A woman in Scotland says she released audio of her rapist’s confession to show how abusers can “manipulate their victims”.
Ellie Wilson is 25 and captured Daniel McFarlane confessing to his crimes by putting her phone in her purse. McFarlane was found guilty of two counts of rape in July last year and sentenced to five years in prison.
Wilson claims that even with audio and written descriptions presented in court, the verdict was not unanimous.
The attacks occurred between December 2017 and February 2018 when McFarlane was a medical student at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
Wilson has renounced anonymity and has been acting on behalf of the victims since the trial.
At the time of her abuse, she was a politics student and a top athlete at university. And in the first half of January 2023, she posted on Twitter the audio of a conversation with McFarlane secretly recorded a year after the attacks.
In the recording, she asks, “Don’t you realize how awful I feel when you say ‘I didn’t rape you’ when you did?”
McFarlane replies, “Ellie, we’ve already established that I did that. The people I have to believe in me believe in me. I will tell them the truth one day, but not today.”
When asked how he felt about his act, he replied, “I feel good knowing I’m not in prison.”
Wilson’s tweet has surpassed 200,000 views. In an interview with BBC Scotland, she explained that she released the recording because many people questioned what evidence she had to support her rape conviction.
She says the reaction has been “overwhelmingly positive,” although a small minority have been very uncomfortable. And that despite the recording of the confession posted online, some people still said “he didn’t do that”.
In addition to the audio confession, Wilson had text messages suggesting McFarlane’s guilt, but she says she still feared they weren’t enough to secure a conviction.
“The verdict was not unanimous,” says Wilson. “You can literally have a written confession, an audio confession, and not everyone on the jury will believe you. I think that says a lot about society.”
Ellie graduated from the University of Glasgow
Image: Personal archive
Wilson had previously stated that his courtroom experience was terrible. She said she was personally attacked by her defense attorney and feels guilty about having been abused.
The young woman says she felt “humiliated, outraged and abused” during the interrogation. And she told the BBC that she recently read the transcript of the trial and felt bad about some of the things she was told.
She says McFarlane was portrayed as a successful athlete and student who had a bright future and would never commit this type of crime.
According to Wilson, “He knew he could warp that narrative, that he wasn’t a rapist. I wanted to show people the reality of the facts, especially the people who support him.”
She says she posted the audio to Twitter because she wanted to show the “ambiguous” nature of abusers. “I wanted to show that these people can also be perpetrators and act differently behind closed doors,” she says.
When Wilson reported the rape to police in 2020, McFarlane was suspended from the University of Glasgow, where the two studied. She later found out that, despite a police investigation, he had managed to enroll at the University of Edinburgh, also in Scotland.
“It came as a real shock to me because I was thinking of Edinburgh’s student population. You could also become a victim,” she says.
Wilson says he can’t understand how universities could put the rights of a rape suspect ahead of their student body. “I worry that universities aren’t doing enough to keep people safe,” she says.
“Will Be With Me Forever”
“I will never be able to change what happened to me, it will be with me forever. I need an outlet for my pain,” says Wilson.
“What drives me is the thought that maybe I could be able to change society for the better and make it a little bit easier for other people. It’s what gets me up in the morning when I feel like I can’t do more,” she says.
Wilson was an awardwinning athlete at her university
Image: Personal archive
The University of Edinburgh has issued a statement saying student safety is their top priority and they will act quickly if any student is found to be misbehaving.
The statement said: “Our admissions process does not require applicants to disclose any criminal convictions or ongoing investigations at the time of application.” But he adds that “the strength of sentiment around these issues is something the university fully understands.”
“We will continue to listen to feedback on what changes can be made to improve our processes and help make all of our students feel safe and secure,” the university concludes.
A spokesman for Universities Scotland the body that represents Scottish universities said the organization was working with Ellie and the Scottish Government to see what further steps could be taken in the interest of the safety and wellbeing of students. She claims that a change in data protection laws came into effect just before the pandemic and created an opportunity to improve measures in this regard.
This text was published at https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional64298937