Changes in how rape will be investigated- about time!

there really aren't

House and AWholeLottaNosy those articles... there aren't really words.

that guardian article puffins linked to was sickening, describing how men have used social media after the rape as a way to make it retrospectively look as though their victim consented. i can't even imagine how distressing it would be to receive a message saying "thank you for last night" or a bunch of flowers from your rapist

Dora there is an awful one that comes to mind

the victim was knocked off her bike by a car, the assailant was a total stranger

(this might have been in Aus or US though)

and of course there was the 'contributory negligence' of the mini skirt in the 80s, but I don't think the rapist was acquitted as such, avoided a custodial sentence though I think

No, he won't. CCRC may decide to re interview her, biut not necessarily. He's still got very little chance of getting everyone back in court.

Thanks for the info. Please can somebody link me up to the court details of a case of outdoor stranger rape where the rapist has been acquitted on claims of consent.

Yonic of course it is unlikely to be any good but he is going to drag that poor girl back through everything (and she is a girl to me dd is about her age). If whatever he has gets the conviction over turned it will be a nightmare.

I am actually not expecting him to produce much as otherwise with all the publicity it would have been available during the court case.

I don't know how the new rules challenge socially inept men's perceptions of a woman's participation. But, one thing that they will be expected to do is to adequately explain their actions.

However

barristers, whether sitting on the bench or not, have shown hostility towards victims as young as 13. Guidelines may not help where the law is already being ignored by practising lawyers.

I wish there was a 'like' button as well! So many good posts here.

If it means people realise "taking advantage of someone" may well be rape, good.

Sausage - Ched has put that on his website, AFAIK his lawyer and the CCRC haven't commented. Might be someone else who saw the victim earlier in the evening, or who once saw her complete a dot to dot after four vodkas. Just because he's claiming fresh evidence, doesn't mean it's of high quality...

but we're talking specifically about rape here

What we're actually talking about is what happens when there is a dispute about whether or not consent has been given. The discussion we're having doesn't relate to rapes where it's obvious that the victim did not consent.

Clearly outright liars who rape and then say, "but she clearly said yes" probably aren't going to get caught by these changes. But that's true of anyone who says clearly that x happened when actually y happened.

What I hope this change will do is reflect a societal change. Make men, and boys, think a bit more about how the authorities view a woman and her decision making regarding sex. It's clear that a lot of the problem with rape is that the perpetrators genuinely don't think they've done anything wrong, or they think they've only done "a little bit" wrong. If we can start to shift that thinking somewhat, we're starting to make progress.

The problem is that too often rapists are viewed as scary bogey men in the dark who jump out and attack random women. That's not true. Most rapists are "ordinary" men who know their victims. But who have somehow absorbed this idea that sex is their right and that short of a women screaming, scratching and drawing blood, it's not their obligation to be absolutely certain she wants it.

As someone upthread said, it's also about changing this perception that sex is something men want but that women just go along with. It should be clearly understood that sex is equally desirable for both and that means that both should be 100% engaged when it happens.

Ah, google, my friend. Thanks Buffy.

So it's a no thanks to choice feminism, a partial yes to post-structuralist except for I think I prefer my concerns to stay at least somewhat earthbound, Intersectionality, well yes. I thought this was a fairly central and common idea. But then, maybe that's how all the best ideas look, as though they've been around for ages. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

And third wave in general - basically just 'oh right. Well it's a basic yes until we get to the darker corners of tumblr, at which point it becomes a polite no thank you.'

The whole trans thing is a bigger deal than I realised, isn't it.

Sorry for the derail.

Increasingly there are females in the UK who do not have access to justice for sexual rape/violence simply because the live in deprived, impoverished areas where sexual violence to girls some as young as 11 goes,, undetected, unreported and ignored. ' Sexual violence in areas of the UK as bad as in war zones.' www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/26/gangs-sexual-violence-warzones

No progress will be made until we have a culture change towards rape and sexual violence for females of all ages.

Slice, of course that's not naive. IMO in order to call yourself a feminist you need to identify with the inequalities suffered by women as a result of gender. That's it. What those inequalities are, how they should be changed etc are all up for debate and not all feminists agree on them.