All current rape and sexual assault cases to be reviewed - BBC

[UpABitLate]

here

This raises a massive amount of questions and will be taken by many quarters to mean that most accusations are malicious and that lots of men are in prison for nothing / can be sent to prison on a "woman's word" (the evidence is fitted to make sure of that).

There is a line in the article which says:

"It also begs the question of why the review is to rape and sexual assault cases when many believe the problems of disclosure are systemic, he added."

I think this just shows up that our justice system has deep issues and worst in the area of sexual offences. We seem unable to "get it right" and the entire thing is already balanced on a foundation of laws evolved from property law, a societal tendancy to disbelieve victims, and here by procedural cock-ups.

I also note that new evidence that weakens cases does not mean it didn't happen - but of course this is how it will be taken. Undermining victims massively.

And yes - why only these types of cases when the problem is systemic? Because of an underlying perception, again, that women and girls lie (them being the majority of victims in court).

I think we need an overhaul of how approach sex crime. Trying to tackle it in our adversarial system, with the cultural underpinnings we have, is just not working. These crimes are effectively legal, the difficult in prosecuting is so high. It's only really if there's lots of evidence of other simultaneous crimes (other physical harm from violence, threats with weapons that are found, murder) that our laws are suitable.

Other countries have an inquisitorial approach, maybe we need to look at that.

And the agencies involved in all of this need to sort their shit out. On the one hand we have withheld evidence, on the other hand we have warboys. The system is not working for lots of people.

Of course if someone is barely conscious, they cannot five consent, but how would you decide?
Personally, if I had any doubt at all as to whether the other party consented, I just wouldn't have sex.
Anyway you still haven't answered my question about how you would go about getting justice for the large number of women who have been raped.
What say you?

Brownelephant*

Intent (mens rea) is a fundamental part of all crimes except those classed as strict liability. Drink driving is the usual example given of a strict liability offence. Intent is irrelevant in that instance.

Quentin

How would I get justice for women? It's a tricky question and one that doesn't have an easy answer. One thing I wouldn't do is try to get justice for one group by making it easier to be unjust to another.

Any system of default presumed guilt for men based on (usually) one person's word against another simply replaces one injustice for another.

If someone is barely conscious, the reasonable person (in the legal sense of the phrase reasonable person) would know that consent cannot be given. Therefore any belief of consent from the man cannot be an honest belief.

Quentin, I cannot answer your question and I am not sure anyone can.

Obviously you should not have sex if you do not believe you have consent, but that is when the victim is not conscious/asleep no? How would you otherwise judge ? I know lots of people who get so drunk they suffer blackouts the next day and cannot remember what they did, but actually they were dancing, drinking.....Its not an exact science is it?

It seems to be your trial would a bit like this;

Victim: i was raped while we were alone together
Judge/jury: #webelieveyou

Locks up and throws away the key

Or how would you eatablish if consent was given!

One thing I wouldn't do is try to get justice for one group by making it easier to be unjust to another.
Ok. How do we get justice for women then? Or are they acceptable collateral damage?

Noone is saying they are acceptable collateral damage, just pointing out the complexities as there are often no evidence either way

Quentin

So because I can't solve the entire problem of sexual violence in a snappy mumsnet post, that means I'm wrong about everything? Right....🤨

Stop being goady. I didn't say that.
I suggested various things upthread that you've ignored, you are just arguing for the status quo. One could almost think you are happy for it to be so difficult for a man to be convicted of rape. I see you.

You have completely excluded the category of men who had an honest belief that they had consent.

From the victims perspective this really doesn't make a jot of difference. If a man rapes someone, whether he 'meant to' or not, it's still rape. The victim still has to deal with any trauma that may come with that.

I think (can't remember the exact figs) there were something like 88,000 rapes reported last year. So 66,000 rapes where the rapist is still out there, probably raping other women.
I think that's a bigger problem than the anecdotal man with a "ruined life".

Totally and utterly agree. There are far, far more women out there having to rebuild their lives after watching their rapist walk free than there are innocent men languishing in prison. Cry me a fecking river.

There is no easy answer. Rape is unique as it's one persons word against another. Which at times, makes it so difficult to prosecute.

There is an App were both parties can sign consent forms, and a short video is recorded confirming consent. That would be a clear indication that a man has gone a long way in confirming consent.

The issue then arises, if consent is later withdrawn, or a man pushes boundaries too far. It might make the situation worse, giving some men, a green light to do what they want.

These things always seem to have people who see no middle ground between what we do now (which is clearly not working) and assuming all men are guilty and putting them in prison immediately.

I find this not helpful to the conversation.

Especially as no-one has ever said "put all men in prison immediately".

I would like to discuss how we can improve things around sex offences, which the system seems unsuitable for at the moment. The list that Xenophile posted earlier is the soft of thing I'm interested in - and this one jumped out at me in the context of this announcement:

"Because you have had a trauma reaction that means you don't act in ways society deems ok for victims of rape. "

Lots of women and children do not behave in the way "expected". This is a fact. For a woman to contact a man who has raped her and seem quite normal is in fact not particularly unusual.

What bothers me is the fact that the authorities have picked out this crime specifically to review when the issue is across the board - this is a big statement that I can't imagine is accidental. They knew how this would be interpreted by the media and large tranches of society.

And then of course the fact that further evidence meaning it's not going to win in court is not the same as evidence which totally disproves the allegation. In the latter, then steps are usually taken to prosecute the person who made a false allegation. In the former, again, they know that these cases will be picked up as meaning it was false - when of course it doesn't mean that at all.

