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!)

Agreed BOF - what kind of bastard would do that to a woman who was clearly so pissed off her head that a member of staff asked him to see her home safely? That's appalling behaviour.

more about the case here

That's exactly what the law says though Spero

Spero did you read the asking for it thread?

Well said smallwhitecat. FFS all this talk about the tiny, TINY number of false allegations is just diverting attention from the real problem: that approximately 100,000 are raped in this country each year, that few of those rapes are reported to the police, and of those that are reported to the police hardly any result in a conviction. It's fucking outrageous!

that should read "100,000 women"

Completely outrageous but we can only comment on the ones that do make it to court because those are the cases that the general public knows about

Well he certainly has to withdraw as soon as he becomes aware that he is having non-consensualk sex.
And the issue of consent is no different to any other criminal offence which involves consent. It is based on what the defendant honestly believed givin the circumstances at the time. Now the more unbelievable and unlikely that he honestly believed there was consent the less likely the jury are to accept it. It isn't carte blanche to just say "oh yes I honestly believed that the woman who was passed out through drugs was consenting" as it then becomes a question of fact for the jury to decide. If however a woman admits to being excessively drunk but still functioning then the fact that she may not have had the same sexual encounter when sober is not the issue, if her actions could have reasonably lead the man to believe she was consenting and he honestly believed she was consenting then a conviction will not follow.

ok, a crap example, I agree sf, if the woman does explicity cry out no, stop then yes, it is rape.

But the scenario we are exploring is man and woman, acting as if they are attracted to each other. Man not a perfect gentleman, aware his partner has had a few drinks but he likes her, thinks she likes him and he has sex with her. I just really really struggle with the concept that this scenario justifies the full force of the criminal law.

I think it is a dangerous road to go down to say that women shouldn't take responsibility ofor themselves and we can just rely on the criminal law ex post facto.

But if you don't agree with me, you will simply see this as an apology for rapists and I doubt we will convince each other.

I've provided the links Dittany wanted so my work here is probably done.

I know plenty of police officers with that same view, smallwhitecat, sadly

It is apparently rare for the CPS to agree to proceed with rape cases unless there is very strong evidence to support it. A course I was on recently, on rape and sexual violence, suggested that it is very uncommon for women to lie all the way to court and through a court case.....
I don't have my dossier here at home to back up this.
generally speaking, if a person is too pissed to realise what is happening, they are too pissed to have given consent IMO.

Does that mean ellimental that a drunken offender is also too pissed to form any intent about committing the act? There are levels of drunkeness

And I am not an apologist.....just thinking from a court point of view

Of course you can't consent if you are unconscious.....this case seems to dwell on the fact that a conviction couldn't be safe because she could not remember if she consented or not which is different from being unconscious. I personally feel he "got away with it" but that is more to do with a crap investigation that didn't pose that question before it got to trial

So there would have been a conviction then if she was clearly unconscious....the point is she says she was unconscious and that clearly wasn't believed....he said she consented....his word against hers and we all know in whose favour that goes

It's a shame tehse two topics merged: the issue of rape conviction rates is a very important one and should IMO have been kept separate from a single cse which has been tried now. OK so juries are not eprfect but it's ther best we ahve and unless we ahve in depth knowledge of court transcripts it's unfair to pass even hinting judgement on him.

Whereas the otehr topic here has a lot of areas for discussion and would be far easier to debate prtoperly if not aligned to a specific case.

Victims are often not believed, our juries are far too judgemental about women in the first place....always lose-lose