Harvey Weinstein's New York rape conviction is overturned as appeals court rules he didn't have a fair trial

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68904229

More commentary:(

I'm going to continue the list:

1. Women and Feminism must be useful to men or they are worthless. Pointing out that high numbers of rapists go free is not useful to men and therefore responding is not a worthwhile priority.
2. Women who go around being female AT men by complaining about getting raped deserve punishment.
3. Women should always be grateful to men for everything. Even if the "everything" is being coerced into sex they don't want.
4. Men are whatever men say they are and women are whatever men say they are. Men get to define what a "proper" rape is, not the victims .
5. Men always know the “real reasons” for everything women do and say. In the case of rape, this is usually they are gold diggers, liars or spurned lovers.

10. The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad. Being falsely accused of rape is much more serious than being raped and we should prioritise protecting men from rape allegations.
11. Whatever women suffer from, it is worse when it happens to men. If we talk about the number of female victims of rape, we must also talk about false accusations against men.
12. Women’s ability to recognize male behavior patterns is misandry. It should not be allowed as evidence in court.
13. Angry women are crazy. Angry men have trouble expressing themselves. It's not their fault they didn't understand she wasn't consenting.
14. Women have all the rights they need: The right to remain silent. Especially if their husband or partner rapes them. That's his right.
15. Men are the default human. Women are strange subhuman others. A man's reasonable belief in consent should therefore carry more weight in court than whether a woman actually consented.

We all know this, but seeing if written down like that terrifies me, it's so true.

Yes.

There is a list as long as your arm of frankly unbelievable rape defences. "Accidentally fell and penetrated her" being another. "So drunk I thought a stranger in a hotel room that wasn't mine, was my girlfriend ". Etc etc etc

AdamRyan
I am so sick of these men.
That's like the Ulster rugby players having their WhatsApp about spit roasting disallowed as "prejudicial".
If a man has rapey entitled misogynistic views that should absolutely be admissible as evidence

I think about this case from time to time and just feel so angry and frustrated that those men walked away, despite their WhatsApp messages, which spoke very much to character. I understand of course that they were seen as prejudicial, but Christ ... that poor woman.

//

Was it the Ched Evans case where his team had a retrial based on previous "partners" of the victim claiming she'd once enjoyed rough sex?

The odds are absolutely stacked against the victim. Tale as old as fucking time

How do you propose to deal with societal misogyny?

EtA: I was responding to this line:
a proper understanding of consent, with both men and women understanding what it means

If I misunderstood and it was meant as a throwaway comment with the main thrust being on policing then I apologise.

This

A very sad day for women

MrsSkylerWhite · Today 08:47

When I served on a jury years ago, we weren’t told of defendants’ previous records because it may prejudice our decision.

I think it was Blair's Government, which introduced the bad character rule, where the jury can be told, "Terry Smith has been convicted of 117 previous burglaries," etc. In this case, it seems that this is expressly forbidden under New York's Mollineux Rule. The women outwith the charges shouldn't have been allowed to give evidence.

That's not to say that I have any sympathy for him. I don't know if he would have been convicted without their evidence and I'm surprised that his lawyers didn't point out that it was a procedural error.

Let's hope he's convicted again, on the evidence of the women included in the charges.

How many cases will be re-examined now of men who are not celebrities. Lawyers will be busy going through historical cases I fear

I know it doesn't change anything and it's depressing as hell but it cheered me up a bit that another man actually confronted HW. Maybe if more men confronted this kind of behaviour it might reduce.

Oh dear @AdamRyan , you appear to be reading my response through a different lense from the one through which I wrote it.
Do you not feel that societal misogyny needs to be dealt with? The issue of consent is separate from that, as I thought I had made clear.
The police response to rape allegations have changed very little in the last 40 years, the setting may have changed, but the thought processes have remained the same, with a lot depending on the individual officers lived experience and views of women's place in society. That needs to change, long before any court proceedings are contemplated.

I'm sorry but I think that's still letting rapists of the hook.

I don't think there are that many "accidental" rapists who didn't understand consent or who's partner wasn't clear enough they didn't consent (which in itself is a problematic concept - the onus should be on the man to be 100% sure he has consent, not on the woman to be 100% clear she doesn't want sex).

