Was Bristol Palin raped?

[darleneoconnor]

according to this bristol palin was so drunk when she conceived her son that she doesn't remember having sex.

Sounds like rape to me.

Then she was basically 'forced' to marry her rapist? WTF! Sometimes America sounds more like the middle east!

Quite a few forums are discussing this, with some

disgusting rape myths on this forum

TheBossofMe

You don't have to assume she is lying, but 'trust but verify'. Perhaps best not to assume anything at all and just keep it up in the air until there is proof.

The law doesn't say that, at least not that simplistically.

Correct, that is offensive, no-one is arguing otherwise.

That wasn't what I said. I said that we didn't know whether she had consented, and in my opinion assuming she is telling the truth is as offensive to him as it is to her by assuming she is lying.

Hilly, she says she was drunk. Why would you not believe her?

Hully, sorry, bloody autocorrect

Clearly there's not enough eduction, given that we are having a debate on a feminist board of all places as to whether drunk women can consent and more than one poster has suggested that the man being drunk may be a mitigating circumstance.

Why would I?

Why would I believe him?

Or you?

Or anyone?

Special gender pleading just doesn't cut the mustard either way for me.

On a feminist board.

My understanding of feminism is about equality.

Mrs r the law says that if a womans judgement is impaired by drugs or alcohol, they cannot consent to sex. That is current uk law. In the us it varies state by state.

In which case you and I have a very different understanding of feminism.

Equality would mean treating the victims of rape the same as the victims of every other crime and not assuming they are lying. Especially when the facts show that they rarely lie.

What's yours then?

And it would also mean treating the accused as innocent until proven guilty.

And she hasn't said she was raped. So she can't be accused of lying.

She has said that he had sex with her when she was too drunk to remember. Do you not believe her?

Why do people out a Z on men?

I have no way of knowing, karma.

None of us know:

1. Whether Bristol was drunk
2. Whether Levi was drunk
3. Who did what to whom in the tent
4. Who said what to whom afterwards
5. Why they did or didn't do whatever they may or may not have done.

Do you remember the woman who was kidnapped and killed recently and the police arrested the landlord? Everyone said "Ooo, he looks funny/guilty etc" and guess what? It wasn't him. I don't want any human being of either gender given a bad name and hanged because it is evil.

1. Bristol says she was drunk. Do you believe her?
2. Why does Levi's state of intoxication matter? Do you believe that being drunk absolves a man of criminal responsibility if he rapes?
3. Bristol says they had sex. Do you believe her?
4. Why does this matter?
5. Does it matter why they were drinking or why they had sex? Why? What else matters?

Trouble is if you say he's innocent you are by default accusing the victim of lying if she has named her rapist. The same applies vice versa. If we say she was raped, we are accusing Levi of being guilty. That's the problem with an adversarial system and there's no way round it unless we want to change the law (which might not be a bad thing).

Given that the incidence of false reporting of rape is no higher than for any other crime, I think we should err on the side of believing the victim, because to do otherwise risks victimising her all over again. It is quite possible to believe her without ruining the alleged rapists life, because until he is proven guilty in law he has no punishment or restrictions placed on him. Sadly, given that false reporting is only between 2 and 6 % (I think?) accusing someone unjustly is only going to apply in a very small number of cases.

TheBossofMe

That's not quite right about UK law. The Court of Appeal famously stated in 2007 that a 'drunken consent is still consent'. The law requires that the victim have 'capacity to consent' - the court will look at all the relevant circumstances to find that out, and the jury will decide. You can still be pretty drunk, and have 'capacity'.

It's a bad law, but it is the law.

I am just talking generally BTW, not specific to Bristol and Levi.

She hasn't accused him of rape.

Karma - I neither believe nor disbelieve. I simply don't know because I wasn't there. All I have to go on is a brief interview to plug her book.

"until he is proven guilty in law he has no punishment or restrictions placed on him"

That's not really true though is it sunshine? The allegation is enough to damage the accused - would you employ a childminder if you Googled his name and found he was accused of rape, even if it was never proved? The damage to the reputation seems like a punishment to me.

This is just speculating about something on very little facts. Why don't we just accept Bristol's version of events, and accept she wasn't raped?

Yes, and I know that if I were in that position I would be bloody furious about it. But sadly we will never have a perfect system unless we change it so we have to choose between the lesser of two evils - damaging the reputation of a small number of men who are unjustly accused of rape, or brutalising a much larger number of victims by failing to believe them.