Is a man accused of rape guilty until proven innocent?

This idea that all the rape cases beign reported/going to trial are "his word against hers" "misunderstandings" and so on.

It's ridiculous.

The majority of those cases are filtered out by the women themselves - most women do not report "date rape" cases where they have no injuries as they know there's no point.

The cases that get reported are usually the ones where there is some kind of supporting evidence.

And women are not all mentally unstable lunatics. It is not normal or even likely or even slightly likely that women who have a few drinks and a one night stand will wake up in the morning and think "ooh that was a bit silly. i know. I'll report him for rape!!!". Yet apparently there are hordes of women doing just this. I would instead suggest that when a woman says she has been raped, usually, she has been raped, and the man who was doing the raping, was well aware of what he was doing. All this talk of "misunderstandings" is ridiculous. If you look at somwhere like the thread on MN where women recounted their stories, it is obvious that the men involved knew damn well what they were doing. It is further obvious from talking to people in RL and and here, that women who have been raped, are often unwilling to call it that, and put it down to a "misunderstanding" themselves, and find it hard to actually acknowledge that the man did anything wrong. Women who say "well he pushed me down and took my clothes off and had sex with me and I hated it, but i didn't say no, so it wasn't rape".

noyoucan't the stern report and other studies have noted many shortcominsg in the police/criminal process which are lacking

things like

police buying into "rape myths" eg she was drunk and what did she expect and treating the complainants accordingly

police "on the ground" beliveing that most women are lying and treating them accordingly

evidence not being collected

evidence being collected too late

complainants being discouraged from pursuing the complaint - "this won't go anywhere love, is it worth the trouble"

the CPS only being prepared to prosecute the more "cut and dried" cases

and so on

In the case of john worboys 12 women reported him before he was arrested. These women all told the same story, yet it took 12 before the police made a move. Why? Because, despite these cases going to the specialist rape unit (sapphire), many of them were not believed, were dismissed because they had been drinking, were told that a black cab driver wouldn't do that. I read somewhere that one of the victims said police laughed at her.

When the police and prosecutors start taking it seriously, maybe then we will start to see improvements.

Some women even have to undergo physicals by male doctors FGS. I am sure that in itself makes a lot of women change their mind about proceeding.

btw there is an outstanding blog post on here today re: what about teh menz and having to put up with the same old stupid antifeminist derailing arguments and how a woman can get heartily sick of it, frankly

it's the one with hanging chads in the title

dittany, ISNT, elephants, i think i love you

dittany, surely putting the burden of proof re. consent on the defendant is in effect making him "guilty until proven innocent"?

how does this work in burglary cases? does the state have to spend time proving that actually, the householder did not consent to have someone break a window, climb in and then help themselves/ransack the place?

i may be wrong but it is not a defense to a burglary charge to say 'i genuinely thought they wanted me to kick their door in and nick their telly whoops (sand besides, they liked it when i did har har)'

it seems to me that they start from an assumption that people don't want to have their houses broken in to unless they explicitly indicate otherwise

i apologise for making a crass analogy between burglary and rape/sexual assault

can anyone give me a really compelling reason why the same assumption can't be extended to women, that is, that we do not exist in a perpetual state of consent to any and all sexual activity with whoever unless we explicitly state otherwise

The idea of having to prove the "seeking" is the interesting one. If a woman's verbal statement of "I didn't consent" is considered a strong piece of prosecution evidence, then is the verbal statement of "yes, she did" from the man not considered an equally valid piece of defence evidence?

Or does the defendant need more than a verbal statement, i.e. one side requires more evidence than the other side requires? And if so, what should that be - a signed letter? A recording? Photograph album? (How many of the above could be forged?) And doesn't this imply that the swearing on oath to tell the truth in court is meaningless, because anything the defendant provides verbally is invalid without backup?

It may sound as if I am being a little flippant (and maybe I am, a bit, or playing devil's advocate) but if you require "X" you should be clear exactly what the law should accept AS "X".

ElephantsAndMiasmas It's certainly interesting to get a different perspective from what I've picked up from other media on the subject. I had the (erroneous) impression that a much larger percentage of men were acquitted, hence my views on anonymity.

In terms of improving the overall conviction rate, what is easier - improving the rate for cases going to court, or improving the number of cases that make it to court? And what can be done to facilitate this? (And am I asking questions that have been done before? )

Yes, we can all say up to a point what ISN'T it, but what, precisely, is? That's what a court of law would want to know.

How does one prove one has "actively sought" consent? It's often one person's word against another. Unless you have it in writing it's pretty difficult. Or should men all carry a portable mp3 player and tape their drunken conversations with women in taxis? I'm almost not serious.

Good on you for changing your mind, NYC, and for listening to what we've said on here.

dittany, surely putting the burden of proof re. consent on the defendant is in effect making him "guilty until proven innocent"? Nowhere else in UK law (in my limited knowledge of it) is there any burden of proof on the defendant. Is it not always up to the prosecution to proof its case (in this example, that consent was not given)?

I appreciate the need to improve conviction rates, but I don't think such a fundamental change to UK law would be the way to do it.

In the specific example you quoted, I'm not sure how your proposed change would make any difference. Presumably there was an argument in court over consent, and the facts you outlined must have emerged. If, on that basis, the jury regarded that as consent - and I share your disbelief - then I see no reason why they would have behaved any less irrationally if the burden of proof had been reversed.

I think it is around 60-70% guilty at trial. This is roughly comparable with other crimes (You will have to google or go through thread for exact figures though).

Most rapes are either -

a) not reported
b)dropped during the investigation stage by police or the accuser

Have fun with those 1001 posts

There are a lot of links on that thread to pertinent research and articles, I think.

Thanks. In that case I think the balance between not having anonymity, to encourage more women to come forward, overall outweighs the need to protect the identities of those acquitted. I thought I had picked up somewhere that the convictionn rate was around 10%.

If you google stern report then you get a lot of articles like this talking about the figures.

I can't find one for conviction rates overall at the moment but remember seeing somewhere that the 58% conviction rate for rapes that get to trial is comparable.

noyoucan't

off the top of my head, the conviction rate for rape cases that go to trial is more than 50% which compares well with other crimes

it might be in the stern report i'll have a look

Only 1002 posts. Give me 2 minutes to have a quick read!

original thread re anonimity

The false report rate for rape is thought to be similar/less than the flase report rate for other crimes (apart from reports for insurance fraud which are very high). It is also the case that in most false reports, the person making the accusation in mentally unstable and doing it for attention, and thus do not actually name their attacker. The point is not that they want someone caught.

I fail to see how being falsely accused of rape (which is unlikely) is worse and more damaging than being falsely accused of murder, child sex offenses, fraud etc etc etc