To think that “innocent until proven guilty” just doesn’t always apply, particularly in cases of sex offences?

[AngeloMysterioso]

It should… I know it should. In a fair and just world.

But the fact is that, in this country at least, because it’s almost always a he-said-she-said, the level of prosecutions and convictions for rape is so shockingly low that virtually every rapist out there is technically an innocent man.

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t like trial by media, I don’t think someone should be convicted of a serious crime purely on somebody else’s say-so, but I also know that so many men are being able to get away with it that innocent until proven guilty has become a complete crock of shit.

Especially when the perpetrator is famous. Even setting aside the one in the news right now, we also have a recent case of a footballer whose crime was literally recorded and he still got away with it.

I mean what the fuck do we do?!

If it's unreported then yes statistics will be pretty inaccurate, but you only have to spend time on here to see how often women suffer what would meet the legal definition of rape and don't even realise it themselves, or won't/can't report because of their personal situation etc.

I imagine rape within relationships as part of a wider pattern of abuse is probably terrifyingly common and hugely underreported

National crime survey asks about whether people have suffered a crime (regardless of reporting). It's separate to police data and is considered a reliable data source

Where on earth do you get that from? It rather looks as if you are the one on drugs. The post was very specifically about the standard of proof generally, as indeed is the thread.

It applies in a court of law, nowhere else. Yanbu.

Your reluctance to answer the hypothetical question on a member of your family being falsely accused is very telling. For the most part, no family want to think their own are capable of it. Worse so when it is clear they are innocent.
So on Visiting Day, Will you visit the local nonce prison and tell eg Dad that I'm sorry but you were just collateral damage. But at least it was another conviction.

As PP have pointed out. Numbers given for reported cases without conviction, although deeply disturbing and extremely upsetting for those genuine victims to not get closure, Cannot be reliably used to state how many do not receive justice.

Have you a link that shows the conviction rate from 2009 until today. The years 2019-2023 and perhaps beyond, Will not show a proper representative figure, due to the reduced element of interpersonal interaction with covid. Add that to a much reduced Court system during that period a number of cases that would have been included did not take place.

I don't think the majority of us feel that someone accusing another of rape is lying. It is up to the courts to make the decison of who's version of events is more likely.

A couple of your suggestions I'd like to reply to.
inquisitorial rather than adversarial prosecution. That means working to establish the truth rather than "guilty/innocent".
If truth is established beyond reasonable doubt, then a conviction takes place. Anything less is not acceptable in law.

additional crime of reckless penetration that focuses on whether the man took appropriate steps to ensure he had consent.
I believe that is part of the investigation and trial process as it is. A good example of this is having sex with a woman under the influence. Was she able to give consent. If the answer is found to be no in court, then he gets a conviction.
The Swedish system although sounds good to a certain extent. What it is essentially saying is that despite there being no consent on the victims part, because the intention of the rapist was not to rape, but just to have sex. Then that is reducing the severity of what was carried out. Sex without consent is Rape. No matter how you dress it.

altering the "reasonable belief of consent" clause or making it so certain things can't be given as reasonable belief. Such as, being so drunk you don't know who you are fucking. Or having very rough sex with a 16 year old believing she consents, when you are 30
Part of my answer to this is given above. Having rough sex with anyone, be they 16 or 60 makes no difference. The important part is consent.

Sadly the under-reporting of crime of all kinds is increasing. Due to lack of police & courts. Many feel it pointless as they know the police will not investigate low level crime now. Where this is going to lead is frightening imo.

If a man I love was convicted of rape I would have to accept due process was followed and he was a rapist.

I cannot see any scenario where a jury would find someone guilty but I would know they were innocent.

But is that with the current system or your proposed system with a much reduced burden of proof?

I'm not replying to the rest of your waffle because 1) you clearly don't understand inquisitorial vs adversarial law, 2) you are entirely capable of doing your own googling to prove your point, 3) you don't understand the reasonable belief clause in rape defence.

