What do you think of this...(possible rape)

[differentnameforthis]

Now I think this is rape. I appear to be a lone voice however, as most are calling those who fell for this stupid.

Opinions?

Rape?

And the flipside is - I don't know, but I suspect, that he wasn't using his deception on 65 year old women. He was making his own judgement about the appeal of younger sexual partners so he can't defend himself with a complaint of shallowness about who they fancy.

Canyou - logically if they both had blindfolds then they wouldn't have found each other in the dark.

That's a variation on the "if they were both blind drunk did they both commit sexual assault?" question.

To me, the answer is yes but what would almost certainly happen if the faults were deemed to be equal by the CPS or equivalent is that neither would be prosecuted.

"No you've given us your interpretation of the law, bowl..."

No Scallops - I explained what the law is.... and then applied that law to this particular set of known facts. If I can find the appropriate case authority/citation, I'll look to post it.

There are many people calling this rape because they want it to be or they think it would be unfair if it wasn't etc.

Simply lying about your name/what you look like/or some other detail does not negate consent.

But lying about your biological sex can negate consent. What's the "quality" of that lie in law that's so much greater than lying about a 35 year age difference?

Exactly Yonic. What would need to be decided in a court of law would be how much of a deception constitutes negating consent. And bowl, you can't say that because basically that is determined on a case by case basis. Yes there are no doubt precedents which could lead the courts one way or the other but it is unlikely that there is an exact case like this. And even if there was there is no guarantee of a similar outcome with different people present in the court and slightly different circumstances.

It still comes down him saying he was someone else AND the fact he targeted hundreds of women. Hundreds. This man is a danger to women and should not be allowed to put his penis anywhere near them.

Btw I'm not convinced if this goes to a court of law that he will be convicted. But that's not because I don't think what he wasn't rape but because patriarchy. Women are stoopid, women need to bear some responsibility etc etc etc

Also consent is pretty much always conditional. I may consent to PIV sex but that does not mean the man can have anal with me. I may consent to being blindfolded but that doesn't mean the man can tie me up. The conditions of these women having sex with this man were quite clear and based on the photo he provided.

I actually argued myself into a different pov on this one, so bear with me :).

I think we need to change the terminology from simple "consent" to "informed consent"

The medical profession, for example, consent is not enough, it must be informed consent.

So, you go to A+E with a sore wrist. A consultant appears and says he must cut your leg off. You say go ahead, you know best. Consent? Yes.

It is the Dr's responsibility to make sure you know why he is cutting your leg off, and the consequences of that action, or not, so you can choose whether to have your leg cut off, knowing the predicted outcome if you don't. The dr also has a responsibility you are capable of informed consent, not drunk, unconscious, mentally impaired.

Therefore in this situation I think it is both parties responsibility to have informed consent. He should make sure that she knows she is having sex with a man she hasn't met, and the risks she is taking. She equally, has the responsibility to make sure she is having sex with who she thinks she is, and if it turns out to be some 13 year old boy, that's on her.

So I think they were both wrong not to gain informed consent from the other party. But in this case it is him that does not have consent as he has not informed her that he is not the man in the photo- if he had told her that and she had still wanted to go ahead, then informed consent.

Simply lying about your name/what you look like/or some other detail does not negate consent.

But he didn't just lie about his name, what he looks like, or any other "detail". He presented himself as a different individual entirely. The women involved had given their consent, they thought, to that person. He was not that person.

Say I am married to Bill, who has an identical twin, Ben. I frequently give my enthusiastic consent to Bill. Unfortunately, Ben is not just an identical twin but an Evil Twin, and one day he dresses up like Bill, comes to my house when I am expecting Bill home (he's locked Bill in the boot of his car), says "hi honey, I'm home", responds when I address him as Bill, and sweeps me off my feet and into bed.

That's rape, too, because I haven't consented to Ben, I've consented to Bill, and this is not Bill.

'The women had no chance to decide on their actual sexual attraction to him.'

They had the chance to turn the light on/take the blindfold off. They chose not to.

Actually do you know what? Screw what the law does or does not say. The law should in principle operate on principles of harm/loss.

We seem to go round the houses on consent and what perpetrators "reasonably believed". When the focus should really be on has harm been inflicted. I can kill someone, even without intent and if that's deemed to be as a result of negligence on my part then that's manslaughter.

This man committed a sexual offense clear as day as far as I can see. He had intent to undermine consent through in this case fraud rather than force, I can totally see how the woman in this scenario experienced harm so I have no reticence in calling it rape.

Despite being a man I can speak from experience that having consent undermined through fraud sure as shit causes harm. My compassion is with the woman here. How she chooses to get her jollies isn't the issue here. Whilst I can see how some would say it was ill advised, given the state of the world NOTHING she did was going to cause harm to another, and she was merely going about her lawful business, but I would argue blaming her is just another varient of women not being free to walk the streets, or freely associate with whom they choose, for fear of being seen as culpable for assaults made against them. Which is quite frankly bullshit.

Thanks, Yonic, for your comments. I know what I was saying is way out there. It was just a feeling I couldn't put into words well.

I do think the idea of informed consent is interesting.

Absolutely Dervel. With the wrong hotel room case, there was very definitely harm caused and that was caused by the actions on the part of the man. It is wrong that there was nothing he was found guilty of.

They had the chance to turn the light on/take the blindfold off. They chose not to.

