'Rape should carry a mandatory life sentence' - Herald article, Neil Mackay

I'm torn on this issue. I'm fairly sure life sentence for rape isnt the solution, BUT I'd like it to be.

But longer sentences for rape should happen.

Before he got to me my rapist was:

Convicted of raping a child - no apparent sentence

3 years later he was:

Convicted of raping a child - sentenced to a couple of years

On release he:

Murdered a woman in her 80s - sentenced to life in prison, later released on a life licence

He behaved himself for some months then he, whilst still on his life licence:

Raped me.

So would anything after the first rape have happened if he had been dealt with properly? Who knows. Personally I wish he'd been locked up and never allowed out the first time.

It would have saved a lot of people.

I'm not impartial enough to be able to view this issue properly though.

My case does show though that some people just don't give a shit and shouldn't be allowed out into society as they can't be trusted to behave themselves.

MacKay is a hardline gender ideologue. I'd be concerned he'd be happy for these mandatory life sentences to be served in the women's estate.

Slightly glib, but a serious point is that he's close to some in power and maybe they feel that if they are seen to be tough on rapists it won't matter that they are destroying safeguards. Of course it does, mainly because most will never get to trial and prevention is always best. I do feel there is a whiff of "see I do care" about all this too.

I'm not convinced that studies on men in prison for rape tells us much about rapes or sexual assaults overall. I tend to think the guys in those situations have all kinds of reasons that they are likely to be repeat offenders, and also violent offenders in other ways, too.

Yes, the rapists in prison are the tip of an iceberg of rapists. These are the ones that got caught either by raping repeatedly or raping in an obviously and easy way to prove. Most rapists will never spend a day in prison and that’s because they are not repeat offenders or are very calculating and sneaky or are rich/upper class because the law still does protect the toffs.

But as far as conviction rates, I tend to agree that the real problem is that often there is no evidence of a crime. There may well be evidence of sex, and two stories about what happened, but no evidence that a crime has occurred. I don't think the law can elevate the narrative of one side over another - that destroys the whole basis of the justice system and would have huge implications in other areas. My conclusion is that rape may simply be something that is not very effectively be controlled by the law, and it may not be the most useful avenue to try to do so.
Yes, that is my view too. Making sentences harsher isn’t going to change anything except to increase the standard of proof, making it even harder to prove rape.

I believe in some places where rape carries the death penalty that acts as a deterrent to reporting. Rape is normally not carried out by strangers, and vulnerable women and girls (and men and boys) don't want to report someone they know, perhaps an ex partner, and then feel responsible for their death. I wonder if a mandatory life sentence might have the same impact.

My brother was sexually abused as a child and it took him many years to come to report it because he was afraid his abuser would commit suicide and it would be his fault. I don't think he would have felt able to report under this system, even if the abuser absolutely deserved (and deserves) life in prison.

I'm not convinced that studies on men in prison for rape tells us much about rapes or sexual assaults overall. I tend to think the guys in those situations have all kinds of reasons that they are likely to be repeat offenders, and also violent offenders in other ways, too.

Do they tell us a lot about instances at places like parties that involve s ton of alcohol or drugs, and young people, which almost seem designed to create problems around consent and poor self control and bad decision making? I'm not so sure they do, and those people don't tend to be represented in the prison population.

But as far as conviction rates, I tend to agree that the real problem is that often there is no evidence of a crime. There may well be evidence of sex, and two stories about what happened, but no evidence that a crime has occurred.

I don't think the law can elevate the narrative of one side over another - that destroys the whole basis of the justice system and would have huge implications in other areas. My conclusion is that rape may simply be something that is not very effectively be controlled by the law, and it may not be the most useful avenue to try to do so.

If I was a serial rapist the threat of a life sentence wouldn’t stop me raping but might encourage me to start killing my victims.

This case gets brought up a lot and it's a bit of a red herring.

