To think that people accused of rape should be given anonymity until proven guilty?

[DaleyBump]

Controversial.

I don't mean to start a bunfight, honest! Am I the only one that thinks that people accused of rape should be given the same anonymity as the rape victims until they've been proven guilty? By all means, once they've been found guilty, feed them to the dogs but being accused of rape publicly and then being found not guilty still has a major effect on someone's life.

I'm not saying rape victims should be outed at any point, by the way.

oh is Philip Schofield on the case

when does this man stop and think

Kali, I agree with you...lose/lose situation.

I think that the people who call for anonimity for the accused for this one specific crime, do so because they believe that women and girls routinely lie about rape.

I don't know who said this, but for me at least it's completely untrue.

YABU

For those who think that a wrongly accused man always has his life ruined - I present my Foster Dad. As FMum was told she couldn't have kids, they fostered and adopted a family. My Foster Brothers (legally adopted) were contacted by their birth mother and encouraged to stay with her and then for a reason I cannot fathom persuaded the older to make allegations of sexual abuse.

Dad was arrested and taken in for questioning. Fortunately, Fbrother couldn't resist embellishing his accusations until the point where it was damned obvious he was inventing stuff so the charges were dropped.

In that time, Dad didn't lose his job (not with children, so no worries there) The other children in the household were not removed (only their biological daughter left at home anyway)

It's about 20 years ago now. NO ONE even remembers there was an allegation. Dad had an unremarkable but fairly OK career, retired due to ill-health a few years ago. Still has his family, his home, his wife.

A false allegation is not necessarily the end of the world. A rape affects you for the rest of your life. Mine is still affecting me, my sex life, my relationships. But given the opportunity to report my rapist when I was 18/19 I declined because I didn't want to go through the trauma of the investigation and the thought of being in the same country as he made me feel ill. I think I made a statement and that was hard enough I couldn't bring myself to take it further.

we need to separate trial by media and the law

unfortunately the media have made some peoples lives very difficult, Christopher Jefferies was treated terribly by the press but not by the courts

No, they shouldn't.

Rape Anonymity For The Accused: Well Intentioned But Wrong

"Rape anonymity — the right of the accused in rape cases to have their identity kept secret — is in the news again today, after Conservative MP and deputy speaker Nigel Evans was named publicly following his arrest on suspicion of rape and sexual assault.

The Coalition Agreement said the Government would ‘extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants’. Though the pledge hadn’t been included in either party’s manifestos, it was Lib Dem policy, agreed at the 2006 party conference. The Lib Dems’ then home office minister Lynne Featherstone was in favour of the idea, arguing ‘It is clearly appalling for someone who is innocent to find their life and reputation ruined by false accusation and trial.’

It was a controversial pledge at the time — Karen Kruzycka criticised it here on LDV at the time: ‘The fact that anonymity is only applied in very specific circumstances is part of the openness of the UK’s legal system, for the good of all.’ — and was dropped within a couple of months.

Karen’s point still stands. While it would of course be horrific to be falsely accused of rape, there’s no evidence that false accusations are more common in rape cases than in other types of crime. And it wouldn’t have protected someone like Christopher Jefferies whose reputation was notoriously dragged through the mud by the press when he was arrested in connection with Joanna Yeates’ murder.

More importantly, anonymity wouldn’t serve the cause of justice, something the Telegraph pointed out after Stuart Hall’s admission of sexual assault crimes last week:

After the case made headlines, 10 more women came forward with allegations of assault. None of them knew each other, and almost two decades separated the first and last attacks: unless his identity had been shared with the public, they would never have found out that they were not Hall’s only victim. Indeed, one woman who came forward said that she did so only because she heard about his arrest while listening to the radio. On April 16 this year, Hall pleaded guilty to 14 indecent assaults on 13 girls, one as young as nine years old.

Ultimately the best safeguard for maintaining a free and open society is an accountable and open system of justice. Secrecy, however well-intentioned, is hardly ever preferable to transparency, however messy."

Most rapists are serial rapists. And most rapists rape people they know. And most rapists don't think they are rapists

Well said, debrisslide.

I woke up to an ex of mine having sex with me. I was on pretty strong sleeping tablets at the time. When I let rip, I don't think he realised the enorminity of what he had done and confessed to having done this on a number of occasions .

When I told him that his actions, in fact, made him a rapist, he basically laughed in my face. 'But I didn't force you, you are my girlfriend, you didn't cry for help, you didn't say I couldn't...blah blah blah'. No, I didn't cry for help because I was asleep. I didn't say you could either

Further a long down the line, a friend's daughter accused him of the same. I believed her and walked away. As it was, she was lying. But I also had witnessed what he was capable of (and most likely is).

Partly because the conviction rate is so poor, we have people who believe that a judgement of "Not Guilty" just means that there wasn't enough evidence to convict despite any evidence to the contrary. That was clear in the threads on the Le Vell case, quite a few posters were of the thinking "no smoke without fire, if CPS thought there was enough to prosecute I know what I believe", etc.

