Man cleared of rape because he was too drunk to realise which bed he was in.

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Sorry DM but here.

This guy's girlfriend refused sex, he stumbled into another room "by accident" and started having sex with the woman in the bed there.

He was cleared of rape.

There is so much wrong with this that I don't know where to start. I imagine he's been cleared because he didn't intend (apparently) to commit a crime. But the fact is that neither woman had consented to sex with him, so whoever he decided to penetrate it would have been rape. He seems to have been cleared on the grounds that if he had walked back into his (non-consenting) girlfriend's room and penetrated her without further ado, that would not have been rape. It obviously would have been.

:( scared and all at once.

BrokenGirl11 you need to change your name to MendingGirl11.

I have not read the whole thread but want to add my virtual support here.

I am sure you can see from this thread that we all believe you.

I am sure it is worth you seeing those words on the screen.

So glad you got out of the house today with your DD.

hey BrokenGirl.

we did some yelling for you on Saturday.

if you can imagine, literally thousands of women and children, all ages and races, stopping the traffic all the way down Oxford Street, yelling 'WHAT DO WE WANT? JUSTICE! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW!' for you and all the other women who have not had justice.

stopping the traffic when you are cross about something is very satisfying.

I've come to this quite late but I just wanted to add my support BrokenGirl and I hope today finds you feeling better than last week. You do sound really brave and hope somehow you do get some justice.

It's cases like yours BG and the OP that make me hope that I'm selected to the jury on a rape case because I will kick and scream until the animal in the dock is found guilty.

don't forget to let us know how you're doing. and if we can do anything to help.....

It does sound dodgy, and horrific if as portrayed, but I am wary of reaction to anything based on so-called 'facts' provided by the DM. Especially as no other newspaper appears to be reporting the case. IMO their agenda here is to promote racism as the guy is Asian.

Knowing the DM, the whole thing could be a fabrication.

"Mr Khan told he court that she had touched him in a way that made him believe that he had the consent of his 'girlfriend'"

I think this is actually the issue that this case turned on rather than the mistaken identity narrative that the Mail wants to big up for it's exclusive.

Still, if by his own admission he was 'pissed out of his mind' I fail to see how the jury accepted his claim that he thought he had consent. But then I wasn't in court and I didn't hear all the evidence and argument for either side.

It's easy for us to 'judge the jury' as it were, but we are only viewing this case through the lens of the Daily Mail.

The torygraph has it, but they are just churning the DM story.

I despise the DM. The only thing I would say is that the newspaper by law has to publish an account of the case which is "fair, accurate and contemporaneous" or the journo concerned risks being chucked into prison for Contempt of Court.

That said, the paper would certainly highlight aspects of the case according to the angle it was most interested in and play down others without finding itself on the wrong side of the law.

But it's highly unlikely the facts as such would have been misreported.

I imagine the race of the defendant didn't escape the paper's notice, no...

Well it's strange how the line I quoted above is absent from the original report. I guess accurate doesn't have to be complete.

Do you wish to remove the 'reasonable belief in consent' defence dittany?

The key word of course is 'reasonable'. Belief, however genuine, is not enough. This is why I find it difficult to to understand how the jury acquitted a man who was, by his own admission, to drunk to be considered reasonable.

"I guess accurate doesn't have to be complete."

I'm afraid you're right about that. But it has to be deemed a "fair" report.

You say he was lying, but at least 10 jurors didn't.

What do you know that they don't? Or do you just consider yourself to be intellectually superior?

Yes, next time I go into a shop and there are goods there with no price label on them/near them, I will assume they are free. That should be fine. If I'm too drunk to see that there is a label on them, that should be fine too.

And yet again we are making comparison between women's bodies and goods for the taking/selling, which I hate. So I will stop now.

"Yes, next time I go into a shop and there are goods there with no price label on them/near them, I will assume they are free. That should be fine. If I'm too drunk to see that there is a label on them, that should be fine too.

And yet again we are making comparison between women's bodies and goods for the taking/selling, which I hate. So I will stop now."

But there already is a defence to theft that you believed you had the consent of the owner to take possession of the item either permanently or temporarily. So it would be the exact same in that it would then be up to the jury to decide if that belief was reasonably held.
I think this case has been decided appallingly, but it is not a defence which is unique to rape, it is there for all consent based offences.

The difference is, MQ, that people wouldn't commonly accept that stuff is open to being taken away unless someone specifically says no. If I go to the park and take my coat off and put it beside me on the grass, no jury would believe a thief who randomly passed by and picked it up and ran off with it, that s/he thought I wanted him/her to take it.

Whereas with rape it seems that people are pretty ready to believe that women are open to being penetrated by anyone unless there is a really really really good reason to think not (e.g. dark alley rapes at knifepoint etc). And even then.

No I don't think justice was served, I'm just not entirely certain that I'm right and the jury was wrong.

Id like to think I would make a good juror, better than your average. But juries are selected at random, if you want to make them better informed you have to make everybody better informed.

I worry that the approach to rape is a top-down one where the enlightened look to tweak the law and judicial process in order to help juries arrive at the "right" decision.

"The difference is, MQ, that people wouldn't commonly accept that stuff is open to being taken away unless someone specifically says no."

Completely agree. My point was that this is not a problem specific to the law regarding rape. The problem is juries readily accepting completely unreasonable justification as constituting a "reasonable belief" as to the womans consent when it comes to rape that they would not do with regards assault or theft.

What approach would you prefer, JP?

(appropriate initials, perhaps?!!)