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Persecute means to torment or oppress someone, usually because of their race, religion or political beliefs. Prosecute means to bring charges, usually criminal charges in a court of law. If you have been persecuted for your beliefs, you can prosecute your persecutor under hate-crimes laws.
prosecute
More information on the words discussed in the video, including sound files, examples of usage, common mistakes and encyclopaedic information, can be found in TransLegal's Legal English Dictionary.
Hi, I'm Robin and welcome to TransLegal's lesson of the week.
Today we're going to try to understand the important differences between the words persecute and prosecute.
Now persecute means to torment, oppress or to treat somebody unfairly, usually because of their race, religion or perceived weakness or belonging to some sort of a social group. Anyway, it is often said that in the 1930's Jews were persecuted in Nazi Germany. Also, these days we talk a lot about schoolyard persecution when bullies torment younger, weaker children and even more recently we've started talking about gender-related persecution when, typically, women are treated badly because they are women. A person who commits a persecution is a persecutor.
Now we turn to the other concept, which can be positive, prosecute. Now prosecute means to bring legal charges against someone usually in a court of law and usually criminal charges. So it is said that currently we have started prosecuting illegal file sharing as a way of combating Internet piracy. Now those that bring prosecutions are called prosecutors.
I, in fact, was a prosecutor in my prior career before I became a lawyer linguist. I was a district attorney or a D.A. in New York. In the US, prosecutors are known as district attorneys or state attorneys. In the United Kingdom, prosecutors are usually known as crown prosecutors as they work for the Crown Prosecution Services.
Now it is possible these days if you are persecuted to be able to prosecute for that. Most countries have statutes which prosecute hate crimes or which are otherwise called bias-motivated crimes. Now a hate crime is typically a crime of violence, which is motivated by hatred of the group to which the victim belongs. Usually, this group is a racial group, a religious group, of a particular sexual orientation, a group of disabled people, or something like that. So these days you don't have to stand for being persecuted the way many religious and racial groups did all through time. They can contact their local prosecutors and see that their tormentors get prosecuted for persecuting them.
That's all for today. Thanks for listening. Please leave any comments or questions that you have in the space below. Don't forget we want your feedback. Thank you.
Robin,
I appreciate your video on this matter. I find it very explicit and easy to understand.
Besides, i am very fascinated on all issues that are related to the profession of prosecutor.
Thank you very much.
It’s really helpful for many Law students like me.
If possible discuss about LLB foundation subjects.
Thanks.