Changes in how rape will be investigated- about time!

[AWholeLottaNosy]

I just read this and I was really pleased. It's about time rape was investigated and prosecuted differently considering the appalling rape conviction rate we have in this country. Imagine there will be an outcry from all the MRAs, but, I think it's very good news...

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11375667/Men-must-prove-a-woman-said-Yes-under-tough-new-rape-rules.html

And this is a good tactic in your view.

im not scary , but yes if i was the rapist sort i would take this tact , get the victim to agree or they end up in the channel with cement jimmy choos

No I think you are scary.

The things you are writing are scary.

You don't think men who are suspected of rape should be fully questioned by the police
You think there's "no such thing as rape" only delayed acceptance
You see women as nothing more than sadistic selfish leeches who happen to have holes that you like to fuck so sometimes you pay them for that even though you hate them

You sound scary. I'm perfectly serious.

Sorry but these guidelines are a change in the way the legal process operates. The onus will be on the man to explain himself in the police station well before it gets to court and a refusal to do so which he is perfectly entitled to is very likely to lead to a charge because he has not been wiling to explain how he got a positive 'yes' consent.

This is true of anyone charged or accused of any crime. Let's run through an alternative scenario:

Police: "Sir, you've been accused of breaking into the house over there and stealing the tv."
Person: "No no, that wasn't me. I was told by the homeowner I could take the tv."
Police: "Really? Right, can you give me some details - when and where did the homeowner suggest this? Did she offer you a time to collect the TV? Did you agree how you would remove it and when?"

At this point, the accused can go silent. Or he can state out that he arrived, as agreed, at 15:00 on Tuesday, was let into the house and removed the TV in his white van.

Assuming the accused is NOT innocent, he's going to be unlikely to provide any of this detail. In addition, the police will simultaneously be looking at other evidence eg history of the homeowner and the accused ever actually talking to each other, signs of breaking and entering etc. They'll then make a decision on whether or not to take the case further. It's not like they simply charge him and send him to court on a once off accusation by the person who originally owned the TV.

So why is it so difficult to accept similar guidelines for other crimes such as rape? This is not a change in how the process operates and under what conditions rape is considered rape. It's simply saying that the accused needs to at least attempt to explain himself.

And let's face it, if he says, "We got into bed, got naked and she kissed and cuddled me" the chances are that the police are going to say, "Okay then. this will be dropped." even if the woman says that she subsequently changed her mind as the police, even if they believe the woman, are going to find it very hard to prove that the man is lying.

And now you say that you think a good approach after rape is to tell the woman that if she reports you, you will murder her.

Scary.

As I repeatedly said, the issue is in those cases where there is neither a verbalised 'yes' or a verbalised 'no'. Was she enthusiastic is just a qualitative judgement impossible to prove and very much in the eye of the beholder. I think this guidance will not help and could harm women if we start off down the road of relying on 'non-verbal' signals open to interpretation - at worse it opens up the 'well she came to my flat and took her clothes off and she didn't say no' as a legitimate defence.

You've already said yourself that you believed that someone coming to your house and taking her clothes off indicated consent. Many men think that way MoreBeta and it is already used in court cases as a way of implying that rape didn't happen.
What this guidance actually does is say that even if a woman comes to someone's house and takes her clothes off, that is not consent. So it actually guards against the situation you are worried about.
What it says is, it doesn't matter if a woman is buck naked, she must actually be participating and participating freely, not out of fear or inability to say no.

I still don't understand why you have such a problem with this. Is it because you feel you raped someone when you were younger? Your attitude would indicate that you had the potential to be a rapist.

Poor old bigloads. I know it's hard to attract quality women when you

A) basically hate women - the quality ones totally don't dig it
B) live through eastenders

Hating women yet curiously obsessed by them, poor old biggers.

You are assuming that such a case would get to court morebeta.

There is a long process between somebody reporting a rape case and somebody being cross examined by a barrister, even assuming they report the rape in the first place.

The CPS would have to decide to prosecute a case on no more evidence than one person's word against another - even with the new guidance, is this really likely? - and the person who reported the case would have to be willing to go to trial. If I were going to stitch somebody up, I think there are easier methods.

i agree i don`t see modern woman certainly not british ones somewhere i would like to spend the rest of my days with, i do not condone rape at all i said i felt the laws in this country protect woman more than men.

and they do ,

I wouldn't worry too much about bigloads Sardine.

