British MP denounces 'sexism and misogyny' after claims she 'distracted' PM

British lawmaker and deputy Labor leader, Angela Rayner, has furiously hit out at claims in a prominent national newspaper that she tried to distract Boris Johnson in the House of Commons, calling it “sexism and misogyny”.

Rayner took to Twitter to dismiss the claims made by Conservative MPs in the Mail on Sunday. 

The newspaper reported that she put Prime Minister Boris Johnson "off his stride" by crossing and uncrossing her legs in the Hosue of Commons chamber.

In a series of tweets on Sunday, Rayner blasted the newspaper, saying she was a victim of “sexism and misogyny”.

She accused Johnson’s allies of “resorting to spreading desperate, perverted smears in their doomed attempts to save his skin”.

The Labor MP said she believed the premier himself was behind the “desperate, perverted smears” that likened her body language toward him to Sharon Stone’s iconic scene in the 1992 movie. 

Johnson has since been forced to publicly denounce the blatant “misogyny” directed at Rayner. 

Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer, in his response to the controversy, said that "sexism and misogyny" peddled by the Tories marked a "disgraceful new low from a party mired in scandal and chaos". 

Meanwhile, rape victims in the UK have lost hope in criminal courts amid the rape crisis in the country, with British women and girls now seeking fair court judgments in other places. 

Despite the high rate of rape and sexual abuse in recent years in what has been described as the UK rape crisis, charging and conviction rates have dropped to the lowest since records began.

A recent article on rape and sexual assault published in The Guardian revealed that the British nation was facing what barrister Charlotte Proudman described as the “decriminalization of rape".

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Only 1 in 100 rapes reported to police result in a charge

Just one percent of British men accused of rape are charged and prosecuted while the vast majority go free without being reported, according to rapecrisis.org.uk.

It is estimated that only one in six rapes is reported at all in the country. 

That puts the actual conviction rate of Brits committing rape at about 0.016 percent.

England and Wales' police received 63,136 rape complaints in the year to September 2021, but only 820 alleged rapists were charged.

Proudman, who specializes in violence against women and girls, says as a result of rape not being considered a crime by UK criminal court judges anymore, more and more victims are forced to seek alternative ways to find peace and justice. 

UK rape victims are now turning to civil courts to access some semblance of justice, according to Proudman.

However, she added that civil courts can be much more demanding in terms of time and resources and some victims simply do not have money to access justice in these courts where the burden of proof is laid on the traumatized victim, so they are forced to leave it. 

"Rape should be treated as seriously by the state as terrorism," she argued in the Guardian article. 

Recently British state TV (BBC One) aired a documentary depicting the country's broken legal system.

The documentary film, Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Britain’s Rape Crisis, highlighted how rapists go free and the victims avoid coming forward in the United Kingdom.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir