The Blue Mountains were not raped. A teenage girl was erased from this sentence and replaced by a location. Again.
I think the person who wrote the headline mean “conviction” not “sentence”. The man was convicted of six charges of sexual assault and one count of choking without consent. He was sentenced to nine months (minimum of two months) in a youth detention centre. His lawyer appealed the conviction, not the sentence.
Also, a note on the sub-heading: “A lawyer representing a man convicted of raping his schoolmate … claims the victim’s evidence should not be relied on.”
The difference between passive and active voice is about the subject, verb, and object in a sentence.
In the active voice, someone (subject of the sentence) performs an action (verb) on someone else (object of the sentence). The active voice uses them in that order. The passive voice reverses the order.
(Object is a terrible word to use when I’m talking about rape victims, so let me be very clear: “object” is the word in English grammar that describes a person who is the target of a verb. The person is always a person.)
For example:
=>John crashed the car – John is the subject of the sentence, crashed is the verb, car is the object.
In the passive voice, the order is reversed:
=> The car was crashed by John – object, verb, subject.
If the writer was trying to erase John’s responsibility for the car crash, the passive voice sentence would be:
=> The car was crashed – object, verb, subject erased.
Another example:
=> Passive voice sentences infest news headlines.
or
=> Journalists infest news headlines with passive voice sentences.
One last example:
=> A lawyer claims the victim’s evidence should not be relied on
or
=> The Judge should not rely on the victim’s evidence, claimed a lawyer.
*Note: This conviction is under appeal, which means comments about the case could still be considered contempt of court.*
_
If you’re reading this on social media, links to all the articles are on the post on my website: www.JaneGilmore.com
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