research suggest that juries blame women who drink for their own misfortunes...

[GlennCloseAsCruellaDeVille]

......is there a way round this?

Is the mn view very differ4nt to the general public then? The conviction rate for cases of rape is so low that coupled with the fact that most women don't even report it, the chance of a man getting away with remains dperessingly high.

here

I don't think that it is so much that jury's "blame" women - it is just if 2 people are blathered it is very hard to conclude on something "beyond reasonable doubt". I suspect you would get a different answer on the "balance of probabilities", but if you have any doubt at all then you are asked not to convict.

This kind of attitude disgusts and saddens me. About 6 months ago there was a big interest on women binge drinkers in the news, and every single item linked the womans drunkeness to the increased chance of being attacked. Why wasnt the news item given a different stance - why are men unable to control themselves when they see a vulnerable woman? (that sounds anti men and I dont mean it to be, just the way it was reported that annoyed me).

I agree that everyone has a resonsibility to keep themselves safe, but the onus seems to be on blaming the women and not questioning the motive of the attacker. If this is how jurys see it as well I am not suprised most women dont bother reporting attacks.

Oooh I am annoyed now.

agree Kezza - and did you hear them discussing it on R4 Today this morning? John Humphrys was so dismissive of women who get drunk as though it was totally their fault. made me really

I wonder if they tell young men who are drunk and then get beaten up/mugged that it was their fault becaus thye were drunk.

Do you not consider that there might be an element of contributory negligence? I do not in any way, shape or form excuse or condone the actions of the perpetrator, but if you place yourself in a vulnerable position knowing you are doing so, you have to accept an element of responsibility.

I do not think that the woman's state should be taken into account in dealing with the person who assaults or rapes her, but it should be if she brings a claim for compensation.

Isn't the point is that if you are totally bladdered you won't be able to remember clearly what happened. Or that you may have said yes without remembering it, or that something you said might have been misinterpreted as 'yes'? Not that you are 'asking for it'. I think that people do condemn drunken youths and there also would be an element of 'serves you right' if they get beaten up.

I don't see why equality between the genders has to equate to women drinking themselves stupid as well as men.

but why do men take aggressive advantage in a situation which they know is wrong..when another man would sleep on the sofa, send the woman home in a taxi, etc etc

because they believe that they will not suffer the consequences

and for some odd reason their belief that a woman who has been drinking is up for it is also held by jurors..I took the cases in the article to refer to cases where the evidence would convict or could convict if the jury wasn't prejudiced by the alcohol

Doesn't surprise me, I'm afraid. I think there is a real vibe of 1)expecting women to protect themselves and punishing them for failing to do so and 2)seeing women who like sex and drugs and rock n roll as people who deserve all they get if they are sexually assaulted/raped.
It's horrible that this is still the case after so many years.

"Even when a woman had unknowingly consumed a spiked drink, juries were reluctant to convict defendants of rape, unless they were convinced that the drink had been spiked with the specific intention of sexual assault, as opposed to ?loosening up? a reluctant partner."

And that's even more shocking, imo. How dare people think it's ok to loosen up a reluctant partner? That's assault in itself, I'd say.

"I wonder if they tell young men who are drunk and then get beaten up/mugged that it was their fault becaus thye were drunk." yes they do.

Errm, why shouldn't we be expected to look after ourselves?

And where do you place that line for "putting herself in a vulnerable position" - no bra? short skirt? fmb's? over the legal limit for driving? not being accompanied in public by her husband?

The conviction rate for rape cases is horrendous and imo is just one indicator of the loooong way Britain has to go in the path to equality for women. It also, I think, reflects the police culture which is no doubt extremely "blokey" and dangerously untouched by external reprimand.

John Humphreys' comments on Radio 4 were outrageous and sadly typical, I fear, of a lot of general opinion. I thought his "best" effort was comparing a drunk woman being raped to a drunk man waking up the next morning with (and he actually managed not to say "an ugly" although that's what I'm sure he really thought) a woman he didn't know.

in order for the rape or alleged rape to take place then there has to be a man and a woman together..so I'm suggesting that as an alternative to sex/rape then the man could send the woman home in a taxi or sleep on her sofa if he wanted to stay or was her partner

alcohol was certainly involved in my 2 experiences of rape. But not imbibed by me.
One went to court, one didn't (found some other less police approved justice though so AFAIC justice was served)
The court one was indeed the defence rtying to prove what a fuck up I was, how terribly I led my life
However they actually lied and got found out.
it is hard and consent when you're pissed is hard to prove and disprove.

