to be shocked at the sentencing in the Gayle Newland case?

[hackmum]

Eight years seems excessive to me. This is the woman who had sex with a female friend while pretending to be a man. Story here:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland-sentenced-eight-years-prison-duping-friend-having-sex

Here's an interesting take on the case:

thesecretbarrister.com/2015/11/13/gayle-newlands-sentence-was-both-entirely-proper-and-wildly-disproportionate/

I read that earlier nauticant - very interesting indeed. IMO the victim was raped, as is anybody who has been deceived, tricked or "future-faked" into having sex with someone. But that's just my opinion and I'm not the judge.

nauticant: that's a really excellent post from the secret barrister. It explains very well the issues we've all been trying to feel our way through here. I can see why Newland got eight years now. But I'm pleased that the barrister also agrees that it feels like an unduly heavy sentence:

"8 years is 3 years more than the maximum for inflicting grievous bodily harm without intent. If Newland had punched the complainant, who as a consequence fell, banged her head and ended up paralysed for life, she would not have received as long. But this is not the fault of the judges who sentence these cases – they are bound by the laws created by Parliament, the charging decisions of the CPS, the verdicts of the jury and the Sentencing Guidelines."

Victim-blaming is vile
Sometimes rape or sexual assault are via violence; sometimes via trickery or taking advantage of incapacity.
Some women are especially vulnerable to trickery, due to MH or abuse. They shouldn't be blamed.

You can always say a victim shouldn't have got helplessly drunk or gone home with a bloke on the first date, or walked down a dark alley.
It is NOT her fault. The blame is 100% on the criminal.

The sentence is about right, because it is the average sentence for rape.
The criminal couldn't be charged with rape, because in UK law that requires a penis.

She agreed to sex with a man, not with a woman.
That's a fundamental violation: being deceived about biological sex and being penetrated by something fundamentally different to what she had agreed.

Contraversial: Imagine if a (drunk / naive ?) woman consents to sex with a woman and a dildo, to find afterwards when sober that was a transwoman who penetrated her with a penis.
Comparable situation and would also deserve 8 years, imo

That was a very cold-blooded deliberate series of assaults, carefully planned and carried out over a long period of time.
Not a stupid impulsive crime.

If there can be no victim blaming, what on earth is the point of a court case? Might as well have a kangaroo court that sentences the accused straightaway. There is a thread at the moment about capital punishment and many people are mentioning miscarriages of justice. If, let us say, this case is overturned on appeal, who is the victim then?

This case is so odd that I think it's only human to question what on earth went on. The sentence was imo harsh; the perpetrator was obviously a cunning and manipulative person, but the victim did seem to be astonishingly gullible.

A court case is not about victim blaming, but seeing if the facts can be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Having a naive or even stupid victim is no defence against committing a crime

In fact, this criminal was treated better than a rapist - a man who committed 10 rapes wouldn't get 8 years, but a great deal longer.

This crime was in fact 10 separate assaults, so 9.6 months per crime, if sentenced consecutively

It's not victim blaming. It's freedom of speech and it's crucial that we're able to discuss these issues. Not being able to do so will only hurt everyone in the longer-term.

boom Don't you know the difference between victim blaming and educating issues around safety? Who cares if the predator goes off to try someone else if this girl's personal boundaries had been more solid, we'll educate everyone else too. I think you're very defeatist.

The case is very odd indeed and both parties did things that are outside what might be considered normal. Having sex with someone that requires you to be blindfolded and never see their face? Very odd.

Very odd indeed.
It seems the victim was carefully groomed by her "best friend"
She might have twigged immediately, without her best friend saying how wonderful this bloke was and that she should indulge his strange requests.

Some people are just not very clever and are easily conned, but this doesn't normally excuse crimes against them.

nauticant that article is interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Stopping I do know the difference. For instance "I'm concerned that a very long sentence turns this incident into nothing more than a villain/victim. While it is that, it is also someone being very stupid." is victim blaming and does nothing to educate anyone.

boom I wasn't suggesting that we shame her publicly, as I think you know. As I've said, I was suggesting that she would have benefited from tighter boundaries and that education in this area would be of more benefit to her now than any prison sentence for her attacker.

It sounds more like she needs support and therapy to increase her confidence and her understanding that she doesn't have to bend over backwards and agree to ridiculous demands to be loved. The freedom program might be a good idea. But the education she needs isn't so much about criticising her choices as showing her she has equal humanity with others and doesn't need to bend over backwards to find love. If you tell her she's stupid you'll do next to nothing to help her find the way to value herself more in the next situation.

Nevertheless, educating this woman won't stop the abuser from finding someone else to abuse. They'll just find someone more vulnerable, someone who, no matter how much "education" we give them, will not be able to recognise the odd requests as a sign of an imbalance and control.

