to think "being drunk" is no defence for raping someone

[SmashingNarcissistsMirrors]

i'm absolutely shocked by this case where a man has been acquited of raping a woman because he was so drunk he thought she was his girlfriend and didn't realise he was in the wrong bedroom.

this is so so wrong. how many men will now use "being drunk" as a defence?

not only this but according to the article the girlfriend had earlier said she was too ill for sex. plus the victims phone was found dismantled in the mans sock when he was arrested.

how can this happen?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363964/Haydor-Khan-cleared-rape-said-thought-I-BRUNETTE-girlfriend.html

MQ what this man did was hardly a "pure accident" was it. He was drunk and he was negligent. He did not act with due care and attention (in motoring-speak).

Same post to Tortoiseshell - please read the posts correctly if you are going to take issue with them.

And yes, if I came across a thread where people were blaming an 11 year-old girl for being gang-raped I would have plenty to say on the subject.

The problem is that a lot of posts are not in support of rape victims so much as denigrating the system and perpetuating errors.

How odd cumfy on the radio I heard he was found guilty of murder, which I thought was odd as it didn't seem that he intended to murder the woman.

Either way.

The other links will do.

That's why the case stuck in my head I mean, I wasn't actually following it.

He was driving incredibly, horrifically dangerously.

Again not an accident.

no it was in response to people claiming that people are being jailed for pure accidents where they have done nothing wrong or had no mens rea.

In this, like the other cases the argument was that he either knew the woman was not consenting or was reckless to the fact that she was not consenting.
Those cases are exactly the same. For the driver ones they either knowingly engaged in dangerous driving or they were reckless to the fact that they were engaging in dangerous driving.

Similarly in the bottle throwing case that you linked were the person was guilty of manslughter. This was not a pure accident where he had no mens rea, he didn't have the intent to kill the woman but he was reckless as to whether or not he caused her harm.

the only difference is that in the rape case at hand the jury decided that the man had not been reckless.

But nobody is being jailed for pure accidents were they lack the requisite mens rea which some seem to be claiming.

Leningrad - which sentence?

If someone IS innnocent, ie they did not commit the offence, then the allegation is untrue. It is not true that they committed the offence.

If someone is FOUND NOT GUILTY then that may be because they are innocent or it may be because there was reasonable doubt.

Not every person who is found not guilty is actually innocent. Some guilty people are found not guilty.

"MQ what this man did was hardly a "pure accident" was it."

No and I am not claiming it was. what I was refuting was the assertion that others have been jailed for pure accidents where they had no mens rea for the crime they committed.

Leningrad - Re: lots to do. I entirely agree and have said so several times on this thread. In my view the most that needs doing is in relation to the handling of reports and subsequent support and preparation.

He was drunk

He went into the wrong room

He didn't check who he was getting into bed with

It's not a "pure accident" is it

I have to go out npw

"If someone is not guilty then the allegation was untrue - fact. If someone is FOUND not guilty then that may be because of reasonable doubt etc etc."

Right, but it doesn't mean that the allegation was untrue, does it?

Not guilty = allegation not true in legal terms, but in all other respects the two are not linked in 100% of cases.

Surely a better phrase would be "If someone is not guilty then the allegation was untrue or there wasn't enough evidence to find guilty - fact"?!

Whether someone is not guilty or not doesn't verify the validity of the allegation at all. It merely means that the actual legal definition of the charge against the person hasn't passed the test level for evidence/etc required by the courts.

I might be arguing semantics here but i think this is quite important...

Frgr - I don't know how many more times I can say that exact same thing.

Not guilty = didn't do it.

Being found not guilty = didn't do it/reasonable doubt/legal issue/trial collapsed etc etc.

Everyone seems to keep reading the first of a pair of sentences and not the second one.

Also going through a red light and killing someone is at least death by careless driving.

Not an accident.

Perhaps, you are right that carelessness should be enough in some situations to be a sufficient mens rea, but in UK law that is generally not the case.

I also need to go. Am in theory working from home today. Now looking sadly at large pile of files that I could have had finished if I hadn't got distracted by talking about the law and actually applied some.

"How can what he did not be reckless?"

Because the test for recklesness wrt rape (in Ireland anyway) is whether or not the man had an honest belief that the woman was consenting to sex. a rule of thumb is that the more unreasonable a belief is, the less likely it is that it is honestly held and the less likely a jury is to accept it.
In criminal cases the jury are the deciders of fact, it was there opinion that he was not reckless as to whether or not the woman was consenting because they obviously accepted his explanation that he believed it was his gf and he believed she was consenting to sex.

