Taking off one's shirt to sunbathe on the beach was one thing; taking off one's clothes in the plaintiff's seat in court and showing the whole world the evidence of one's humiliation was another.
Just as the lawyer raised this possibility, one of the girls already looked extremely distressed.
Landa squeezed the girl's hand, then turned to the lawyer and asked, "Will it really be that bad?"
The lawyer nodded. "We all know they're doomed to lose. When people are already facing the worst possible outcome, they'll cast aside all restraint, because things can't get any worse."
"But if they crush your morale, drag out the trial, and give themselves enough time to patch up certain details, we might not win so easily—or so decisively."
The lawyer did not finish saying everything. The truth was that some of the girls had been forced into it at first, but later participated of their own accord.
Some girls had even refused to go to the battlefield and voluntarily taken part in the sex parties. That wasn't merely a mistake—it was also a violation of the law and military regulations. Desertion!
The reason the military had not yet had time to exploit these loopholes was that everything had developed too quickly.
Once they managed to drag things out—and keep dragging them out for a long time—the lawyers hired by the military would bring up these arguments.
They would turn the matter from something passive into something voluntary.
If the girls had initially been forcibly violated against their will, then if they cooperated later on, could it still be considered an assault?
Taking another step back, if the later sex parties had been voluntary and did not constitute assault—
then perhaps some of the injuries on their bodies had not been inflicted during the