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.

No I thought you meant 2 verdicts as in either guilty or not proven. I understand now it is a 3 verdict system. Still not sure about the value as would seem to me an easy compromise verdict and same as the usual "not enough evidence"

Why is this a good system?

Why don't you have a look on wiki and read some more about it, and why the scots do it, that might assist you.

I'm still interested into where you read in the recent conversation that ?someone wanted to do away with the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Why is this a good system?
At the moment if a man is found not guilty then there are loads of calls for the woman to be prosecuted for wasting police time, that she made it up and ruined an innocent man's life.
" Not proven" basically means that although the man has been found not guilty there's still a question that he did it.
In those cases it would be lot harder to start going on about the victim being a liar and wasting police time.
I can't see any disadvantage to it, the man has still been found not guilty and it would be much preferable for the victims.

Upabitlate, I just explained it to you above. Also I was interested in your opinion on the "not proven" verdict.

Quentin, thanks. I am still not sure why this differs from "not enough evidence to convict"? Is it not the same? To me it doesn't do anything about the low conviction rate.

It's a good idea because so many idiots in this country think a not guilty verdict= innocent. Even using the term 'proven innocent' during a discussion. These same morons then go on to lambast the victim and this feeds into the notion that not guilty = woman made it up.

I'd be all for a not proven verdict in England. Some cases can't be proven in court but it doesn't mean it didn't happen in reality. It could help victims feel slightly more at peace with what they've been through, knowing that it's not that the jury didn't believe them, but that unfortunately, there just wasn't enough evidence for a guilty verdict.

Agree with delete

Ah right so you now understand that no-one in the conversation recently had suggested that we do away with the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Just to be clear.

There is no judgement of "not enough evidence to convict" that I am aware of. We have guilty or not guilty. Apart from in scotland, as just discussed.

Unless anyone else has some more info.

Last night, Whatnow123 said: "I have seen it suggested that the burden of proof switches"

Thats guilty until proven innocent.

A friend who works in a specialist sexual offences unit of the police in a large city posted on facebook last week that the unit is being closed down, and the specialist team reassigned.

Depressingly, between stuff like this and the #me too "backlash" it does seem like things are going backwards and there's an appetite to shut women back down on this topic again. Sigh.

One issue is that women are actually convicted of making false rape allegations as men are convicted of actual rape. The media always portray the false conviction rate as 2% but when you actually look into it, it is actually between 2% and 10%. If we take an average we are left with 5% against a rape conviction of 6% we have parity. The key word is conviction here.

So to say that false rape is neglible as is often the argument against naming the accused is quite interesting given that if you used the same argument about actual rapes, you would be rightly met with ridicule.

To say these false accusations don’t have much impact on people, men or women is quite bizarre. I personally worked with someone who was accused, then cleared only to take his own life.

I guess what I’m saying is. Don’t dismiss the men here. They can also be victims.
We need to look hard at the 88% in the middle because they are the real victims, from both sexes.

I can't make head or tail of your post, ray. Parity? Of what?

you're saying that everything is fine because women are convicted of making a false accusation at the same rate as men are convicted of rape?

Where are you getting those figures?

Sorry where did I say “everything was fine”?

What I am saying is that to dismiss false rape claims as so minuscule as to not warrant attention is crazy given the statistics.

Those statistics are available from the home office. I generally disregard statistics from the guardian.

“According to a major study by the British Home Office, around 8% of rape allegations are false”

This is from Metro.co.uk

Laughable given that it then went on to say that it means that the other 92% must be real.

Sorry, where did I say anything about the Guardian?

I'm looking at some Crown Prosecution Service stats. Over a 17 month period, they record 5,651 prosecutions for rape (so that's out of something like 120,000 rapes - accepted estimate is that there are approximately 85,000 rapes a year in E&W). And they logged 35 prosecutions for false allegations of rape. But the stat you're missing is what this number of prosecutions represents as a percentage of the total number of false allegations of rape - do you know?

They don't seem remotely comparable to me.

I generally disregard statistics from the guardian. I’m sure you do!

So what brings you to the feminism board, Ray?

What sort of feminists do you admire? Who's your favourite feminist author?

It's not in the interests of non-rapist men to suggest that rape is likely to be falsely reported.

The reason being, that a man is far more likely to be raped than he is to have a false allegation of rape made against him.

(According to moj / ons stats, about as many men are raped in a year as the total number of formal rape allegations made in that year)

So the only people in whose interest this sort of argument is, are rapists.

why would we expect the number of rapes to be the same as the number of false allegations? I am very confused....

PP

Princess already clarified that she was responding to Arkengarthdale's post right before hers when she said that,

But I'm glad that you have decided that her own clarification on this was irrelevant, and that you knew well better than her what she was thinking when she wrote it!

Almost like you aren't really reading the posts, and you aren't engaging in good faith, and you are perfectly happy to say that you know what other posters (likely to be female) have in their minds even if they have already said something different....

Yes, all ties in with all your other posts really

"The reason being, that a man is far more likely to be raped than he is to have a false allegation of rape made against him."

This.

Also, Quentin, equality. If women want equality, it means we need to be convicted of as many crimes as men. Even if we aren't actually committing them. Equality means somehow getting the prison numbers the same for men and women despite the fact that men commit way more crime and way more violent crime. In the case of sex offences, I think it's about 98% of convictions are of men. This is obviously unfair. It's straighforward logic.

The moj/ons report estimates that about 85000 women are raped per year, of whom about 15% (12-13000) make a formal allegation.

In addition to this, about 12000 men per year are raped.

The number of formal allegations by women is equivalent to the estimated number of rapes of men. Therefore, even if all formal reports of rape by women were false, a man's risk of being accused falsely of rape would still only be about the same as his risk of being raped.

In fact, false reports of rape are likely to be a tiny fraction of all reports, therefore a man's risk of being falsely accused of rape is a tiny fraction of his risk of being raped. Therefore, men who are not rapists are far more likely to be harmed than helped by the suggestion that false accusations are common.

As a group, rapists (and not innocent men) are the only people who benefit from the mra narrative being peddled by some pp.

The men who come on these threads and conversations elsewhere never have anything to say in sympathy for victims, nothing to acknowledge the ongoing and deep rooted issues the authorities have around these crimes, and they never mention male victims of rape whether men or boys.

They NEVER mention situations eg the recent news around systematic abuse of boys in sports clubs.

They only ever talk about:

• You sound like you want all men guilty until proven innocent
• You sound like you hate men and think they are all rapists
• What about honest misunderstandings
• What about grey areas
• What about false accusations
• What about anonimity

They NEVER engage with the statistics around the vast number of sexual offences being committed, the massive impact this has on the lives of women (and men and children), the fact that our institutions fail so badly time and time and time again, and the fact that to improve our society, for everyone, we need to do something better, somehow.

Women are very interested in this because it is a small or large part of our lives from about 12 onwards. And we know that so little is reported. And hardly any convictions result.

Some men are only interested in not improving matters, and possibly turning the clock back.

Loving the aggression against anyone who "doesn't relate" or whose posts are wilfully misunderstood....

So what brings you to the feminism board, Ray?

Yes Ray, we don't want to discuss anything, the purpose of these boards is to moan amongst ourselves - no disagreement allowed.....

What would you like to discuss piffle?

I dont think Sophocles realised what a difficult question that was