"Most prolific" rapist reporting - male vs female victims

*sorry, I said “at work” twice there

I’m afraid the link given from his research is just word salad to me

I’ve already had a woman at work say the reporting at work is different “because women cope better after being attacked”.

I was nearly ill on the spot.

(But I'm pretty certain they wouldn't.)

The thing with this bloke is that he lurked outside nightclubs and mostly picked up straight young blokes who were pissed out of their brains and had got separated from their mates - gone outside to throw up, or similar.

Because there have been such stringent reporting restrictions, we will never know if these straight young men would have been given the same treatment by the press as young women would have done had we had a blow-by-blow set of articles on the trials.

Saw this article and after reading it, came straight here as I knew there would be a thread up.

This rapist is indeed a disgusting excuse for a human being. I am glad he will never be released, and I hope that the men raped by him can at least feel the sense of some kind of justice being done.

I do, however, agree that the reporting was more "neutral" than with male on female rape. The only vaguely suitable comparison case was the Warboys one linked upthread, where the tone WAS different - and look how quickly they tried to parole him.

More generally, when discussing rape cases from the news, so many people still seem to equate rape with sex, rather than power and violation, and so by default have a lot more sympathy towards men who have been raped, than women. People wring their hands over "the poor male victim". There seldom seems to be the default reaction of trying to almost justify the rape by picking apart the victim's behaviour or to automatically slur them as false reporters, as is almost a reflex when discussing female victims.

He was a postgraduate student. Result of looking up his publications:

doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2014.919118

Lol. Of course the rape of men, especially straight men, is taken more seriously by police and courts. Don't know how it's possible to deny this.

I thought exactly the same when reading the news earlier. I'm glad other people agree.

But generally I think the media are more outraged by a man being raped, yes.

Heterosexual man, yes.
I think gay rape, and date rape, is very common and almost unreported.

I don't think Worboys did keep notes. There's speculation that there are more victims, but we will never know.
The notes he kept were a list of excuses to use if he was caught.
The solid evidence this guy kept, especially the clear video evidence of his victims being unconscious, was why there was a clear, unambiguous conviction.
Although the crimes were similar, the way the two cases progressed was different, as others have mentioned.

OP

I too had a feeling about the reporting but didn’t look it up

What will be really telling will be how quickly anyone is up for parole.

There is a big difference in evidence though. But generally I think the media are more outraged by a man being raped, yes.

I am not commenting on the outcomes of the trials, particularly- just the fact that the defence in each case thought it was likely enough to work that it was worth a shot. I notice in this case they tried to see if any missing persons could be linked to this man- ie did he overdose anyone with the stuff and kill them whether intentionally or not- and could not find any links. But if they had, and the video evidence not existed, no doubt the rapist would have claimed the victim took the drugs knowingly and willingly. Somebody on a previous thread noted bitterly something along the lines of "If you want to get away with murder now, just be sure to rape your victim beforehand any evidence of drugs/knives/strangulation or any other murder method can be waved away as all part of the fun that all the cool kids are having".

"Sex positivity" and mainstream extreme porn has a lot to answer for. Nowadays it seems you're terribly square if you're not into all sorts; the likes of anal and threesomes are probably vanilla now.

Thirty or 40 years ago a judge and jury are less likely to have believed that a hitherto straight man was really likely to have got hammered and consented to gay sex with a stranger +/- intentional drug taking beforehand; that a young woman consented to such violent spit roasting and fisting with rugby players that she was torn, bleeding and crying in the taxi all the way home; that a teenager was happy to be violently gang banged by a crowd of her holiday flings' mates; that a woman consented to being battered, violently penetrated with a bottle of carpet cleaner and left in a heap drunk, drugged, injured and dying; and that it was all a bit of fun for everyone.

I think the reason this has been reported so differently is that the vast majority (all bar a couple) of his victims were so drugged they had NO recall, and that all the attacks on the victims were videoed on his phone. It was going through the phone imagery and the trophies that were collected from the victims (mobile phones, bank cards that kind of thing) which meant the police could trace many of the victims and let them know they had been raped that led to such a solid conviction.
I cannot recall any other serial rapist (of men or of women) keeping such detailed evidence.

I see nothing nothing wrong with the reporting of the case. It was factual and reported parts of the victim impact statements.

I don't think the sexuality of the victims is of any significance whatsoever

I thought his defence was that they were consenting but 'pretending to be asleep'

I did feel uncomfortable with the reporting of the victims' feelings - but of course it is worse for men because many of them were not homosexual.

Hmm...he was only caught when the last victim was arrested for bashing him in self defence! If there was no video evidence and he had got rid of all the stolen mobiles etc, then there is a strong possibility that anyone who did report would have had the GHB out of their system by the time they made it to the police and his "they were bicurious and consenting but ashamed to admit it" defence might have worked. In fact even if they had GHB still detectable in their bloodstream there is a chance he could have said "oh we were having chemsex, they consented to experiment with gay sex on drugs".
I

I think this was a dreadful case, obviously. Yes I think there is a subtle difference in reporting, but the fact is, the rapist’s recording of all these rapes of clearly unconscious men was what made for the victims “being believed”, not the fact that they were male.
I know there ARE clearly issues around prosecution of rape cases, but it is true it is difficult to get convictions - because often, by the very nature of the crime, it is one person’s word against another’s. It’s not a case of proving the sex, it’s proving the issue of non consent. It’s not even that an acquitted rapist means the woman is not believed; the onus is on the prosecution to prove rape “beyond reasonable doubt”. That actually means that you can think the guy probably DID do it - on balance, but that you don’t feel there is NO reasonable doubt.

Royal there were 4 separate trails, due to the overwhelming amount of evidence.
That's why they had reporting restrictions in place.

That poor girl who was gang rsped in Cyptus was videoed by the rapists.
Unfortunately that hasn't been much help to her.

Jesus H Christ. Why does this still have to be a competition between men and women? Read about the case before posting such drivel.