A woman who released audio of her rapist’s confession said she wanted to show how “manipulative” abusers can be.
Ellie Wilson, 25, secretly captured Daniel McFarlane admitting to his crimes by setting her phone to record in her handbag.
McFarlane was found guilty of two rape charges and sentenced to five years in prison in July last year.
Ms Wilson said that despite audio and written confessions being used in court, the verdict was not unanimous.
The attacks took place between December 2017 and February 2018 when McFarlane was a medical student at the University of Glasgow.
Since the conviction Ms Wilson, who waived her anonymity, has campaigned on behalf of victims.
Earlier this week Ms Wilson, who was a politics student and champion athlete at the university at the time, released audio on Twitter of a conversation with McFarlane covertly captured the year after the attacks.
In the recording she asks him: “Do you not get how awful it makes me feel when you say ‘I haven’t raped you’ when you have?”
McFarlane replies: “Ellie, we have already established that I have. The people that I need to believe me, believe me. I will tell them the truth one day, but not today.”
When asked how he feels about what he has done, he says: “I feel good knowing I am not in prison.”
Image caption,
Ellie was a university athletics champion
The tweet has been viewed by more than 200,000 people.
Ms Wilson told BBC Scotland’s The Nine she had released the clip because many people wondered what evidence she had to secure a rape conviction.
She said the reaction had been “overwhelmingly positive” although a small minority had been very unkind.
And even with the recording of the confession being posted online some people were still saying ‘he didn’t do it’, Ms Wilson said.
In addition to the audio confession, Ms Wilson had text messages that pointed to McFarlane’s guilt yet she said she was still worried that it would not be enough to secure a conviction.
“The verdict was not unanimous,” she said.
“You can literally have a written confession, an audio confession and not everyone on the jury is going to believe you. I think that says a lot about society.”
Ms Wilson has previously said the experience she had in court was appalling.
You may not realize it in your day-to-day life, but we are all enveloped by a giant “superbubble” that was blown into space by the explosive deaths of a dozen-odd stars. Known as the Local Bubble, this structure extends for about 1,000 light years around the solar system, and is one of countless similar bubbles in our galaxy that are produced by the fallout of supernovas. Cosmic superbubbles have remained fairly mysterious for decades, but recent astronomical advances have finally exposed key details about their evolution and structure. Just within the past few years, researchers have mapped the geometry of the Local Bubble in three dimensions and demonstrated that its surface is an active site of star birth, because it captures gas and dust as it expands into space.
Now, a team of scientists has added another layer to our evolving picture of the Local Bubble by charting the magnetic field of the structure, which is thought to play a major role in star formation. Astronomers led by Theo O’Neill, who conducted the new research during a summer research program at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), presented “the first-ever 3D map of a magnetic field over a superbubble” on Wednesday at the American Astronomical Society’s 241st annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. The team also unveiled detailed visualizations of their new map, bringing the Local Bubble into sharper focus.
“We think that the entire interstellar medium is really full of all these bubbles that are driven by various forms of feedback from, especially, really massive stars, where they’re outputting energy in some form or another into the space between the stars,” said O’Neill, who just received an undergraduate degree in astronomy-physics and statistics from the University of Virginia, in a joint call with their mentor Alyssa Goodman, an astronomer at CfA who co-authored the new research. […] “Now that we have this map, there’s a lot of cool science that can be done both by us, but hopefully by other people as well,” O’Neill said. “Since stars are clustered, it’s not as if the Sun is super special, and is in the Local Bubble because we’re just lucky. We know that the interstellar medium is full of bubbles like this, and there’s actually a lot of them nearby our own Local Bubble.” “One cool next step will be looking at places where the Local Bubble is nearby other feedback bubbles,” they concluded. “What happens when these bubbles interact, and how does that drive start formation in general, and the overall long-term evolution of galactic structures?”
Last year BMW took ample heat for its plans to turn heated seats into a costly $18 per month subscription in numerous countries. As we noted at the time, BMW is already including the hardware in new cars and adjusting the sale price accordingly. So it’s effectively charging users a new, recurring fee to enable technology that already exists in the car and consumers already paid for.
The move portends a rather idiotic and expensive future for consumers that’s arriving faster than you’d think. Other companies have also embraced the idea, and BMW continues to find new options to turn into subscription services. The latest: remote engine starting, which will soon cost car owners an additional $105 every year. On the plus side, there’s at least some flexibility with the pricing:
Most of these features are available through either a 1-month, 1-year, or 3-year subscription, or can be purchased outright for a one-time fee. Motorauthority reached out to BMW USA and found that the Remote Engine Start costs $10 for 1 month, $105 for 1 year, $250 for 3 years, or can be purchased for $330 for the life of the vehicle.
Again, this technology — and every other technology BMW is going to do this with — is already included in the higher-end price tag of BMW vehicles. It’s effectively double dipping (to please Wall Street’s insatiable desire for improved quarterly returns at any cost) dressed up as innovation. It’s not a whole lot better than your broadband ISP charging you $10-$25 every month for years for a modem worth $70.
Once companies get a taste of fatter revenues from charging customers for things they’ve already technically paid for, it won’t really stop without either regulatory intervention, or competitive pressure from automakers that avoid the model. BMW’s also turning a lot of other features into subscription services, like parking assist, video driver recording, and other features:
As for the Driver Recorder, it is available for $39 for 1 year, $99 for 3 years, and $149 for a one-time payment. Driving Assistant Plus with Stop&Go can be added for $20 for 1 month, $210 for 1 year, $580 for 3 years, and $950 with a one-time payment. As for Parking Assistant Professional, it is available for $5 for 1 month, $50 for 1 year, $130 for 3 years, or a one-time fee of $220.
Hackers are already fiddling with ways to enable the technology without paying a subscription fee, which will launch an entirely new cat and mouse game that, if automakers get too creative with their crackdowns (like claiming you’re voiding your warranty by enabling something you already own), could also run afoul of the FTC’s tougher stance on right to repair issues.
If it was for a service they offer, one for which BMW needs to expend energy and effort, eg updating maps, posting locations of speeding cams, etc, this would be fine. But you are paying again for hardware you already own and have already paid for once you bought the car.
