Jack Tweed found not guilty of rape

[Ponders]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/8644486.stm

hmm. Did he just get the benefit of the doubt do you think - his word against hers?

Or "she knew what he's like when she chose to go back to his house"?hmm

Will she now be named?

These cases are horrible - really hard to determine who's guilty - maybe we should adopt the Scottish Not Proven verdict.

(put this in sleb twaddle before & then realised hardly anybody reads that!)

dittany - where is TTTT tarring all rape victims? She is simply saying that some women/girls lie about rape. Even you yourself have provided stats that say that this is the case - 2-4% are false accusations, therefore those 2-4% are women or girls who have lied about rape.

I dont agree with what TTTT did, but I don't see where she is saying all women lie.

Prolific enough for me to conclude she is telling the truth

Unfortunately

Right, so how about focusing on the 96-98% who are not lying then?

FFS

Look:

Most woman who accuse someone of rape are telling the truth, the vast majority.

Most men who are guilty of rape will lie about it when confronted or goes to court.

Many men will get let off on a rape charge due to insubstantial evidence sadly.

Some women will lie and make false rape accusations; not many, but a small but significant minority.

A court Must convict without reasonable doubt.

If there is doubt they cannot find someone guilty under our legal system.

Rae is sadly for many many reasons more likely to be left unresolved, not reported, guilty men found wrongly not-guilty. It is usually a 1:1 incident where it is one person's word against the other.

It is a horrendous crime.

Nothing will change that aspect.

We can only hope that these stats will improve with time, and more cases go to court.

But we can;t say - as lay people looking in - who is and isn;t guilty based on the odd snippet we get through the press.

Exactly Molesworth.....why give attention to a sad fucker who wants the attention.....women who report rape do not do so without thought or take the situation lightly......the very first question they will ask themselves on reporting is "will I be believed?" It's sickening that we still make an assumption that it didn't happen before anything else

"We can only hope that these stats will improve with time, and more cases go to court."

I don't think hope will get us anywhere actually. If all we do is hope, we'll be having this discussion in twenty years when the conviction rate is 1%

oi, I don't make a habit of troll spotting

the best thing to do here is let TT go back to her usual posting style in baby names and child behaviour

mini-drama over, absolute proof that some women will lie about being raped

but we already knew that

Sadly HerBeatitude,I think you are right.....there is a definate mindset about what is and isn't rape and so long as we have the judegemental group that is favoured amongst juries then the conviction rate will not differ, nevermind what evidence is offered

I'm not quite sure I can understand where this is going.

'We can only hope the stats will improve with time'.

rape carries a maximum sentence of LIFE in prison. Therefore it must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Very often, the only evidence before a jury is the word of the two people involved in the sex act.

What are you asking for? That rape is proved on the balance of probabilities? Or that the burden of proof shoudl be reversed and the man has to prove he is innocent?

There seem to have been a lot of rape trials recently where alcohol was involved and the woman 'remembers' later she was raped. I find this really disturbing. While nothing justifies another person taking sexual advantage of another, what about our self respect and responsibility to take care of ourselves? Why are so many young women getting so pissed they can't even remember going home with some bloke?

There is a lot more worrying stuff going on here than low conviction rates for rape and I agree with what has been said about the horrible influence of porn on women thinking that it is in some way 'liberating' and 'empowering' to be skewered by two footballers at once.

Well Spero, we could challenge some of the rape myths that lead to rapists being given the benefit of the beyond reasonable doubt.

Are you transferring blame to the victim then Spero?

What are these 'rape myths'???

For the record, men who stick their penis in any part of another person without knowing or caring if that person consents are scum bags, deserving of criminal punishment

BUT I want to teach my daughter to have respect for herself and not think it a great old laff to get so pissed she can't remember her name and end up having sex with someone in a situation where she probably is too drunk to give informed consent.

I am sad what appears to be happening with regard to sexual boudaries, for men and women.

I am not transferring blame to the victim. I am posing the question - does it really help women to be absolved of all responsibility for their health and welfare.

No it does not. We are not little children. We have choices.

Educating young men about what should and should not be considered to be consent would help.
Tackling our Nuts and porn-driven culture would help.
I was pondering a bit of rape law whereby anyone who did not obtain express consent for a first-time (ie with that person) sexual act would be presumed to have committed rape unless he proved he did not but I can't see it getting on the statute books. I can see it would be problematic.

For you Spero: Rape Myths

Dittany - recent case of 40 something solicitor who woke up in morning and accused 20 something bloke of raping her. He was acquitted. She appeared to have been very drunk.

V famous case of the poor student at King's college a while back who was named and had his photo in every national newspaper. His accuser appeared to have got pissed and then embarrassed that they had had sex and accused him of rape.

I don't think cases like these help anyone.

Yes, Spero and that is Rape.......if you are too drunk then you will not have the capacity to consent....you are judging a female on her drunkeness not on her ability to say no

thanks Molesworth. I am aware of the excuses men can use.

But what if you are a man, you meet a woman in pub/club. She is drunk, she comes on to you, you kiss, you go home together, you have sex. You didn't think anything other than she was up for it. In the morning she thinks better of it and accuses you of rape.

What part of the rape myth is this?

O dittany also the recent case of college girl and security guard who had sex in the corridor? I think he was acquitted as girl when asked 'did you consent' replied 'I don't remember, I was very drunk' and judge stopped trial saying there is your reasonable doubt.

Is this part of the rape myth?

If you are paralytically drunk then yes, you do not have the capacity to consent to anything. But now we are asking men not only to guage the genuiness of our consent but also the degree of our drunkenness??

I simply do not feel it is as black and white as saying 'men have a licence to rape'.

It can often be a very complicated situation, with many varying shades of grey and this I think explains the low conviction rates.

Spero, I suggest you read this recent thread about rape: asking for it?

It is a long thread, but well worth the effort to read it all.

Sorry dittany, I'm off to bed. I'm sure if you google you will find them - these were all big stories in the last year or so, although I accept the King's College student is a much older case. I think that was one of the first where people started getting anstsy about the fact that the accused could be so readily identified while the victim was anonymous.

If you want to make it so black and white, then that in itself is something dangerous because most of us accept that just isn't true and most juries would not want to see a man be looking at a potential life sentence if he was in a situation where he could reasonably have thought sex was consensual for eg after meeting in social setting and 'victim' indicating that she found him sexually attractive at least at the beginning of their encounter.

How does that scenario warrant a serious criminal conviction???