This is concerning.

Coming hard on the heels of the warboys case (a disaster for women from start to finish) you have to wonder what message they are trying to give women here. Because I can't believe they won't have thought about how all this will come across.

We don't need apps or forms or anything,

We need men to stop it.

Most "he said she said" is never reported anyway, most women "triage" their rapes, think about a variety of factors, and many decide not to.

Coming hard on the heels of the warboys case (a disaster for women from start to finish) you have to wonder what message they are trying to give women here. Because I can't believe they won't have thought about how all this will come across

Definitely, they are not stupid. They know exactly what they're doing. I despair I really do.

Whatnow that app sounds awful. As soon as you mentioned it I immediately thought of the circumstances you mentioned in the following paragraph.

Men KNOW they are not supposed to go ahead if the woman says no, or stop, or she is unable to stand through drink/drugs/illness. If she is vulnerable in some way (learning difficulties for example)...

The rapes that get reported tend to be rape-rapes. Because women know how bad the whole process is and how difficult it is when it's his word against hers.

I know 2 local women who have said they have been raped and everyone - everyone - was very quick to disbelieve them for no reason at all. "Oh she's a bit flakey" "She likes attention" and "She was seen leaving the party with a bloke" - all from people who didn't know the women or the situation any better than me (casual acquaintances). In neither case was the man "known" - both had gone to the police but neither knew who it was. That aside - the local reaction immediately was that they were lying. Everyone. It was so weird. Very instructive and very depressing.

UpABitLate - In a perfect world men would stop it. It's not a perfect world. So we look at imperfect answers.

DeleteOrDecay - I know. However, I have seen it suggested that the burden of proof switches and men have to prove what they did to get consent.

What I mean is that very few rapes are "grey area". This idea that men can't tell whether women are consenting or not, that it's all very difficult and grey and what have you.

This is getting into issues which need discussing - eg women "going along with it" because they are scared of the reaction a no will get - but are not really the issue here. At the moment it's hard to get anywhere with cases which are not "grey area".

Maybe we can take this a piece at a time, and say, first we need to work out how to get the no argument cases sorted, then we can turn our attention to trickier issues.

My idea for a long time has been to have an "amnesty". Where all the women who have been attacked and know who it was can go along to the police and tell them what happened. The police can put it all in a database, my bet is that some names would come up over and over and over again. At which point, if you have say 30 different victims who have never spoken to each other, all saying the same person did a similar thing, then surely that would be able to form a prosecution case.

If we could at least get some of the prolific ones out of the picture that would help I think.

The thing is that some men claim to have an "honest belief" that a woman consented to sex because she smiled at them, or was wearing something they found sexy, or didn't fight back hard enough. That's the whole problem, that many men's idea of what constitutes a woman agreeing to sex is completely out of whack with reality. Dude above can claim that the idea of it also being a reasonable belief acts as a check all he likes, if you look at the way rape cases actually play out he is 100% incorrect.

I mean that very few rapes of the type that end up with the police.

The conversation around sexual consent need to happen and #metoo is a big step - most women using #metoo have never reported anything though.

Most women never report anything. At the moment, the basics aren't even there.

I also note that he's assuming that during a rape trial women will lie about being rapes but men accused of rape will tell the truth, and therefore if they say they have an honest belief that the woman consented, oh well, guess that was a misunderstanding.

Awfully convenient, that.

I think that instances where he thinks she consented and from her side it was coerced are very frequent

But are a long way from the criminal justice system in any country as far as I know.

So not really relevant to discussions about conviction rates, where we can't even put the likes of reid and warboys behind bars for years while they are operating.

I think those instances are a lot less frequent than men pretend they are.

Yes agree, obviously men who have raped lie to all and sundry when it comes to this.

I think it is probably fairly common for men who have raped someone - because at the time they wanted to, and they could, so they did - after the event to construct a narrative for themselves that makes their actions reasonable in their minds.

Unfortunately society colludes with them in this. The attitudes surveys are always pretty shocking - what % of people think a woman is somewhat to blame if she's been drinking etc

I reported a historic rape recently.

I had a traumatic and abusive childhood and was then 'lucky' enough to be severely traumatised again in my teens.

By the time I was raped by a long-term friend in my mid-20s I managed to completely bury the incident and tell myself it hadn't happened.

It's only very recently that I've been able to face up to it. I reported it because it was planned and pre-meditated at least a day in advance. I am under no illusions that there will be any justice - I doubt it will get to court.

But it was so slick I felt sure he would either have done it before, or since.

If I could have come to terms of it any sooner than a decade I would have done. But I didn't.

I never saw him again but I did end up being fb friends with him - because at the time I was still convincing myself it was consensual, despite knowing that it wasn't.

I was entirely truthful in my videostatement but I would imagine the fact that we interacted on facebook a couple of times will be taken as 'evidence' that this man didn't rape me.

There needs to be a better understanding of trauma and how our minds work to normalise things that are wrong. I also bought birthday presents and stayed in touch with the person who sexually assaulted me in childhood.

I was desperate for none of it to happen. Trauma really can work like that sometimes.

Btw the force I reported it to have been utterly dismissive and ineffective to the point that I've already had to complain about their treatment of me once.

I also found the detective who interviewed my rapist on twitter. He follows convicted rapist Mike Tyson and known domestic abuser Stan Collymore.

I wouldn't be surprised if the interview involve a cup of tea and a big pat on the back.

whenIreported
I dont have anything constructive to say, I just dont want your post to go unacknowledged