That makes me think you aren't making a good faith argument so I am not engaging further.

OP You make a valid point; in education a teacher or TA would be suspended until further investigations and that's for most allegations where codes of conduct have been seriously breached and a child is potentially at risk.

Allegations besides sexual abuse.

Brand (and the media companies that employed him during the various allegations via their own policies and procedures) is under investigation by both the police AND the media companies.

So it hasn't been trial by social media etc, it's been suspended and investigations started.

It's public because the nature of the allegations are very much in the public interest.

if you had a society where rampant violence existed and then decided to drive cultural change by making it illegal, you would ultimately destroy the prison service,

But rampant violence is already illegal? I don’t understand your analogy.

I haven't rtft as I don't have time but I also can well imagine the discussion that he's innocent until proved guilty.

Yes he is.

But if he was at the bbc he'd be suspended. If he was at C4 he'd be suspended.

He's self employed and has a massive following therefore he is effectively cancelled as much as possible.

I would not be surprised if this is what lawyers and the police advised should happen in order to effectively suspend him while allegations are investigated, post operation Yewtree.

Social media is just your local pub; people can say what they want. And have opinions they want.

I know someone whose life was ruined by a false allegation. He had to leave colleague as he was threatened, his car windows were smashed and he lost his job. He had to have invasive questioning and examinations. It nearly killed him. Then she admitted she made it up as she was jealous as he had kissed her but wasn’t interested in a relationship and she saw him chatting another girl up. We were all 18. I was a good friend of his and believed him as her story didn’t add up, he was a flirt but genuinely a lovely guy. She eventually admitted it was lies when her story kept changing and unravelling. She said he head butted her repeatedly and held her down while she struggled, neither of them had any marks. Also 3 of us saw him during the timescale she said it happened.

I think false accusations should lead to jail time as not only did she do massive damage to his life (if it had gone to court it could have been even worse he could have ended up in prison, had a criminal record and been on the sex offenders register). These accusations also lead to the fall in convictions and less allegations being taken seriously.

*leave college

Sadly that suggests to me that you are unable to give reasoned arguments to support what you are aiming for.

Both inquisitorial & adversarial law have their merits. And both should result in all evidence pertaining to a case being brought before the court for consideration.
The main differences is that in inquistorial it is the Judge who directs the prosecutor and defence on what evidence should be brought.
In our system, both sides put their own evidence out to prove or disprove a claim.

The reasonable belief of consent is fairly clear. It hinges on if the victim had capacity to consent without fear of repurcussions when sex took place.

You quite clearly are not a mother of sons.

Imagine if they got falsely convicted. Or were assumed guilty until the woman is found to be falsely accusing them. it does happen. We can’t just turn a blind eye to false accusations to get more convictions. That’s just simply isn’t the answer and you’re incredibly naive if you think it is.

I am a mother of sons. I am also a rape survivor at two different stages of my life. I did not report. When I was younger, it was precisely because he was popular and I didn’t feel like anyone would believe me. The most recent one (15 years later!) was because I know how poor the conviction rates are.

I often feel like the false conviction argument is very similar to the ‘abortions for contraception’ argument - both assume women are just feckless, cruel and would go to massive extremes and inconvenience to their own lives for really stupid reasons. The reality is that other than a few mad women, most wouldn’t. Who really wants to have their lives examined in full detail, have to hand over their private devices, be asked intimate questions in front of several people and be presumed a liar off the bat from a nasty defense team? It just won’t happen in the norm and not enough for me to really lose sleep over.

As the mother of sons I will be teaching them to ensure they always have clear cut consent - not ever an iffy ‘well I think it was consent’. I’ll be teaching them to respect women properly and if, for any reason they were accused of rape, I’d have to put my trust in the courts. Seeing how shocking the conviction rates are I’d have to think it would be 1 in a million chance that they would actually be falsely convicted.

