Ken Clarke differentiates date rape from 'serious rape'

[NotFromConcentrate]

AIBU to think it's time he went?

I listened to the whole interview as it was going out on the radio and I actually could understand what he was saying i.e. average stats for sending rapists to prison also include under age sex cases so it makes the tarriff appear lower than it is.

However, a lady who had been attacked came on and he just didn't get it. What she was trying to say was that offenders nearly always reoffend. In her case the guy had offended several times before and then after her case (where he got a year) he went on the reoffend again.

KC doesn't seem to understand that rape/murder is just something you should not get let off for good behaviour or for pleading guilty because a year or two inside is no time to treat and rehabilitate and it won't be KC who pays the price.

Sack him now. Outrageous from anyone but particularly from someone in his position.

flagging. How many 18 yo do you think are in prison in the UK for having consensual sex with 15yo?

Seriously. None? A handful? Yet he is claiming that consensual sex between teenagers is prosecuted and convicted so regularly that it's enough to skew the average tariff figures?

It's rubbish.

From his later clarification that he thought date rape meant an over-age man having sex with a consenting underage girl, and his comments, bearing that in mind, make more sense than if he thought that date rape meant 'rape by someone you know'.

So I think that was a bad (incorrect) choice of words rather than a gross undermining of the experience of people who have been raped by someone they know.

I don't think he should resign on that count.

Whether you agree with his policy of offering 50% reduction of sentence in all crimes (and not just rape) is a different matter.

I dunno noble , I think if anyone should know what date rape is, its the bloody Justice Secretary....

YES swc he is talking shit.

CONSENSUAL SEX BETWEEN TEENAGERS IS NOT RAPE

I wish Vic Derbyshire had known that.

And, to be a little bit charitable, perhaps the crime statistics need to make that clear. It is not so easy to extract the information.

sardine he acknowledged this himself but Victoria didn't pick up on it.

The context that he used date rape in, he seems to differentiate it from sex with someone underage, as a separate thing.

He also later on says that

"Date rape can be as serious as the worst rapes. But date rapes, as you are quite right to say very old experience, of being in trials, they do vary extraordinarily one from another and in the end the judge has to decide on the circumstances."

I don't think he would have said that if he genuinely believed that "date rape" meant consensual sex between teenagers.

I think this claim that he doesn't know what date rape is, is simply an attempt to backtrack from what he actually said.

flagging - where was that? I must have missed it.

Early on he said that average tariffs gave a misleading picture of sentencing, due to date rape and sex between teenagers being included in the figures. Seemingly saying that date rape wasn't as serious as "rape-rape" (yuck) and hence it got a lesser sentence, and also implying that consensual sex between teenagers regularly resulted in convictions. This is all nonsense.

With this crime I am with yuo swc. I am happy to cast aside my namby-pamby nicey-nicey happy-clappy lefty ideas about rehabilitation, and say lock em up for a good long time and until there is absolutely no chance whatsoever, of them ever ever reoffending.

This bit is also incredibly patronizing:

Yes but I don't think rape's changed all that much. What I think happens is that the woman finds that another ordeal is now being imposed upon her. The woman's already distressed and traumatised enough by the rape finds she's now in a witness box, in front of a jury, the lawyer accusing her of lying, going over the whole thing again.

And yet somehow this process is also meant to be such a lark that there are some women who would go through it just to be spiteful?

The transcript says

Derbyshire: Hang on a minute. Five years on average, yes they do Mr Clarke, yes they do.

Clarke: That includes date rape, 17-year-olds having intercourse with 15-year-olds.

If instead of reading it as a list, you read it as

Clarke: That includes date rape: 17-year-olds having intercourse with 15-year-olds.

then it makes perfect sense as he continues

Clarke: Serious rape, I don't think many judges give five years for a forcible rape, the tariff is longer than that. And a serious rape where, you know, violence and an unwilling woman, the tariff's much longer than that.

Otherwise it's saying that he doesn't think date rape as rape by someone you know is a forcible rape. That doesn't make sense. It makes far more sense if he was differentiating underage sex and forcible rape. The punctuation in the written transcript makes it read differently than I think it was meant.

I had sex at 15 and it wasn't rape but if my father could have found the 18 year old he would have cryed rape of his daughter. Is this the same as non consensual rape I think not.

BTW my father knew because it ended in a preganancy

noblegiraffe if you read his comments later on about how date rape can be very serious it is clear he can't be referring to consensual sex.

Also many people think that "date rape" is not as serious as being raped by a stranger, so on that score what he says early on makes perfect sense.

Is it nicer to be raped by someone you know then?

He is a complete twunt and I for one hope he has to make a very public apology and resigns.

Sad to think that attitudes like his still exist and from someone in his position too.

So if KC was raped by:-

A - a man he met in a pub who was a colleague and it was after several drinks, dinner and laughter together

OR

B - plucked off the street by a random stranger and raped in an alleyway

Would he personally feel that one was less serious than the other and would that affect how he personally felt about the situation?

I doubt it. Because each one is where he would have been FORCED to have SEX AGAINST his will. No difference. Perhaps he'd like to try it and see how he felt.