today started with the testimony from another of the victims, Natalie da Silva. You may well recognize the name; Nat was involved in my investigation into the Andie Bell case. I learned that Andie had bullied Nat at school, and had even sought and distributed indecent images of her on social media. I believed this could be a possible motive and, for a time, I considered Nat a person of interest. I was entirely wrong, of course. Today, Nat appeared in Crown Court to give evidence about how, on 24 February 2012 at a calamity party, she was allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted by Max Hastings, the charges listing one count of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration. So, Ravi, can you take us through how her testimony went?

Ravi:

Yeah. So, the prosecutor asked Nat to establish a timeline of that evening: when she arrived at the party, the last instance she looked at the time before she began to feel incapacitated, what time she woke up in the morning and left the house. Nat said that she only has a few hazy snatches of memory: someone leading her into the back room away from the party and laying her on a sofa, feeling paralyzed, unable to move and someone lying beside her. Other than that, she described herself as being blacked out. And then, when she woke up the next morning, she felt dreadful and dizzy, like it was the worst hangover she’d ever had. Her clothes were in disarray and her underwear had been removed.

Pip:

And, to revisit what the prosecution’s expert witness said on Tuesday about the effects of benzodiazepines like Rohypnol, Nat’s testimony is very much in line with what you’d expect. The drug acts like a sedative and can have a depressant effect on the body’s central nervous system, which explains Nat’s feeling of being paralyzed. It feels almost like being separated from your own body, like it just won’t listen to you, your limbs aren’t connected any more.

Ravi:

Right, and the prosecutor also made sure the expert witness repeated, several times, that a side effect of Rohypnol was ‘blacking out’, as Nat said, or having anterograde amnesia, which means an inability to create new memories. And I think the prosecutor wants to keep reminding the jury of this point, because it will play a significant part in the testimonies of all the victims; the fact that they don’t remember exactly what happened because the drug impacted their ability to make memories.

Pip:

And the prosecutor was keen to repeat that fact regarding Becca Bell. As a reminder, Becca recently changed her plea to guilty, accepting a three-year sentence, despite a defence team who were confident they could get her no jail time due to her being a minor at the time of Andie’s death, and the circumstances surrounding it. So yesterday, Becca gave her evidence by video link from prison, where she will be for the next eighteen months.

Ravi:

Exactly. And, like with Becca, today the prosecution was keen to establish that they both only had one or two alcoholic drinks the night of the alleged attacks, which couldn’t possibly account for the level of intoxication. Specifically, Nat said she only drank one 330-millilitre bottle of beer all night. And she stated, explicitly, who gave her that drink on her arrival: Max.

Pip:

And how did Max react, while Nat was giving her evidence?

Ravi:

From the public gallery, I can only really see him from the side, or the back of his head. But he seems to be acting the same way he has since Tuesday. This sort of calm, very still demeanour, eyes turned to whoever’s in the witness box as though he’s really interested in what they’re saying. He’s still wearing those thick-rimmed glasses, and I’m one hundred per cent certain they aren’t prescription lenses – I mean, my mum’s an optometrist.

Pip:

And is his hair still long and sort of unkempt, like it was on Tuesday?

Ravi:

Yeah, that seems to be the image he and his lawyer have settled on. Expensive suit, fake glasses. Maybe they think his blonde, messy hair will be disarming to the jury or something.

Pip:

Well, it’s worked for certain recent world leaders.

Ravi:

The courtroom sketch artist let me take a photo of her sketch today, and said we could post it after the press published it. You can see her impression of Max sitting there while his solicitor, Christopher Epps, cross-examines Nat on the stand.

Pip:

Yes, and if you’d like to look at the sketch, you can find it on the appendix materials on the website agoodgirlsguidetomurderpodcast.com. So, let’s talk about the cross-examination.

Ravi:

Yes, it was . . . pretty rough. Epps asked a lot of invasive questions. What were you wearing that night? Did you dress promiscuously on purpose? –showing photos of Nat that night from social media. Did you have a crush on your classmate, Max Hastings? How much alcohol would you drink on an average night? He also brought up her past criminal conviction for assault occasioning bodily harm, implying that it made her untrustworthy. It was, essentially, a character assassination. You could see Nat getting upset, but she stayed calm, took a few seconds to breathe and have a sip of water before answering each question. Her voice was shaking, though. It was really hard to watch.

Pip:

It makes me so angry that this kind of cross-examination of victims is allowed. It almost shifts the burden of proof on to them, and it isn’t fair.

Ravi:

Not fair at all. Epps then grilled her about not going to the police the next day, if she was sure she was assaulted and who the perpetrator was. That if she’d gone within seventy-two hours, a urinalysis could have confirmed whether she even had Rohypnol in her system which, he claimed, was up for debate. Nat could only reply that she hadn’t been sure afterwards, because she had no memory. And then Epps said, ‘If you have no memory, how do you know you didn’t consent to any sexual activity? Or that you even interacted with the defendant that night?’ Nat replied that Max had made a loaded comment to her the following Monday, asking if she’d had a ‘good time’ at the party because he had. Epps never let up. It must have been exhausting for Nat.

Pip:

It seems this is his tactic for Max’s defence. To somehow undermine and discredit each of us as witnesses. With me, it was his claim about how convenient it was that I had Max to use as a male patsy, to try make Becca Bell and her alleged manslaughter sympathetic. That it was all part of the ‘aggressive feminist narrative’ I’ve been pushing with my podcast.

Ravi:

Yeah, that does seem to be the route Epps is going down.

Pip:

I guess that’s the kind of aggressive strategy you get when your lawyer costs three hundred pounds an hour. But money is no issue for the Hastings family, of course.

Ravi:

It doesn’t matter whatever strategy he uses; the jury will see the truth.

Two

Words spliced, growing across the gaps like vines as her eyes unfocused, until her handwriting was just one writhing blur. Pip was looking at the page, but she wasn’t really there. It was like that now; giant holes in her attention that she slipped right into.