He's already said he'll stay away from women. He's decided to keep himself away from the rest of the world. We should be really happy about that.

Also, I think this idea that a rule or guideline change shouldn't be implemented in case someone finds a way to use it in a way its not intended is all very well and good but name a law or guideline that doesn't have that problem already? It's not like because there's a law the person committing the crime immediately rolls over and says, "You're right, I did it. This is how." Let's get real here.

Bigloads and their ilk are so boring. They like to come on these threads, wave their willies around for a bit then leave having convinced themselves they've told those illogical feminists how the world really works

I wonder if they realise what a stereotype they really are

MoreBeta I would have massive respect for you if you would actually address the points being made and indicate that you are at least consider that your stance doesn't make any sense.

The fact that you're continuing to bang on about a hypothetical situation where a man might have consensual sex and the woman might report him for no good reason makes you look like a rape apologist at best and rapist trying to justify his actions at worst. I'm not sure you are either of those things, although my rapist looked like a normal man too, and protested that he was doing nothing wrong when he put his penis in me as I slept.

I would really appreciate an answer to my question:
which situation is better:

• Expecting men to be absolutely sure their partner wants sex, up to an including actually asking them, with the result that some men don't get the sex they want

-Not expecting men to be sure, with the result that more women get raped.

it's a hypothetical situation where he doesn't seem able to acknowledge that the woman involved (his wife, in the most recent scenario described) would have to report the encounter as rape

it's not like the police are picking a postcode at random and interviewing every single man about his most recent sexual encounter. they actually have to have had a complaint

as with the sexual-encounter-that-isn't-rape, it seems as though the woman is entirely passive in the whole hypothetical situation

I'm also wondering MoreBeta, seeing as you say your non-verbal signals with your wife have been built up over years, what happened when you were first going out with her? Was everything verbal then? Or did you just go ahead and do whatever and never actually know how she was feeling?

This is such an interesting thread. I have been snatching glances all day. Please can I ask why a person might see this change as undermining the burden of proof? I've got some fool on another forum screaming that it does. As far as I can see the burden of proof is still with the prosecution this simply means that the defendant needs to explain why he thought he had consent rather than he has to prove beyond all doubt that consent was given. Is that right?

Yes that's right Kachan. It's very unfortunate that some newspaper headlines said men must prove the woman consented. That is absolutely not the case. The defendant does not need to prove anything.

Here is a link to the actual guidance. It is quite odd to read actually because all it really says is that, you know what, women should be able to choose, freely, when to have sex and when not to have sex. That's all it really says. It is madness in this day and age that police forces have to be informed of that so that they do their jobs properly.

The guidance says nothing at all about proof. It outlines the circumstances in which rape occurs and gives the police cues as to what to look for in a rape allegation. The aim is to improve the current situation in which rape allegations are hardly investigated at all.

Lordy, reading the CiF and Daily Mail comments made me mad.

So I wrote a blog post on it.

Wah! How am I supposed to know if someone wants me to put my dick inside her body or not? Anyone would think I was a full adult human being who is capable of asking! Not fair!

Will now read rest of thread

I think that questioning a man accused of rape about his belief in sexual consent, then subjecting his belief to serious investigation before and during trial, is an example of a man's loss of unearned patriarchal privilege, not a loss of his legal rights. Patriarchal society has a long track record of confusing and conflating unearned male privilege with male legal rights.

I welcome this new guidance to police and prosecutors to encourage them to do their job properly under existing laws for rape. Perhaps this guidance will focus their attention on the strengths and weaknesses of the man's belief in consent as being important in rape cases, not an optional extra nor an irrelevance.

I think it's important to emphasise that this guidance is necessary because the police and prosecutors have not been doing the best possible job in investigating and prosecuting rape cases since ... forever.

The protests against this guidance remind me of the protests against guidance issued to judges about a year ago concerning less harsh prison sentences for women under certain circumstances. Outraged critics claimed that women would be treated more favourably than men. The reality was that the guidelines were to bring women's harsher sentences more into line with the more lenient sentences that men were already receiving for the crimes in question.