To be angry about the Oritse Williams rape case?

[prettyinpink23x]

He's been found not guilty today by a Jury.

So many people on twitter are saying 'name and shame the woman, she's lied' 'she deserves a prison sentence'. This is infuriating! Do these people not realise that 'not guilty' does not equate with innocent and it doesn't mean she's lied?

Is it unreasonable for me to be angry about this?

At the end of the day, the only people who know what happened that night were in that hotel room. Everything else is just supposition.

No woman deserves to be raped.

No man deserves to have his life ruined by a malicious claim of rape.

Not guilty can also me a he did not do it

You know what would really help the small number of falsely accused men? More convictions. Because then the majority of men found not guilty would actually be innocent.

Absolutely, but how would you go about this? Sex between adults is perfectly legal where there is consent. How would you prove beyond reasonable doubt when it is one person's word against another whether there was consent at the time.

To everyone saying that he shouldn't have been named unless he had been convicted, and we should have anonymity for men too - if this were the case, nothing would have ever come out about Jimmy Savile. Is that really the sort of society we want to live in, where men can rape with impunity, and if they ever get convicted they don't feel guilty, just unlucky?

I have wondered recently whether technology might develop to establish the fact of consent and whether it is withdrawn if circumstances change. It would be good if a device could somehow record those parts of the interaction.

There has been shown to be purpose in naming those accused of rape in that it sometimes encourages others to come forward with similar evidence, strengthening the case brought.

randonchap people always say that proving rape is so hard because it's one person's word against another, but this isn't true. Often there's no witnesses to a murder, a burglary, an assault. So the police should be gathering the sort of evidence they would in those cases - CCTV, foresnsic/DNA evidence.

In rape cases they should be taking statements from people the victim might have told.

One of the big problems is that evidence often isn't gathered, and if it is the CPS use rape myths to not take the case forward. Those that do get to court - I've seen cases where the prosecution haven't used the evidence they've got, don't know the case as well as the defence, women's sexual history is still used against them, defence barristers get round that and never get bollocked for it.

We need to make those accountable for investigating and prosecuting rape accountable - try making a complaint as a victim of rape who's watched the justice system balls up her case. You get nowhere. If police/CPS/prosecutors/judges faced the sack/prosecution when they don't do their jobs properly we might see the rape conviction grow.

The statistics say one thing about men found 'not guilty....'

Should have said 90+% of accused men are guilty.

There are solutions to this. Better sex and relationship education. Better parenting support based on consent. Clamp down on sexism in the media. Special courts with either no juries or specially trained juries. A need for enthusiastic consent to be a defence, not just the man's assumption that an unconscious women consents.

There are many things that could be done and aren't.

@PinkieTuscadero. Where is your data from? CPS figures at the end of 2018 show that the overall conviction rate for rape was nearly 40%.

Unfortunately the nature of the crime and the difficulty in proving non consent means that many cases won’t reach court but it doesn’t seem to correlate with your assertion that juries return less than 2% conviction rate.

I don’t think she should be named. No good will come of it.
I do feel sorry for Oritse though. The unintelligent “there’s no smoke without fire” force will be vocal about this

@Dorsetdays there have been numerous media articles about the woeful state of prosecutions. Have you missed them all?

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rape-prosecutions-sexual-abuse-victim-rates-convictions-police-cps-a8920611.html

I’d rather rely on actual stats from the CPS etc than media interpretation...🙄

I worked with a man who was accused of rape and it completely turned his life upside down. 'Luckily', he was found not guilty and we all felt very sorry for him, he sued the woman who claimed he had assaulted her because obvs he was innocent. His life was almost back on track until he was caught raping a different woman. Coincidence?

OP YANBU.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3507582-So-what-does-it-take-to-get-a-rape-case-through-then

If this case didn't even get to court - what is going on?

Women are being raped and murdered and men are being found not guilty because "the woman consented" to the sex and the violence and the actual murdering bit was an accident m'lud.

@MrsTerryPrachett.

By your reasoning, I wonder why we bother bringing those accused of rape to trial at all. You seem to be saying that if they get to court they are at least dodgy, and at worst-guilty, regardless of whether or not they are found not guilty.

Some men are accused of rape, go to trial and are found not guilty because they are not guilty. This happens for all sorts of charges and you know, sometimes people are not guilty. That's why we have a jury.

if we are now to assume that being brought to court is proof of guilt, then maybe we should get rid of the jury system for everything. Much cheaper if nothing else!

It is a little bit like the witch trial by ordeal. The witch was accused, dunked in a pond-if she survived, then she was guilty and if she drowned then she was innocent. In the end, it didn't matter because being brought to the pond in the ducking stool was enough.

In this case, if a man is brought to the dock then if he's found guilty, then it's proved and if he isn't-well, he was anyway-he's just got away with it.

ILoveMaxiBondi No, ruined like the guy that spent 2 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit, and the girl was ultimately jailed for false accusation.
Ruined as in the student who spent 2 years accused of rape, the student who lost out on a scholarship etc only ultimately for the case to be dropped as new evidence showed he couldn’t have committed it. That kinda ruined.

For those that don’t think false allegations ruined lives, why would happen if someone accused your DH of rape? You think life would just carry on? Even after a not guilty verdict or case dropped?

Do you mean the way paddy Jackson’s life was ruined? How his girlfriend stayed with him and he carried on playing professional rugby with his full family’s support? That sort of ruined?

Not that I am a fan of Jackson but he was hardly unaffected either. He was dropped from the international team, his contract with Ulster terminated, all sponsorship money disappeared overnight, spent nearly a million euros on legal fees, his name is toxic and protests follow him wherever he ends up (at a much reduced salary). Might not be the 'punishment' you think he deserves but the idea that the trial had zero impact on him is a bit daft.

Brilliantly put, donotcovertheradiator. There really is a worrying attitude that people must be guilty if they are arrested and brought to court, before they've been on trial!

No, ruined like the guy that spent 2 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit, and the girl was ultimately jailed for false accusation

🙄 Get off the Daily Mail homepage, seriously. Do you know how rare those cases statistically are? It’s about 100x more common for a woman who’s been raped to not get any sort of justice what so ever.

How about having more sympathy for that VERY common issue as opposed to the rare cases The Daily Mail cherry pick because they have some sort of rapey agenda.

So because it’s not common we need to ignore it? Fact is, men’s lives are ruined by rape claims and those that are denying it are ignorant.

Knew when I clicked on this thread that he’d be accused of being guilty regardless. Typical.