The problem is not that that story is ridiculous (which it is), the issue is that the prosecution could not prove beyond reasonable doubt that any sexual encounter took place / was non-consensual. The onus is on the prosecution to prove this.

Unfortunately the media seized on that one frankly bloody stupid reply from the defence and now it's become the notorious "man cleared of rape because he said he tripped" story instead of the rather more accurate but boring "man cleared of rape because the prosecutions case was not strong enough" story.

I have two issues with this.

One is that the approach of non-prosecution for petty crime has been largely disastrous where it has been tried.

Secondly, in general I think minimum mandatory sentencing rules aren't all that useful. Especially when you have a crime which can include quite a large swath of circumstances. People are more likely to hesitate as to whether the sentence fits the crime in some cases.

I'd also not that longer sentences don't have a particularly strong correlation to prevention. So making the law harsher isn't necessarily going to make offences less frequent. I suspect with rape it would not likely do so.

What a strange article. It's hard to argue for or against it because, for all the words he expends on how strongly he feels there should be mandatory life sentences for rape, he doesn't once give any idea why.

Is it because rapists pose such a danger to society, so need to be put away for as long as possible for society's protection?

Is it because we hate rapists so much that we'll feel better if a harsher sentence can be imposed, to express our anger and outrage?

Is it because victims are more likely to be able to heal if they know their attackers are behind bars and not a danger to them?

Or is it for any of numerous other possible reasons? He doesn't say - it could be any of these, they all have different arguments for and against and the article reflects differently on each of them. All he seems to do, at the end, is contradict his whole point by admitting that a longer sentence wouldn't actually have made any difference to the victim he introduced at the beginning.

Did you even read the story? It is exactly what I’m talking about. Rape is often a he said, she said scenario.

She said this happened:
“The teenager claimed she woke in the early hours of the morning to find Mr Abdulaziz on top of her, forcing himself inside her. Outlining the case at the start of the trial last week, Jonathan Davies, prosecuting, had told the court: 'She said "what are you doing?" he said "it's fine" indicating that her friend was asleep. She got up to find her friend, tried to wake her but couldn't, she then tried to get out of the flat as quickly as she could.”

He said this happened:
”Mr Abdulaziz said he had gone to wake the young woman to offer her a T-shirt to sleep in, or to offer to pay for a taxi home, but that she pulled him on top of her and placed his hand between her legs. But he said she become angry when he had offered to call her a taxi and stormed into the bedroom to wake her friend.” “He had already had sex with her 24-year-old friend and said he might have fallen on top of the teenager while his penis was poking out the top of his underwear.”

Thats the problem with rape trials. It’s not a given that she was raped. And it’s difficult for her to prove rape.

The recidivism rate is very very high. That doesn't mean it's hardwired. It is very persistent though.

Much like addictions it is persistent over time and only with very good supports, a will to change and a different life available can change be achieved.

I do think sex offenders are only ever 'recovering' not 'recovered'.

An acquaintance of mine was living in Cape Town when a young woman was raped and murdered in her local post office:

edition.cnn.com/2019/11/15/africa/south-africa-student-murder-sentence/index.html

Which is why I know that in SA many rapes attract a life sentence, as does murder. Many rapists murder their victims after raping them on the basis that a dead victim can't identify them.

We need to think carefully about the unintended consequences of well-intentioned laws.

I'd rather focus on getting more rape allegations to trial and on the police response to victims than lazy soundbites like this which wouldn't really help.

I agree with PP that not all rapes are the same. There is a vast difference between a man lurking in a park waiting to attack a lone woman and a man who's had a few drinks at a party going home with a woman who's had too much to drink to consent. Both cases would be rape and both should be punished but there is a significant difference in intent and criminality.

And if sexual violence is 'hard wired' into some people then how can they be held culpable? If they don't have a choice then why is it a crime?

