A rape victim goes through the process of bringing her sexual assault to trial in Slut or Nut: The Diary of a Rape Trial. In 2015, Mandi Gray was sexually assaulted by a union leader she was dating from York University. She decides to report the assault to police, but is initially assumed that she implied consent and was not raped. This mark’s Mandi’s first obstacle in the Canadian legal system, as she fights to bring the man who raped her to justice.
With Slut or Not: The Diary of a Rape Trial, filmmaker Kelly Showker takes a very unique approach in using Mandi Gray’s case as a sort of case study to illustrate how broken the Canadian legal system is, in regards to sexual assault cases. This ranges from there only being one rape kit nurse working in Toronto on weekend to the aggressiveness of defense lawyers to use the victim’s sexual or medical history against them, hence the term “slut or nut.” The trial itself is dramatized from the court transcripts and some of the defense’s arguments against Mandi Gray, during her 15 hours of testimony, are shocking.
It can be argued that it was somewhat risky for Kelly Showker to present her film about a serious topic such as rape in an almost lighthearted manner, full of animations and narration by activist “Jane Doe” in the form of a talking fox. However, I do have to say that the film really works in enlightening you of the complicated process of bringing a sexual assault to trial in a very easy to understand format. It is obviously while watching Slut or Nut that the system is broken in a big way and major changes in both the laws and the public perception of rape.
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