This is always going to be a difficult area, because without evidence of violence, it is always going to come down to one person's word against anothers. And if one or both of them are drunk then it is difficult to persuade people that consent was not reasonably presumed.

What I can't work out from that link is what percentage of reported rapes are when the woman has been drinking?

I think women who know they were raped and who had been drinking should not feel they are to blame, but they often do..a step forward would be to take away that stigma and to make men see that women who have been drinking are not easy targets

But what if the man is also drunk? Is he then less responsible?

no

A man may get so drunk he can't form the intent to rape, yes but usually by that point they can't get it up anyway. I have 3 children at university. I know how drunk some people get of both sexes. I think it's very very stupid. NOt because of rape risks which are rare but because you fall over, you lose your mobile, you might get mugged and lots of other reasons.

It's hard for a girl to show she was raped if she cannot remember what happened. It is not surprising a lot of cases fail. Lots of men wake up in bed with a girl they don't remember ever meeting too. Need to reduce alcohol intake.

cases which come to court are rare but rape itself is not so uncommon..if you ask your children at uni I suspect they will tell of unreported cases, certainly other women may if they are willing to reveal it to you

so mn consensus is that women have it coming to them? On the whole? Nothing can be done to help women over this societal bias or the impossibility of being believed from time to time?

I don't think that the consensus is that women have it coming to them. We all need to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions. If you go out and get bladdered, you do place yourself in a more vulnerable position and I do think that you then have to accept some responsibility. It does not in any way excuse what someone might do to you. It should however ensure that you act differently in the future.

This is applied equally to men and women, although women, by virtue of their sex, are likely to suffer more serious consequences.

What we should be looking at is not pressuring women to alter the way they behave (although some of the behaviour seen on the street is frankly quite appalling), but why men are growing up thinking it is OK to attack someone when they are in a vulnerable state (or not as the case may be).

Agree that the whole of what's wrong with this debate is that it always looks at women's behaviour rather than at men's.

Rape is about what men do to women, not about what women do not to protect themselves about it. Therefore, of course we should be starting from men's attitudes, behaviours, assumptions etc. But very little public debate concerns itself with that.

I don't think anyone would think 'women have it coming to them'. It's no coincidence though that of all the reported cases of 'date rape' using rohypnol over the past few years, only a very small minority of women were actually found to have traces of the drug in their blood streams. What was found in their blood streams though, was alcohol - lots of it.

You only have to drive through our local town centre on a friday and saturday night to see hoardes of women, half dressed, already quite pissed by 7am, clearly on the prowl.

Now that is fine in my book, we deserve to get out there and have a great time with our mates but how many of these women then get completely paraletic, split from their friends and find themselves spending the night with a man they have just met. If they were sober, they wouldn't have let it happen.

rape is an appalling experience to go through for any women, but I think that too many women now are simply waking up in the morning next to a man they don't really know and with no recollection of how they got there and reporting rape without any real evidence that it actually occurred.

That isn't equality for women - it's just dumb.

has anybody gathered statistics on unreported rape though..I'm sure they have..anecdotally when the topic has come for instance on mn then an awful lot of people have had that experience

..where is the evidence that people make false reports for rape ..rather than that they are unable to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt?

I'm not saying that people make false reports for rape (although some women have, which is appalling)

I'm saying that x amount of women over the past x amount of years have reported to the police that their drinks must have been spiked with a date rape drug (presumably because they found themselves in bed or having sex with someone they don't know and barely any recollection of how they ended up there). Blood tests were then taken from these women but the date rape drug was only found in a very small percentage (the rest were quite simply pissed)

What is so sad about this is that these women are clearly not taking responsibility for themselves and in a way it very much belittles the experiences of so many women who were raped (desite their best efforts to protect themseves/prevent it)

I also read the thread on here where so many mumsnetters admitted to being raped and was it was very sad