At last, a drop of common sense in an ocean of outrage. A rape victim has come forward to defend the female judge who jailed her attacker and caused controversy by saying that women put themselves in danger by getting drunk.

With incredible bravery, 19-year-old Megan Clark has waived her right to anonymity to defend the comments. The judge, she says, was correct.

On Victoria Derbyshire’s BBC programme, 19-year-old Miss Clark said yesterday that it was ‘good advice’, that women really should be ‘careful’ and that she had taken the remarks in ‘a positive way’. ‘She was right in what she said,’ Miss Clark said. And do you know what? Too damn true.

Rape victim Megan Clark has bravely waived her right to anonymity to back a judge who warned of the threat to women who drink heavily on nights out

Miss Clark’s case was Judge Lindsey Kushner’s last prior to retiring from the bench. Before she jailed attacker Ricardo Rodrigues-Gomes for six years on two counts of rape, she said that the responsibility of course was always on the perpetrator, never the victim – but that after a lifetime of ‘trying one sexual offence case after another’ she didn’t think it was wrong to beg women to protect themselves.

Sensible people will see my learned lady’s remarks as a simple case of stating the screamingly obvious, but we live in complicated times. Rape charities, sundry furious feminists plus the usual suspects queued up to accuse her of victim blaming and worse.

Northumbria police and crime commissioner Dame Vera Baird harrumphed that her comments would deter victims from coming forward. When a fellow judge spoke out in Kushner’s defence, the Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders pursed her lips and said it was ‘always disappointing’ to hear views that ‘lean in favour of victim blaming.’

Yet here is one victim who does not feel blamed but still accepts the wisdom of the judge’s words – and I applaud Megan Clark mightily for that.

For to agree that being drunk just might make a woman more vulnerable to rape is not the same thing as suggesting she is responsible for the rape. And it just might help keep other women safe into the bargain. Surely if we are to celebrate the hard-won freedoms of liberation, then we must accept responsibility for ourselves, too?

Judge Lindsey Kushner sparked the row in her comments during the sentencing of Ricardo Rodrigues-Fortes-Gomes (left)

Megan Clark was raped in July last year, after meeting her attacker following a night out in Manchester. By the time they bumped into each other in a branch of Burger King, she had been drinking lager and vodka and had inhaled the party drug, amylnitrate. That was not her problem. As Judge Kushner pointed out, girls are entitled to drink themselves into the ground, if that is what they want. The problem is that ‘potential rapists gravitate towards females who have been drinking’.

Indeed, why would they not? Much easier prey, for a start. Like vultures on the wire, those with evil intent will scan the landscape for the crippled, the weak, the incapacitated. You see them sweeping the room in the wee small hours of a nightclub, eyes peeled for the party girls who have partied too much. Hanging around pubs in dodgy minicabs. Waiting for their moment amid the innocent Friday night roistering. Bad men target good women every night of the week, in every city across the country. And the terrible thing is that sometimes they get lucky.

That summer night, Megan Clark’s misfortune was not that she had been out on the razz with her friends, it was that she had the bad luck to cross the path of a man who meant harm and who took advantage of her intoxicated state. She acknowledges that she could have protected herself better – and she urges other women not to make the same mistake.

And that is far more helpful than the attitude of violence against women campaign groups who argue that whatever the circumstances, the state of intoxication of the victim is irrelevant.

Ms Clark told Victoria Derbyshire Judge Kushner's comments were 'good advice' and that she had taken them in 'a positive way'

While it is true that rapists are the only ones responsible for rape, isn’t it also the case that getting smashed on a night out makes a woman — or a man — more vulnerable to misadventure, to sexual assault and to becoming a victim of personal crime? Sadly, not everyone agrees we should face that fact.

So here we are again, up on the bar stools in the last-chance saloon, having yet another angry drunk women debate. Like a bad hangover, it is the issue that just won’t go away. In 2014 another female judge called Mary Jane Mowat was castigated for saying that rape conviction rates would never improve unless women stopped drinking so heavily.

In the most elementary way, she meant that the fact that the victims were unable to remember their attack led to a lack of corroborative evidence. Never mind, cue outrage.

A year later, Sussex Police were criticised for an eminently sensible poster campaign which urged girls to stick together on nights out. Campaigners said that the police should be targeting potential rapists instead of bothering potential victims, but the point was a solid one.

After all, we’ve all been idiotic. I shudder to think about how foolish and reckless I have been in the past and if I had a daughter I would urge caution, have fun, stick with your pals, always be sober enough to be aware of any potential danger, don’t get so inebriated that you are incapable of making sensible decisions.

The attack took place in Manchester's Canal Street after the victim was removed from a club

This does not detract from the culpability of the criminal or rapist. Or make a drunken rape victim somehow less worthy of sympathy and justice.

But we cannot shy away from the fact that alcohol has a part to play in the safety of young women. To keep denying this, and to accuse those who point out the dangers of being insensitive and worse, only puts more girls in harm’s way.

I have always supported the victim in the notorious case of footballer Ched Evans’s rape victim but I equally believe that if she had not been so drunk, she might have made a smarter decision about the danger around her. Like Megan Clark, she was spotted late at night in a city centre fast food joint – prime hunting grounds for predators.

That’s why Miss Clark’s support and respect for the judge who jailed her attacker but had the courage to urge women to be careful was so heartening.

Far better for women to understand the danger – instead of being cocooned in a shrieking fireball of feminist outrage. One that insists that everything is the man’s fault and they can do no wrong, including downing a dozen Jagerbombs, ten pints of cider and lurching off into the night on four-inch heels.

It’s not just a feminist issue, it is more serious than that. To pretend that there is nothing women can do that might reduce the risk of attack is reprehensible – and to condemn those who want to point out the dangers is even worse.

Girls, ladies, feminists and friends: doing exactly as you please and drinking as much as you want might be empowering. However, sometimes it is downright stupid, too.