Ken Clarke differentiates date rape from 'serious rape'

[NotFromConcentrate]

AIBU to think it's time he went?

I dont think saying that there are degrees of rape trivialises it, so long as the "best" rape scenario is still considered to actually be rather bad.
However I do think that assuming all acquaintance rape is "better" than stranger rape (however you clarify that?) does trivialise acquaintance rape...

Rape is rape is rape it is only the methods use to ensure 'compliance' (is that the right word) that changes, the rapists either instills fear into the victim or ensures that they are so 'out' of it they can not fight back.

IMHO after listening to the interview, he was making the distinction between constitutional rape, which comes down to the technicality that even if sex between a 16 y/o and a 15 year is consensual it is still technically rape, and violent, non-consensual rape. Of coursed those two should carry different penalties.

I think he has been mis interpreted, and this has become a media frenzy.

kungfupannda

Personally, I'd say "the first reasonable opportunity" to admit guilt is when you are asked, under caution and in the presence of a solicitor, whether or not you did it.

I know the courts don't see it that way.

That's because the courts are wrong.

lilly, that would be true if we were in america, but you would think that the MP in charge of Justice would know that consensual sex with a minor isnt classed as rape in the UK. I didnt before this discussion, but I'm not doing his job...

Leningrad, I did compare it to the taking of a life (which is a crime in which there are degrees). I don't think anyone finds that a trivial crime. Equally, assault, in which one can give someone a bloody nose or leave them in a vegetative state, has degrees. Segregating a crime into bad/worse/worst does not trivialise it. It merely allows the judiciary some discretion.

Kungfu, Murder is not dealt with in an identical way but "life" can mean 10-15 years of actual imprisonment. There is a minimum tariff instead of a maximum one but, in effect, murderers can be dealt with very differently, depending on the nature of their crime.

allsquare, sex with a consenting 13 year old is rape.

fair enough, but no-ones talking about 13 year olds, they are talking about the imaginary 15 year old and her imaginary 18 year old boyfriend
:)

sorry, my posts read back as very passive aggressive today! not intended, i promise

If you are going to separate crimes into different categories according to the effect on the victim (bloody nose vs vegetative state) then are you going to take into account the effect on the victim of rape of any 'sort'? What if all rape has the same effect?

It is an inconsistent argument anyway, since all victims of murder and manslaughter or unlawful killing are equally dead and therefore equally affected by the act.

Larry - which in your mind is worse?

You leave a pub one night on your own and get dragged into an alley at knife point and are raped?

Or you leave a pub at night after a great evening having drunk several drinks with a close male friend who overpowers you when you get home and rapes you?

Lenin,

I don't think Ken Clarke said any differently than what you just wrote. He was discussing tariffs depending on the aggravating factors and the idea of introducing plea bargaining for some rapes with lesser aggravating factors.

Also, assault is assault in the sense that someone invades someone else's space to attack them and killing is killing in the sense that someone has been killed by someone else against their will. Sentencing is about how one deals with the circumstances around a crime after it has been agreed that a crime HAS been committed.

What you are actually doing, Larry, is looking at rape from a perpetrator's pov and deciding what was the worse crime, not from the pov of the victim at all.

Lenin I absolutely agree with you that the dice are loaded against women when it comes to making consent clear and imposing sanctions on men who don't respect that. The whole category of 'playing hard to get' type interactions between men and women massively complicates the whole thing, as it's nigh-on encouraged for women to say 'no' and 'yes' at the same time, and for men to persist even when the overt answer is 'no'.

It's likely that when you put a woman with little experience or low self-esteem (eg my 16-year-old self) together with a man who's bad at reading the signals or has other emotional problems, and then add in the cultural expectations of 'playing hard to get' you may end up with situations like the one I experienced. But is that rape, or something else? As the law stands right now, I really don't know. I spoke to the guy afterwards, and he said 'I thought you wanted to'. So what was the truth really?

If you were semi-conscious when you were assaulted, to me that's quite different. But in my case I to this day genuinely don't know whether what I experienced was rape or not - despite the fact that I did say no. Perhaps you're right, and all young women should be told that unless they explicitly say yes and it feels fabulous then it's rape. I don't really know.

Linden,

Both are awful, although I would be more frightened by the former, in the sense that it might also lead to my death. And, again, if it were a female friend whom I snogged and then decided that I did not want to sleep with, but she overpowered me and forced me to have sex with her, that would still be awful but (I think, it never having happened) better than scenario 1 or 2.

I think Allsquare put it well in that she accepted that there should be degrees of rape assuming that the least bad was assumed to still be pretty bad. I think that was what Ken Clarke was trying to say....although I think the conflation with statutory rape was pretty silly.

Saying "rape is rape is rape" is not very helpful. Like with any crime there can be aggravating and mitigating circumstances which vary the seriousness of the crime.

It is the definition of what constitutes aggravating circumstances and the way that KC couched it that has people baying for his blood, Larry. The inability to see the crime from the victim's pov, the idea that there are degrees of unwillingness and that these degrees may be inferred from circumstances such as state of inebriation, clothing, time of day, place where the crime took place, and now very unfortunately whether the victim knew the attacker is suggested as an element that can be thrown into the mix as a mitigating circumstance that could benefit the attacker. This is the prospect that has so many posters here up in arms.

Larry, do you not see that this gives a get out of jail card to men who feel like shagging the women they know whether the women are up for it or not?

I can see how you could accidentally kill someone but accidentally rape someone? Just not possible. What would the defence be? "I tripped m'lud and accidentally penetrated her"

And if it were a male friend who you have been joking with all night and even flirting with (from his pov) and even hugging and making suggestive comments (from his pov) - you think that would be better than scenario 1 or 2?

What aggravating and mitigating circumstances could there be that a man feels he has the right to insert his penis into an unwilling womans vagina or mouth?