Yes, we've already (on pg1 I believe) established that the women (plural) this man has deceived weren't being sensible, do you have another point?

What, for example, do you think of HIS choices, which is what should be being looked at. He did what he did knowing, or at least having reasonable belief that had he represented himself fairly, those women would not have consented.

If you don't have reasonable belief of consent then what is that? In law?

They had the chance to turn the light on/take the blindfold off. They chose not to.

He had many chances to tell the women he was wanted to shag he wasn't who he was saying he was, over three hundred chances, he chose not to. He knew there was a good chance that he'd be refused sex if he told the truth, a person who would choose to ignore that fact and then actively choose to make efforts to shag them anyway, is the one who should be having their choices questioned.

You can argue the blindfold could have been lifted, the light could have been turned on, but the way I see it is, he also chose not to lift the blindfold or turn the light on. Probably because he knew that the woman in front of him would choose not let him put his penis inside her, he chose to not let her make that decision.

He put his penis where he knew it probably wouldn't be welcome if he was honest, I can't see how it's not rape. All his choices were much much more informed and calculated than hers, he's a dangerous sexual predator at the very least and women should be protected from him imo.

They both made a choice. Totally agree.

When two people both make a choice to have sex i.e. consent was given, we have to look at both choices before we can decide whether it's rape or not surely?

He chose to deliberately deceive women as to his physical appearance.

She chose to have sex with someone she hadn't seen.

He is manipulative and disgusting. She is gullible.

Does a manipulative person having consensual sex with a gullible person equate to rape though? IMO, no.

A lot of marital sex is based on the assumption and agreement that they will be having sex exclusively with each other. If one partner is manipulative and giving the impression of a faithful spouse whilst conducting an affair and the other party is naïve/gullible to that lie, is any sex they have rape? I don't think so. It's morally repugnant sure, but it's not a crime. I don't think I want adultery to be considered a crime. It is a significant deception though, so could be one under an 'informed consent' law.

He chose to deliberately deceive women as to his physical appearance.

He chose to present himself as an entirely different person, OutragedFromLeeds.

May I ask you to check upthread (not very far - on this page) as to my "Bill and Ben, identical twins" example, and tell me if you think that was rape or not? Because that makes it clear for me.

He was the one who made informed choices though. The choices she made were based on lies he fed her. It is a bit more than he's shagging someone else as well as me. This is a different body, a different person to the one they agreed to have sex with.

Plus there is the whole wider picture. His targeting of 350 women.

He didn't care about their consent. That is rape.

'May I ask you to check upthread (not very far - on this page) as to my "Bill and Ben, identical twins" example, and tell me if you think that was rape or not? Because that makes it clear for me.'

I read the Bill and Ben thing. I don't think it was rape. Similar to the Derek/Mary scenario from yesterday, it's disgusting and immoral behaviour. Not every disgusting and immoral behaviour is rape though. I think Buffy nailed it early on with 'What the person consents to is sex with that physical human in front of them'. If Bill/Ben is in front of her and she consents to sex with Bill/Ben then it is not rape. It possibly is or should be another crime, but it's not rape.

Whoa - you don't realise the Bill/Ben thing is clearly and unambiguously rape? Bowing out of discussion at this point and ignoring all your future posts, because, frankly, your opinion is beyond stupid and way into the realms of utterly dangerous and offensive. Thank god English statute law and case law would recognise such a situation as rape.

Outraged, I think that the Bill/Ben scenario is rape. Otherwise the blindfolded "cupboard swap" scenario is also not rape if the husband goes away and the stranger that comes back is welcomed by the blindfolded wife by touch, words etc. The wife is then consenting to the body that is there, after all.

Or do you also think the stranger in the cupboard isn't rape?

'This is a different body, a different person to the one they agreed to have sex with.'

There was no other person involved. She agreed to have sex with him after he gave her false information. There was no other body or real person there, only him. If the model had been there and met her and then swapped places with the old man, that would be rape. She met the old man and consented to sex with him after choosing not to look at him. He lied in order to have sex with her, which is wrong obviously. I don't think it's rape though. Sex based on deception is not rape imo. If it is, we have to look at adultery, people who lie about their age, people who use spanx/fake tan/a wonderbra to create a false image of themselves, wig wearers and on and on.

'He didn't care about their consent. That is rape.'

It's not actually. Having sex with someone without their consent is rape. Not caring about consent isn't illegal (it means you're an asshole, but it's not rape).

'Stranger in the cupboard' is rape because consent is person specific. She consented to A, but B had sex with her.

In the Bill/Ben situation she consented to have sex with Bill and did have sex with Bill. Or consented to sex with Ben and did have sex with Ben. If there was a switch mid-way through, then it would become rape. TBH though a normally competent person able to give consent would not accidentally have sex with their husbands evil twin! This is not Eastenders.

outraged "do you think it can only be rape if someone has been pinned down after saying no?" It's a genuine question.

If a woman didn't say no because she is scared, because she is numb with fear would you see that as rape?

Whenever I read articles about rape, the amount of people who see "grey" areas, where there are none, frightens me. It really does.

A decent man who thinks the woman in front of him isn't 100% aware and 100% consenting wouldn't put his penis in her.

But in the Bill/Ben situation, Ben is presenting himself as Bill, and you have no reasonable way of discerning that he is lying (as they are identical in every way). If you are consenting to Bill, but Ben has engineered it so that it's his penis inside of you, then it's rape. You haven't consented to Ben, and Ben has every reason to know this.