Really stupid article

Yeah that all sounds very 'free ice cream for breakfast..' - I'd settle for something within grasp of sense and reality like 'let's try and get more than 1% of rapes successfully prosecuted' and 'let's investigate the institutional misogyny of the police and CPS AND successfully do something to change it', and 'lets not stuff serious sex offenders (those terrible men who have managed to destroy women's lives and injure their bodies seriously enough, sadistically enough and often multiply enough to get a prison sentence) in women's prisons to crack on injuring and destroying lives cos mustn't have them feeling sad and unvalidated.

Way to give rapists an incentive to murder victims as well, or at least threaten violence if they report.

Rape takes place in a variety of situations, it's pretty much always best to give judges discretion in sentencing, along with training to counter stereotypes about rape.

Yeah, not buying it. I’ve read too many cases where women have been brutally raped and the rapist still gets off, or like that case where a man’s defence was that he fucking fell and his penis accidentally went into in her vagina:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3361640/Saudi-millionaire-cleared-raping-teenager-telling-court-accidentally-penetrated-18-year-old-tripped-fell-her.html.

People don’t give a shit that women are raped.

Did anything suggest how to interrupt that buildup, MrsPratchett? Does it start in the teens, for instance? Do some societies manage male adolescence better?

This was in men who already had a conviction. It would be interesting to see if it's the case in a 'normal' population. The idea was that men who were building up to an offence were slowing giving themselves excuses (I was drunk) and reducing dissonance (look, every man is violent).

Almost always these men had violent and/or abusive childhoods. The one thing we could do to reduce male violence is reduce male violence. The second best thing to do is financially and legally empower women so they can leave earlier and protect their children better.

Did anything suggest how to interrupt that buildup, MrsPratchett? Does it start in the teens, for instance? Do some societies manage male adolescence better?

I think this misses a lot in its lack of nuance. And nuance is always going to be needed. Especially as other PPs have pointed out, if you raise the bar that high that jurys will hesitate to convict ever (they're nearly there as it is).

(And I agree with his point about the over representation of the highly, repeatedly disadvantaged in our incarcerated population but there is some concern that some (and not in any way all) sex offence perpetrators are themselves those who were abused and require support, therapy etc.)

I guess it really comes down to your position on prisons and punishment too. Are they for retribution, for the protection of the public, to prevent reoffending or what?

If we want to prevent rape then we need to focus on the potential perpetrators before they hurt anyone. We need to tackle the route causes of sexual violence by changing the social narrative around women, girls, sex and by tackling toxic masculinity. We need to protect safe single sex spaces, we need to encourage and enable everyone to have boundaries around their bodies and relationships. We need to work with children and young people to understand the issues around consent. We need to work with the police and probation services and with the cjs to ensure that we acknowledge and understand the likelihood of a pattern or escalation of sexual offending and that we resource adequately programmes for perpetrators at earlier stages.

Focussing on what we do after the event is largely pointless imo. (Especially given what we know about the rates of even reporting of incidents to the police, let alone prosecution, conviction and sentencing...)

They're both issues.

It might not be the whole issue but it is one of them. The conviction rates are shocking with no real political will to address even the smallest changes which could help.

There could be the option of a life licence with a recommendation of a few years actual time. Which means monitoring for the rest of their life but not being incarcerated. You can also recall someone to prison on a life licence for lesser things. For example, you could have restrictions on things like internet use (violent porn) and recall if it was broken.

Yes, that sounds sensible.

I think the actual issue is that the people with power and money don't care if women are raped.

I don’t think that’s the issue. I think it’s a hard crime to prove and that is where most of the difficulty in securing a conviction arises.

There could be the option of a life licence with a recommendation of a few years actual time. Which means monitoring for the rest of their life but not being incarcerated. You can also recall someone to prison on a life licence for lesser things. For example, you could have restrictions on things like internet use (violent porn) and recall if it was broken.

I worked with a great psychologist when I worked with sex offenders and there are very clear indicators of a built up to offending. More substance use, porn use, watching very violent media etc. You could monitor these if you were inclined.

I think the actual issue is that the people with power and money don't care if women are raped.