My husband is a retired police officer the false allegation he had to investigate involved two young people who were caught in the act by her very strict dad. She screamed rape, boy cleared off quickly and dad called the police. After taking statements, organising the medical exam, arresting boy, interviewing him, then speaking to her again the boy was charged. The dad was very angry but at this point went off to phone his wife and DD confessed it wasn't true, dad came back in and she said it was true. It was hours and hours of wasted police time, a very upset teenager and his mum, angry dad who refused to believe what his daughter was saying when he wasn't there and very very frightened teenage girl.

Mess hardly begins to describe it. So I do believe false allegations happen but I have no idea how often or what the reasons would always be.

False allegations happen, but are massively outweighed by the number of men who should be in prison walking free. That’s the original point.

There’s always DARVO, there’s always men telling girls of 11 who don’t know what sex is that their short skirts meant they were asking for it, there’s always male judges who want to let young rich men off because they have prospects, there’s always gangs of men who think that a women who has consented to sex once has consented to anyone for all time, and there are now incels and ‘rough sex’ defences for murder.

Women have always been at a disadvantage against male privilege and entitlement.

I have two sons. I think its vanishingly unlikely any false accusation would make it to court and lead to conviction.

The fact is most cases are "he said she said" and what you are basically implying is that because of the outside possibility she's making a false allegations, "he said" should have more weight or his life will be ruined. While failing to acknowledge the "she said" has basically no weight at the moment and so a far greater number of women have ruined lives through not being believed.

The reasonable belief of consent is fairly clear. It hinges on if the victim had capacity to consent without fear of repurcussions when sex took place.
That's just bollocks. It hinges on whether the alleged rapist can prove that he reasonably believed he had consent when he didn't.

Cases where men have got off for this include:

• a man who raped a woman who was unknown to him, asleep in her hotel room, because he was so drunk he'd gone in the wrong room and "reasonably believed" it was his girlfriend
• a man who went home with a friend and a girl the friend had picked up. The friend went to get viagra, he went into the pitch black room thecfriend had vacated and got into bed with the girl who started kissing him (and freaked out when she realised it wasn't viagra guy). The jury thought he "reasonably believed" she consented despite him doing nothing to flag to her he wasn't the man who just left her bed
• the man who got a text from a friend saying "he had a bird", went to the hotel, asked friend if he could "have a go" and had sex with the woman without even speaking to her. Oh and she was so drunk she didn't even know what had happened the next day. But because she apparently was into it he "reasonably believed" she consented.
• the man who climbed into a friends window and had unconsensual sex with her. She told him she had fantasies about being raped so he "reasonably believed" that meant she consented to actually being raped.

It is disgusting that a man's belief counts more than a woman's reality. In most of these cases there is no doubt the woman was raped. But it doesn't count because the man didn't realise that's what he was doing, apparently

Actually, maybe we should start telling our sons not to put themselves in situations where women could falsely accused them, in the same way we tell our daughters not to put themselves in situations where men will rape them.

What you seem to be missing is that as far as the law or judgement is concerned, is it is exactly that. He Said, She Said. Neither one has any more credence than the other.

Take the subject matter and the sex of the people out of the equation. The police, the courts and everyone else can only judge on the evidence before them.

If Person one decribes a car parked outside is red and Person two says it is blue. Nobody can actually tell for sure. Unless an unbiased person looks out to check and the car is still there, can either person be proved as being correct. It doesn't matter if how many of the previous 98 people who looked out the window said it was one colour or another.

Which again brings us back to the evidential difficulty in these cases. Written like you have, yes these men are scum and should be punished. But the court would of heard evidence that may muddy the waters.

However certainly my interpretation of the law currently, is that if a woman is obviously unable to consent through alcohol or drugs. Then a conviction should of taken place.

Sort of. Except in law one parry also can say that if they reasonably believed it was blue, that's the same as it being blue