Giving defendants anonymity, while addressing an issue that clearly does a lot of harm, is getting the whole thing arse about face. Improve conviction rates so we can "trust" a court's decision as much as possible, so that those who are found Not Guilty can move on with their lives while offenders are convicted.

Wow so because i think both parties should not be named mean i dont believe a womans has been raped?thats not true at all. However there have been cases where people have been accused however the accuser hAs been lying, yet these people had their lives turned upside down through no fault of their own.
Im glad the poster a few op's dad life wasnt affected however some have been thats why i think both sides should be nameless.

Improve conviction rates so we can "trust" a court's decision as much as possible,

Aaaaaaaannnnnddddd...there's the big problem. How? How do you obtain sufficient evidence to prove a case beyond reasonable doubt without witnesses, with little or no forensic evidence (in many cases) and even more challenging, where the point of contention is one of consent (or the ability to give informed consent)?

You have 2 people, both off their heads on alcohol (or whatever) and they have sex - who took advantage of whom if they were both so drunk as to be incapable of giving informed consent?

How do you prove that a person was bullied/threatened into compliance when there are no bruises and no witnesses?

The conviction rate is a travesty (I don't, for a minute, believe that all the 94% of people found not guilty are actually innocent), but how can the conviction rate be improved whilst retaining the 'reasonable doubt' standard?

Sure we can do more to educate people about rape, consent, ability to consent, the psychology of how and why people behave as they do after being raped and the fact that what a person is wearing/doing/etc is immaterial, but the bottom line is that rape is very often 'he raped me' vs 'we had consensual sex'.

I'm curious to know how the posters who believe that the accused should be named would feel if it was their father, partner, son, brother etc being falsely accused? Would you still think it was a good idea? Like I said in a prev post, mud sticks, regardless of any eventual acquittal etc.

no of course i would not anyone to be falsely accused of rape and understand the damage it can do to a family especially if reported in the media on a large scale but then we are talking about trial by media which is something very different

but the law is there is protect people and punish people who break the law it is not about how people feel or what they want it is there to protect us all. if someone does falsely accuse someone of rape i expect them to be face legal proceedings

President how would you like to be in the position outlined by namechange above? How would you like to be raped and, like 94% of victims, see the man who raped you carry on his life as if nothing happened?

Yes, YABU, and I look forward to anonymity once again being offered to both the alleged victim AND the accused during my lifetime.

I would be devestated servalan obviously, but I strongly believe it is the price we pay for an open, transparent legal system.

I would be devestated servalan obviously, but I strongly believe it is the price we pay for an open, transparent legal system.

presidentservalan I wouldn't welcome it.

But whether individuals like things or not isn't a basis for deciding how we run the criminal justice system or anything else which is meant to benefit wider society rather than a relatively small number of people.

So skybore would you support secret trials for all offences, after which those found guilty were named?

Skybore "once again" - not sure where you live but accused persons were never given anonymity in the UK.

I have previously asked a number of people, including Pan, why it is relevant to accused's anonymity that a victim has a right to anonymity. No-one has answered. What do you think?

What Mortified said. It's clear the stigma on innocent accused people is too high right now. Reading that thread on Le Vell it's clear those who don't think he is innocent will carry on the vilification regardless of the verdict.

I really don't think that the effect on a person's reputation is worse if they are accused of rape, than if they are accused of (eg) child torture, aggressively coercing elderly people out of their life savings, trafficking people into slavery, murder and so on.

If people think that protecting the reputation of people accused of heinous crimes is important, until a guilty verdict, then why not push for this for all terrible crimes.

Lazey, any public figure accused of a crime of any kind sticks in the mind, guilty or innocent. Everyone has an opinion, just as they do about, say, Oscar pistorious.

YABU. If you make defendants anonymous you are doing at least one of two things:

1. You are saying that rape is a special category of crime worse than viewing images of child abuse, or murder, torture, terrorism etc, and so people have to be protected from even having their names associated with it because it is soooo bad and special. Not so imo.

2. You are implying that rape accusations are a special category of accusation which are so much more likely than any other kind of accusation to be false that the accused should be protected unless convicted. This is an out and out rape myth.

I think you've summed it up succinctly and pretty perfectly FairPhyllis

Another vote here for FairPhyllis having got it in one!

Further to what I said (thanks BBE and geekgal):

1. it's fairly obvious that our actions as a society show that we don't actually think that rape/sexual assault is a particularly awful thing, because if we did we'd be serious about believing people when they say they've been assaulted, we'd have a conviction rate that matches up better with reported prevalence of rape and sexual assault, we wouldn't trivialise rape/sexual assault in our culture's humour, and people would feel they might actually get some justice from reporting it.

2. Rape and sexual assault are overwhelmingly reported by women (I think along with DV this is the only category of crime which is disproportionately reported by women). If you imply that rape allegations are more likely than any other kind of allegation to be false, you set up an association in most people's minds that women are particularly untrustworthy/unreliable. And we don't treat other forms of violence which men are more likely to suffer in the same way. Do you really want that implication to be built into our criminal justice system, OP?