Does innocent until proven guilty only apply to certain people/crimes?

[AVirginLitTheCandle]

I'm not sure why I'm posting this tbh and I'm not even competley sure what my point is but this has been going through my head recently and I feel like I need to write it down.

Why is it that any time a man who has been accused of rape doesn't get convicted, whether that's the allegation being withdrawn by the accuser, a not guilty verdict delivered or the police/CPS dropping the case before it even gets to court, does everyone suddenly label it a false allegation? Why are there suddenly cries of "send the lying bitch to jail!", "his accuser should be charged", "she should now be named and shamed", etc?

I honestly don't get it. Surely if people are innocent until proven guilty then that applies to everyone and works both ways? Isn't it a bit hypocritical to say that men accused of rape are innocent until proven guilty but women who you think/suspect have made a false rape accusation aren't innocent until proven guilty? They're just automatically guilty of wasting police time and perverting the course of justice (I think those would be the two criminal offences a false rape accusation would come under) by default of simply not being able to prove she was in fact raped.

I've lost count of the number of times I've read news reports about men being falsely accused of rape but when I've actually read the article it wasn't actually proven to be false. I would say a good 99% of stories I've read about so called false accusations are simply cases where the accused wasn't convicted.

Does that make any sense at all?

Hilary

^
So in the CE/CM case, if there was (let's say) an objective test for intoxication that negated consent and the victim's blood alcohol level exceeded that, then she could not have consented, whatever her actions.^

I'm not sure I can agree with this bit though. Someone who is drunk but her actions are that they want to have and enjoy the sex they have - they aren't going to claim they are raped, so there would never be a need for such a test. I guess I think that if you are capable of enthusiastically participating in and enjoying sex, you are not too drunk to consent to it ?

Or like I said the prosecution didn't prove beyond reasonable doubt she wasn't enthusiastic
You seem strangely bought into the fact she was definitely enthusiastic. Having followed the trial closely I'm not sure how you could think that. The clincher for me was macdonald telling the receptionist to keep an eye on her as she was sick, at the same time as Ched was shagging her. Sick =/= enthusiastic consent ime

Forgot to say, for some reason the jury in this last trial weren't told that piece of evidence, I don't know why

Grow

I also think there is a problematic conflation between "reasonable belief" and "beyond reasonable doubt"

Oh, and you know who lies in court, and who is absolutely expected to lie in court, and not be separately judged for it? A guilty person.

I don't particularly want to talk about CE, not least because we've had a heck of a lot of new registrants in the wake of the case.

But in the case of the hotel room, it's possible that the man involved would've been raping his girlfriend even if he had gone to the right room, as they'd had a row before he left and he admits to penetrating a sleeping woman (that would be a woman without freedom or capacity to consent)

You can, as I would, argue that someone entering a room to have sex with a sleeping woman quite physically different to his girlfriend cannot possibly have had reasonable belief that she was. However, if you are combining that with a "beyond reasonable doubt" threshold, a jury is probably sitting there asking itself "well, it sounds really unlikely but I suppose it's just about possible" and bang! They can't/don't convict.

"Having followed the trial closely I'm not sure how you could think that. The clincher for me was macdonald telling the receptionist to keep an eye on her as she was sick, at the same time as Ched was shagging her. Sick =/= enthusiastic consent ime"

Yup.

Hillary I too thought the timing of mcdonald saying that to reception was a huge red flag. Again, no wonder mcdonald (the only other person in the room) wasn't called to the second trial.

Hmm I see what you're saying but I think a woman who wanted sex when drunk, had it and enjoyed it would not then get up in the morning and claim they were raped ? Also someone who is incoherently drunk would not enjoy sex I would imagine.

In my younger and more reckless days I had some regrettable sexual encounters whilst drunk that I am honestly not sure myself whether I consented or not.

Did you report them as rape?

Did you report them as rape?

No - but I also had encounters which definitely, unambiguously were sexual assault and didn't report them either. At the time it wouldn't have occurred to me.

I really hope times have changed (this was 20 years ago) as I just don't think awareness of consent was as high as it should be amongst either men or women at the time.

I don't mean to cause anyone offence, and I am a man so given that this is the feminist part of the site, feel free to tell me to push off. I came over here on the back of the trial - and having thought about consent and "grey areas" I thought I agreed that there were basically no grey areas and consent is not complicated - and indeed that anyone is capable of knowing whether there sexual partner is into it or not. There is no need for magical mind reading abilities and the "but how is a man supposed to know" excuse has always puzzled me. It's the idea that someone enjoys sex and then gets up in the morning and says they now aren't sure they consented that causes men to get up in arms about lying bitches and not being mind readers etc. So what I'm saying is that this idea is basically what you would call a "rape myth" right ? However I do get concerned when other posters say stuff like "aha, but even if she really enjoyed herself and was into it, she might still have been being raped if she was sufficiently drunk". Does that make sense ? It seems like if this is what people are saying then you can see why people go on about "rape" rape versus real rape - i.e. some people being raped were "enthusiastically participating" in their own rape, for me this is indeed a "grey area".