It can get circular here now because you obviously believe he was reckless, as do many others. But there's no other real answer to your question beyond "he wasn't reckless because the jury decided he had not been reckless."

Sorry - one last response and then I really am getting on with some work, but thought Prolesworths post worth responding to.

No, I don't think the majority of committed, dedicated campaigners are suggesting that the justice system should be drastically changed - but a lot of people do make such suggestions as a knee-jerk response to stories in the paper. I think it is counter-productive.

Absolutely, there are things to be changed and I am not sure how it can be done, but I don't believe it will be done by an outcry after each acquittal. The case on this thread is done. It is over. It won't change anything. What might bring about change is for campaigners and ordinary people to get behind drives to change specific issues - funding for rape suites, funding for dedicated support staff, mechanisms for complainants to be better prepared. And alongside that, steady, dedicated pressure on some of the myths that do abound - a drunk woman is fair game, a sexily dressed woman is asking for it.

We would all like to think that these stereotypes are not so strong these days but I think they are. We have to remember that there is no such thing as "a jury" in isolation. Juries are made up of ordinary people with all their prejudices and opinions. As much as we would like to believe that a jury can look past a victim's clothing and concentrate on the facts, it is always going to be very, very difficult to be sure that they are doing so. Imagine a jury with three elderly ladies sitting on it. They are shown the underwear of two victims - one is black and lacy and crotchless with "sexy" written on it. The other is plain white cotton with a little pink bow. Do we honestly think that they will nurse the same feelings and views about the wearer of both these items of clothing?

The real question is, can they look past those feelings and actually focus on the evidence?

Not sure what the answer is. Definitely a lot of work to do, but I still think most of that work is in relation to wider society and pre-trial funding/procedures.

""Yes, I think there is justification for saying that many people seek to go behind every reported story and make assumptions about our terrible, weak legal system. It comes up time and time again, based on nothing more than what is read in the papers."

Or just possibly, people look at things like the official statistics and the Stern Report and come to their own conclusions."

Quite SQ. People don't conclude that we have a legal system which atrociously fails rape victims on the basis of a few newspaper reports, we conclude that we ahve a legal system that atrociously fails women on the basis of the evidence we know about

1 in 4 of us have been or will be raped or sexually assaulted in our lifetimes.

Practically none of us will get justice for it. Most of us (betwee 50-90% depending on who you believe) won't bother rporting it and of those who do, only 6% will not see their rapist walk free.

We don't need newspaper reports to tell us that we are being fucked by the legal system. We have the figures.

"BalloonSlayer Thu 10-Mar-11 21:23:23
"Even assuming it was a complete accident on his part, why wasn't he convicted of something?"

• because he was charged with "Rape of Ms X" and that was what he was being tried for."

So (and I admit I am way out of my depth here" do people get tried for different things which relate to the same crime?
In the same way as people can be found not guilty of murder bu guilty of manslaughter, do we need a lower class of rape - "accidentally sticking your penis into the wrong woman"

There have been many debates as to whether rape should be abolished as a crime and re-classified as various classes of sexual assault in order to take the emotion out of the word and possibly get higher convictions.

So far the judiciary has come down on the side of keeping rape as a specific offence.

Come to think of it I've just realised I have no idea what the reporting rate, conviction rate etc. for sexual assault is.

Back now

The thing earlier about accidents was that there was conversation about intent. Posters were making the point that if there's no intent to commit a crime then it's not a crime (as I understand it). Then there was a post which exaggerated it to say that it would be silly to prosecute accidents like a child breaking a window. I didn't think it was on to compare rape to a broken window and said that it would be better to compare it to killing people - where people are often prosecuted for killing people even when it was not their intention to do so. I think that is a better comparison than a broken window.

So if a person is driving without due care and attention and runs someone over and kills them they can go to prison - even if they did not intend to kill anyone.

In this case the man behaved recklessly - he was drunk and didn't check who he was getting into bed with - and the consequence of that was that he raped someone. Whether he intended to or not - I don't see why it is treated differently to the case of the reckless driver. A person has been raped - he did it - he did it because he didn't take due care and attention, and he was drunk.

That's how I see it anyway.

On another thread the crime of "fucking without due care and attention" was (not entirely seriously) suggested. This case makes you wonder though doesn't it.