Laura Brand, would you stand by your man? Trigger rape.

As mentioned above, "innocent until proven guilty" just means that no punishment should be exacted on someone until the evidence on the case has been heard - they should be treated as if innocent.

Some people seem to think that it means that the accused exists in some kind of Schrodinger-esque quantum state until after the trial.

Either he carried out one or more rapes and sexual assaults or he didn't, what happens in court has absolutely no bearing on that, only on whether he will be punished.

Depends on the circumstances & evidence. Before trial, the defendant’s wife will presumably only have heard her husband’s denials & won’t have heard the complainant’s detailed allegations or been able to form an opinion about her credibility. She will not be aware of the prosecution’s corroborating or forensic evidence, or the lack of it.

And let’s be realistic here. If he is a multi millionaire, it is almost certainly her best & most rational strategy to hedge her bets unless & until he is convicted.

Statistics prove that false allegations of rape are very rare. As rare as false allegations of any other assault, or of fraud, or whatever.

False allegations from six women against the same man are vanishingly rare.

I would not support my husband, father, or son in this situation. They’d be disowned.

If there was evidence, I hope not as I would be repulsed by what he'd done and I would lose respect for myself if I took his side, but it's easy to have an opinion when it's not me going through it. If he was genuinely contrite and wanted counselling I might stick with him and support him.

The documentary was really shocking. He was literally on stage telling people what he liked to do to women when it clearly wasn't consensual. I notice that if anyone in the jury admits they saw the documentary then they have to say so and then can't be on his jury.

If I were his wife I would have left him when I saw the documentary. I wouldn't have been able to get past that. However I imagine he's a gaslighting maestro.

If the police knocked and my DH was charged with rape i would hang fire from making any major decisions until I knew more. Being charged doesn’t mean automatic guilt and each case is so very individual so no rash decisions would be made. If however my DH were RB I would be out the door like a shot, that said, I wouldn’t have entertained the idea of a relationship with him anyway, he is and always has been a vile man. So, I suppose it depends very much on who the DH is. Someone like mine who is respectful in all areas of life, hold on and find out more. Someone like RB who has a cloudy past and has repeatedly shown himself to be nasty? Leave ASAP. What attracts someone to a person with such a background is beyond me though. Also he always looks so dirty

I think he likely to be controlling but he is in recovery now and has been for a long time

It's just possible she gets to see a very different side to him than anyone else does.

It's also possible he's a shit husband and convienced her he's brilliant and she can not do with out him.

Also possible she is in a coercive relationship with a man who disrespects women and has a histroy of drug abuse and is worn down and can't see world clearly.

I have no idea which it is and unless posters on here know the couple it's all speculation.

To me there is a very visble public history of concerning behavior towards women and a lot of allgeagions coming to court - so my view is coloured by that but he's not actually been found guilty yet and I do not know him personally.

Yes but I think most people have a different threshold for ending a relationship compared to finding someone guilty at trial.

Chances are she married him knowing he was eccentric, easily ‘misunderstood’, had a rock and roll past. He’s probably convinced her he’s a troubled genius who needs her to regulate his emotions.

She’ll stand with him until she learns to translate what that means in practice. And this trial may do just that.

No, I wouldn’t. Not in a million years. This reminds me of Dee Devlin. Their famous man is the centrepiece of their entire life, they have no idea what their life would be without him making it ‘special’

She's got children with him, and has probably been gaslit to hell and back about these women who were insatiable then turned on him You can only hope that if he's found guilty, her family step in and help her to "de-program" from him. Men like this are very clever and manipulative. She probably hasn't made a decision for herself since they've been together and choose their partners carefully... he was never going to end up with a strong feminist.

I'm amazed at how many values I thought were universal to modern post enlightenment societies (innocent until proven guilty) are not.

Anyway most women do stand by the bloke when it comes to the crunch for a host of reasons

But that’s a legal definition.

i also have my own thoughts outside of this and could decide that i believed the women or I felt his behaviour was morally wrong.

Even if their victim never reports the rape, a rapist is a rapist from the moment they rape.

Only in the eyes of the law.

In reality, if someone is guilty of rape, they are guilty as soon as they rape somebody. They are not innocent of rape in the years it takes a court to find them guilty of it.

Rapists are guilty of rape the minute they rape someone.

I don't know enough about this case to comment on Laura Brand specifically.
But. If someone is charged with an offence, they are still innocent.... until they are found guilty. Equally, they may be found not guilty. How could we know until the court case was completed?
I would imagine that most wives would assume their husband to be Not Guilty, so of course they would support them.
It is disturbing how many people seem to think that an accusation automatically equals guilt.

No.

I have learned never to defend a man against allegations of sexual violence.

He no doubt tells her that he was a bit of a lad when younger and that the women were up for it

I think the sheer volume of accusations would be enough for most of us

i find it hard to believe that he’s an ideal husband to her

she must surely be having doubts about him. She must know what he’s capable of. Deep down

No. He’s hurt a lot of women.

Its vanishingly hard to get a rape allegations past the CPS. Unless you've seen it first hand, I dont think you could even begin to belive how hard it is.