If you're not sure you consented - how could your partner be sure ? He couldn't right ? So that would still allow me my black and white definition :)

I haven't seen anyone saying someone could be enthusiastic and it still be rape?
I can see how it could happen. In this case the woman thought she was having sex with a different guy (who she wanted to sleep with). She was enthusiastic. To me the enthusiasm means nothing though because it wasn't the man she thought.
metro.co.uk/2016/05/12/woman-realised-she-was-having-sex-with-wrong-man-so-accused-him-of-rape-5876504/
Or what about if a woman asks a man to use a condom, they have sex and then she finds he didn't do as she asked? Her consent was conditional on condom use, so enthusiasm is nothing to do with it.

Tbh, grow, I think reasonable belief is too low a threshold.

In driving, there is a crime of reckless driving. i consider it reckless to enter a dark room containing a naked stranger who you can be fairly certain is pretty drunk (given it is 4am and she's been out until then in pubs and clubs) and not take more steps to be certain of consent than you might with, say, your wife where you have been with her all night and know how drunk she is.

The default for all people is non-consent - no one should assume
consent until they have established that they have it and that the other person has capacity to give it. This is because the consequence of not having true consent is rape; the consequence of not proceeding and being on the safe side is that.... You don't have sex that night; most nights lots of people aren't having sex, so to that consequence.

Felas

I haven't seen anyone saying someone could be enthusiastic and it still be rape?

A poster thedancingbear said this :

That's not necessarily true though, is it? Someone could participate enthusiastically but very drunkenly (as in too drunk to consent).

Speaking "as a man" the more alcohol I drink, the more diminished the sexual response becomes until ultimately there is none. I've none the less had girlfriends who in the same state of inebriation as me, wanted to have sex and expressed disappointment that I couldn't get it up, even attempting manual stimulation....now had I been physically capable I would have had sex with them and I had very good reason to believe they wanted me to, the idea that I would be raping them because they were drunk offends me. There is a difference between being drunk to the level that you are vomiting, drifting in and out of consciousness and still able to have a laugh all be it a bit wobbly etc. Anyway - again it seems obvious to me when someone is too drunk to consent to sex, if they are really into it it's a sign that they are not too drunk to consent, I thought thedancingbear was saying that is not actually true.

Sorry OP i've completely hijacked your thread...bout cases to realise that most men are getting off because they apparently had "reasonable belief" - that sex happened is not contested, so if the man did not rap

oh dear -

ignore the 2nd half of the above post, i started to type something and it became to long, looks like didn't delete it properly, sorry.

Just to give an example of an occasion where I genuinely don't know how I feel about whether I consented or not:

I was very drunk in a club, pulled a guy and we decided to go back to the student accommodation I was living in. Walk back sobered me up enough to realise it was a mistake, but felt intimidated by having a stranger in my room and let him have sex with me (definitely not 'enthusiastic' but didn't say no or try to stop him, just let him do it). Afterwards I just wanted him out of my room so i asked him to leave. He refused and said if I made him go he'd knock on everyone's door shouting 'I've just had sex with bubbins'. Eventually, after I booked and paid for a taxi for him I managed to persuade him to go.

Ultimately I don't think of that as rape but if I'd felt more empowered to say 'no' or if he'd been more considerate about checking I wanted to do it, we wouldn't have had sex.

It's interesting because I recall in my student days an occasion where i "pulled" a girl in a night club, I was visiting a friend so wasn't at uni there. I had spent a lot of the night with the girl. We had a lot of conversation as well as the usual dancing and snogging and stuff and I think both liked each other. I can still remember her name.

I was pretty shy with girls and I remember that it was her that "pulled" me as in she came up to me and it was her that kissed me first etc. I was too shy to approach girls although i would dance near them in the hope that she would see me and see that i was open to conversation etc. Anyway, at the end of the night, on the way back to the halls, one of the pushier guys in our group insinuated himself into the group and before long he had separated her and was holding her hand, there had been no discussion of what would happen afterwards or anything like that. I remember thinking she looked a bit uncomfortable with it. Now - i could have simply asked him what the f* he thought he was doing and other friends questioned why I didn't but I figured that it just meant she wasn't that into me. He ended up in her room that night and I assume they slept together so there's a good chance that she ended the night with a guy in her room she didn't really want to be there. In my younger days I guess I thought she had control of the situation and it was up to her to tell him to get lost and to catch up with me and the rest of the group. Reading your post I now feel a bit ashamed, but at the time I put it down to me not being attractive enough to girls when it came to it. I also wasn't really that bothered about spending the night with her due to the amount of booze consumed and sexual inexperience. He was the sort of guy I can imagine threatening to wake up everyone etc - he was a bit of a dick really.

Do girls need to be taught to say no more clearly ? Clearly the real problem is that he didn't really care whether she was that into him.

Do girls need to be taught to say no more clearly ?

Yes, you're right. It was her fault if she got raped that night.

For absolute fuck's sake. Where do you live? 1970?

I'm not sure what your problem with me is thedancingbear, but we were having a civilised discussion I thought.

Until you made such an offensive comment about teaching girls to say no more effectively. Victim blaming.

sorry if I offended anyone, the story i related it;s not clear if she was raped at all or whether she even did say no, it was more a case of a pushy guy acting in an inappropriate way and the girl maybe being in a position where she felt she couldn't say no.

It's not about the story, it's the general comment you made afterwards:

"Do girls need to be taught to say no more clearly ?"

ok - that was a poor choice of words in hindsight.