I think there are a sizeable minority of men who feel so entitled to sex they either don't consider consent to be important so don't perceive themselves as rapists. For example they have beliefs like along term relationship or marriage means a woman always consent as men have needs that women should meet.

https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/22262-publics-attitudes-sexual-consent

And I think there is a further sizeable minority who know its rape, but think they can get away with it.

E.g.
https://www.salon.com/2015/01/15/the_ugly_truth_about_sexual_assault_more_men_admit_to_it_if_you_dont_call_it_rape/

There has been a whole lot of education but these attitudes still persist. I think a change to the legal system to start prosecuting rapists effectively is required to change attitudes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68901032

Good article from the BBC. Looks like he might be retried.

The problem begins long before court, imo, societal changes to misogyny, where we still appear to divide women into "Madonna's and whores", changes in police response to rape allegations, a proper understanding of consent, with both men and women understanding what it means. That's a beginning

we cannot, imo, change the way we deal with suspects, depending on the alleged crime.

So are you accepting of the current situation where 98% of rape victims don't see justice (and the counter, where the vast majority of rapists are free to continue raping women)? Is that a price worth paying for a "fair" criminal justice system?

If not, what changes would you make?

It's not about them being "a good person".

It's about the point at which a pattern of behaviour becomes evidence in itself. In cases like rape, where its all very "he said she said" and the evidence is often basically who is more credible, having a number of other witnesses saying the same thing should be considered relevant evidence.

Also, it (sometimes) considered relevant regarding the credibility of the victim. E.g. the CE case. If its not allowed in the case of the defendant, it also shouldn't be allowed in the case of the victim.

In my opinion the way rapes are prosecuted needs an entire overhaul. I would create a "lesser" crime of reckless penetration, so men could still be punished even if they "thought" they had consent (similar to the difference between murder and manslaughter). And I'd make the process more inquisitorial than adversarial.

I would also consider using a panel of specialist judges rather than a jury because juries are too influenced by rape myths.

You're right of course @TempestTost. I do get it. I just remember that Ulster Rugby case so clearly (am in NI and it was huge here) and was exasperated that yet another woman didn't get the justice she deserved. And of course, her own character and behaviour were very much up for discussion. You could almost have written the script. T'was ever thus.

Surely the most basic part of any criminal justice system, is to ensure that only the guilty are found to be so. This can only be done on the basis of evidence in that case. Yes i believe that weinstein is guilty, but my belief is not sufficient to convict a person. Yes we are aware that prior bad acts give credence to current behaviour, but unless there have been convictions, I'm not sure that they should be used as "evidence ". We should, of course, apply the same to the victim, so her previous behaviour should also be disregarded. It is very difficult, but we cannot, imo, change the way we deal with suspects, depending on the alleged crime.

The difficulty is that you can be an twat with any kind of abhorrent views, and that still does't mean that you are guilty of a specific crime.

The law is meant to find the actual person who in fact committed a specific crime. Not just a twat we could imagine doing it.

Lots of twats never commit a crime. And quite a lot of basically decent people do under the right circumstances.

We really do not want a justice system where it is normalized to weight criminal judgements on whether we think the defendant is a good person or not.

Red is right, this is a direct path to a terrible kind of authoritarianism.

I think the difficulty is there is often a degree of he said / she said in rape trials

men often work hard to demonstrate their good character that what she said he did is so out of character as to make it hard to believe.

in this case the evidence and testimonies showed her claims were absolutely totally positively plausible and the behaviour was totally in character. If that is agreed to be unfair it's hard to see how women could ever be believed.

Appalling. The man is a rapist. So many women have come forward with their stories that there is no doubt of his guilt.

I am so sick and tired of men like this being protected and of women having their character questioned when they come forward.

Being "unwise in social life" doesn't mean you deserve to be raped. That is victim blaming.
In the CE case the victim didn't make a complaint, he was arrested and charged based on his own account of what had happened that night.

I don't want the thread to derail on to him, my point was the evidence about the victim that saw his conviction overturned, would not have been admissible if it was similar evidence about his previous sexual history. Double standards that favour the man.

Spot on. This is sadly very true based on the rape conviction rates which of course leads to fewer women being prepared to bring charges in the first place.

He does have special treatment because he's famous, he can afford to pay lawyers to go through every aspect of his case for technicalities.

By the way I think Trump is deliberately trying to prejudice his own trial so he can claim he is being treated unfairly. However if his actions are leading to this - are deemed unlawful (that's why they are trying to gag him) - this arguably fails.