AIBU to think rape is now legal in the UK?

[verdantverdure]

If there's almost no chance of a rapist being caught and punished then rape is legal, right?

Less than 0.7% are ever convicted.

Less than 1.4% are ever even charged

I'm not sure this is a government that cares about women, you guys.

It should be legal for women to carry weapons to deter attacks and defend themselves.

What's to be done?

1. get rid of "reasonable belief of consent" and make men detail what they did to get consent instead of whether they just believed they did (I mean seriously. Can you imagine if it was tax? "I reasonably believed I didn't have to pay because I asked my mate and he said i didn't)

2. Introduce a "lesser" crime of reckless penetration so that men can still be prosecuted of a crime if consent is not clear cut. It gives juries an option beyond "ruining an innocent man's life" by branding him a rapist.

3. enforce the "capacity" aspect properly - if a victim was over a certain drink level/drugged they were not capable of consent and so its either rape or reckless penetration

4. don't allow admission of evidence of victims sexual history. Previous convictions and other evidence (WhatsApp etc) are barred all the time in case it prejudices the defendants case. The same should be true for the victim.

5. certain things should not be allowed as defence- "she liked rough sex" being one of them

You could have special courts with three trained judges rather than a jury. You could actually process rape kits in a timely way.

There are sooooooooo many thinks you could do.

The first of which is require actual consent. Not "I'm the kind of man who thinks a drunk women who doesn't push me off is good enough". Actual consent.

There's few things lower than a rapist but the minority of women who make false accusations and lie about rape really don't help women.

I really hate this line of thinking. False accusations of rape are so rare they are barely worth mentioning yet every time it’s discussed this is what we get. Nobody starts with initial doubts if someone claims theft or burglary, even though people do lie to make fraudulent insurance claims. Nobody says ‘the minority of people who lie about being stolen from doesn’t help victims’.

I really hate this line of thinking. False accusations of rape are so rare they are barely worth mentioning yet every time it’s discussed this is what we get

tbh the way rape victims are treated by the police, any woman who does this needs some kind of mental health intervention.

And the 'it's so difficult' line doesn't work when other countries manage so much better.

That's awful TwittleBee💐

And the 'it's so difficult' line doesn't work when other countries manage so much better.

I wonder how other countries handle it better and what we could copy from them?

I do think pp point about the victim's past being used against her but a jury not being allowed to hear about the accused's past actual or accused crimes is appalling.

Attitudes are so deeply ingrained. When Sarah Everard was killed a man I work with said 'Why was she out on her own at night?'

2018 figures:

Out of 100 reported rapes, 35 are dropped due to victim not supporting action. 60 are halted by police, 5 are passed to CPS, who prosecute 2 and convict 1.

Of the 60 halted by police, some will be because the perpetrators can not be identified and some identified perpetrators can not be traced, a few will be charged with other offences, but most will have no prospect of conviction.

The latest 1.6% figure is shocking, but the figure is only 5.6% for all reported crime, and rape is notoriously hard to distinguish from legal sexual activity.

You could have special courts with three trained judges rather than a jury. You could actually process rape kits in a timely way.
Ooh yes I forgot this one.
You could have an inquisitorial process rather than an adversarial one. Seek the facts and make a judgement, rather than "innocent" ot "guilty"

There's so much we could do, if we approached it from a lens of reducing rape rather than a lens of protecting men from "false accusations"
Personally I'm very happy labour are focusing on this. That means more to me as a feminist than "knowing what a woman is"

Same.

To be fair, it's the same everywhere. In Sweden they've recently let off a man as the girl he had fingered (I think she's 10, so very young and definitely not in any way, shape or form consensual) had essentially said he put his finger in her noonie, which apparently is very ambiguous as he possibly didn't penetrate her as noonie could be either vulva or vagina. So benefit of the doubt etc... 🤯 Absolutely disgraceful

None of this comes under TBF. If things were fair and right rapists would pay. Victims would get justice.

It is not the same everywhere
I can believe that men get off assaults for spurious reasons everywhere. That's kind of understandable given the presumption of "innocent until proven guilty".

Sweden has "sex without consent" rather than rape and their conviction rate has increased as a result
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sweden-crime-rape-law-trfn-idUSKBN23T2R3

This study showed England, Wales and Scotland had the lowest conviction rate in Europe in 2006 and we've got even worse since then

"Convictions have increased at an even
slower rate of 92%, doubling from 450 in 1985 to 863 in 2006. The conviction rate reached an all-time low of 5% in 2003 and 2004, with a slight reversal to 6% in 2005-2006, and 6.5% in 2006-7. This is the second lowest conviction rate in Europe after Scotland."

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=cwasu.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/England_and_Wales.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj6u5Xp64X-AhUEnVwKHdWuATs4FBAWegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw0SoFyBVd88Nahl1QCokgqY

The British performance on prosecuting rapes is shameful and its insulting to say "its the same everywhere"

I have been raped three times. The first time, when I was 17, I did go to the police. The policeman I spoke to told me that I shouldn't bother taking it further as I didn't have a 'hope in hell' of it going to court as I had absolutely no proof. It was also implied that I would end up looking like a troublemaker and it would be best to just leave it, and that because I'd had a few drinks at a party beforehand it would be harder to prove. That was, admittedly, 30-odd years ago but given the number of convictions for rape I'm not convinced much has changed re attitudes.

The second and third time I was raped I didn't even bother reporting it.

I'm sorry 💐 And angry on your behalf.

You’re not wrong OP, we pay it lip service and that’s it. Men can rape freely in the knowledge that they have a huge, huge chance of getting away with it, and even if they are caught, and end up in court, there’s no big penalty.

No, it’s really not as hard as we’re all led to believe. I remember watching a rape case (that ended up being dropped by the police) on 24 hours in police custody. The man ADMITTED he anally raped her, said he did not get her consent and was trying his luck - the police didn’t even pick him up on that confession in the interview.

WTF? And they still put it on telly?

Yep, as if the fact that the man said he was trying his luck and so didn’t get consent made it all perfectly reasonable and fine, it’s just what lads do. I was absolutely disgusted at the time that the interviewing officers didn’t pick him up on that or even seem to think there was anything wrong with it.

Theres a couple of other cases I read about that we’re particularly shocking to me - a woman who was raped whilst in labour, and the man (her husband) got off with it, because of course, poor men can’t understand that the last thing a woman would want to do whilst giving birth, is have sex. Another where a woman was raped whilst wearing a tampon. The rapist claimed it was because she wanted it so bad she didn’t want to stop to take it out - because yeah, that’s what women do isn’t it? Then there was the girl in America who was gang raped whilst unconscious ON FILM, and the men still got off with it.

They class urgent as immediate risk to life, imminent danger and crime in progress for example. Whilst rape is horrific if it's not happening at the time you call, which of course it's not likely to be, then calling 999 wouldn't get help any quicker than calling the non emergency line. 999 should be for happenings that need immediate police presence.

Typically yes, along with their houses etc. being searched and pertinent information and items seized as well.

This. Police can’t magic evidence out of thin air.