If we;re talking about what sort of education should people have in the world to have decent life skills, to ensure healthy relationships and sound financial decision making, then we're at a point when it wouldn't be victim blaming to talk about what people should or shouldn't put with from potential romantic partners. And we could talk about how people can develop street smarts so that they aren't to trusting or too cynical. But when you put all that in a thread about sentencing in a particular case and suggest that a long sentence is wrong because the victim was "stupid", that puts the whole conversation firmly in victim blaming.

boom Your second paragraph is, quite simply, not a good enough reason to give up on education. Sadly it will not save everyone and no, it may not stop someone becoming a specific predator's victim. But I would like to think our judicial system and our society as a whole is doing everything that it can to make each individual as safe as we can.

You misunderstand re: the use of the word 'stupid'. I do think that what she did was so ridiculously naive that the word stupid is in some respects appropriate. However I would not have used that language in talking to her, or wanted a judge to frame it in those terms. But if we're talking about how society should respond to these incidents, we do need to be able to evaluate how the conduct of this woman has contributed to the situation she's found herself in.

We don't make individuals safe by calling then stupid. Either to their face or in conversations with others about their actions. It does absolutely nothing to bring about a situation where these crimes are less likely to happen. It fails to look at the reasons she made the decisions and so stops us from finding an approach that would make such decision making less likely.

Moreover, your have said that you think the criminal should get a lighter sentence because the victim was "stupid" that you wouldn't use the word to the woman's face is rather irrelevant. This logic clearly puts some of the onus for crime on the victim. There isn't a much clearer example of victim blaming to be found. What exactly do you think victim blaming is?

I did think the case sounded slightly implausible when I first heard it but now I have nothing but empathy for the victim.

She's had to move areas, been betrayed by the person she loved and it will be incredibly hard for her to confide in anyone for fear of ridicule.

I do wonder what influence the sentencing will have on this case www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3292687/Woman-pretended-man-trick-girl-sex-Defendant-wore-bodysuit-insisted-lights-assault-against-woman-met-Facebook.html

I think it's extremely relevant that I wouldn't want to talk about this woman's actions in a way that would make her feel stupid. Without shaming her, I would hope to make her feel there was a need to change and a way to change. Perhaps having those conversations would discourage women from coming forward - but perhaps it might discourage other women from acting so foolishly. Also, if I were in conversation with her, while I would not want to diminish the wrong that has been done to her,I would want to tactfully point out that she walked straight into it when she put that damn blindfold on.

Pointing this out does not mean I think the offender is less guilty. However, I do think there is a ridiculous narrative going on here, which is that I can leave my personal safety entirely up to the judicial system to take care of because if something happens to me, it has to be someone else's fault and no one can suggest that my behaviour needs to change. This is a nuanced point. It is the predator's fault, but there is also a sense in which, aside from his crime, she was a fool. And there needs to be a way to talk about that. Mumsnet tends to be a place where conceptual debates are frank and fast moving; there isn't always time to pussyfoot around and say 'I would like to think this person might need to - ahem - think twice next time they put a blindfold on...'. Actually, you would have had a problem with that too as your primary issue wasn't with the use of the word 'stupid'.

When all is said and done, I do think there is something slightly fucked up about a justice system that hands out such a long sentence for something that can generate so many column inches about exactly what was wrong with the offence - undoubtedly something is wrong with it, but that sentence is twice as long as some people have received for murdering their spouse. Or two years longer that the bloke who threw acid at Katie Piper's face. If we're going to talk about victims, I would not particularly wish to put the victim of this case in that category.

She was convicted as the judge says:

"Youhavebeenconvictedbyajuryofthreecountsofassaultby penetrationcontrarytosection2 oftheSexualOffencesAct2003."

The judge's summing up was really interesting. It's here for anyone who needs a hyperlink.

Don't know what happened there with that quote - I just copied it from the summing up!

She didn't't leave her safety to the judicial system. She suffered greatly. The sentence doesn't take that away. The judicial system isn't a health and safety executive. It is there to judge the the guilt of the accused according to criminal law. It isn't there to judge non-criminal actions.

If the foolishness of the victim lessened the crime then a lot of very vulnerable people would simply become excellent targets for criminals, because their "foolishness", that they may not even have the capacity to change, would mean criminals could expect lenient sentencing. That would be truly fucked up.

As I understand it, offenders are also supposed to be rehabilitated. That's about personal change - something that we are all supposed to indirectly benefit from. Except there are also ways we could directly benefit, aren't there.

Actually, I think many women (and men) in Britain don't make wise choices around issues of personal safety. The message that it's our responsibility to look after ourselves (because there are very nasty people out there who are entirely culpable for their crimes) doesn't seem to be getting through to us all as it should. In throwing out hands up in horror when rape occurs without being able to critique the circumstances in which the rape occurred, we are collectively leaning on a system that locks the door after the horse has bolted. In rehabilitating the offender without being able to talk about what needs to change in terms of the victim's personal choices, we are also placing our confidence in a very dodgy rehabilitation system.