Ulster Rugby Rape Trial - Not guilty to all charges

[Quimby]

Verdict just returned
Not guilty to all four accused, all unanimous decisions.

Yes women are 50% of the population, surely we have a bit more power than to just be forced to accept that the law shafts women. Worse, it compounds their trauma.

where

Here's more from my decision:

" Y would have no reason to believe that X did not want sex again as she had agreed earlier in the evening, although this cannot be presumed it is a reasonable assumption."

(I agreed to a different act earlier in the evening, to the one he forced on me later, whilst I was pretty much passed out).

Oh...he tried to do it again later, but because I was terrified of him at that point I said no before he got near me.

This is CLEAR evidence that I MUST have looked like I was consenting earlier. Because, look what the comment says:

"An obvious question would be why she did not give this clear indication that she was no consenting on the second occasion."

Because I had just been woken up by someone who was raping me and had gone limp. The OBVIOUS answer to this question is that I was behaving like a rape victim at the time.

Either way..ALL MY FAULT. ALL OF IT. Its says so in black and white, see?

I really hope I'm not derailing this thread here, I am in full support of the Belfast victim, just want to highlight the fact that so many cases never even make it as far as CPS because of this "reasonable belief in consent" element.

It is down to a rape victim to prove that she made her attacker aware that she was not consenting, in the eyes of the law. It is not down to an attacker to prove that he had consent.

where

You're correct unfortunately where - it's so fucked up

Yet apparently her facebook's full of naughty photo's and video's of herself? "When she consents she doesn't generally seem to care who sees what? But now she's shy all of a sudden?"

"Ridiculous argument."

As I wrote in my next point, that's what I was trying to get point out. The face at the end didn't work (I musn't have hit it right).

next point trying to point out

[Bangs head off wall]

*next post

I honestly don’t see what is so difficult. In any other area of life gaining consent is m clearly an active and clear and obvious process. You need consent of a relative to turn off a life support machine, to take organs (even if the person themselves has already given it while alive), for an under 16 to have their ears piearced, Christ you even need it these days to pass on people’s names and address under GDPR. At no point does anyone say “well I assumed they were alright with it because they didn’t say no” Or “I didn’t know they weren’t consenting, never mind.”
Why is it so hard - write a law that says “rape occurs when consent has not been given” then prosecute where the defendant can not prove they had consent. It’s really not that difficult - laws are re-written all the time if they prove to have unintended consequences or just not be fit for purpose. All the police “training” in the world isn’t going to help victims come forward if the actual facts are that the victim of rape has to prove they didn’t consent. Apparently politicians and the like are all “concerned” about low reporting and conviction rates so why the reluctance to sort it out? Am I missing something??

You haven’t derailed the post.
And yyy to this:

It is down to a rape victim to prove that she made her attacker aware that she was not consenting, in the eyes of the law. It is not down to an attacker to prove that he had consent.

In the law it apparently isn’t necessary for the man to put any effort at all into determining if the woman wants to have sex with him

Yiu alright wicked?

Oh my god...its catching

Sorry that should be

You

Obviously

Unfortunately effic that's the problem with our mysoginistic society & judicial system.

I literally can't cope with how fucked up the whole thing is. It's awful.

I’m devastated and depressed by this case.

If we were to start again with a blank page for defining the law on rape/consent, what could we do I wonder? If we can define it we can lobby politicians to change it. What if both (all) parties had to be able to prove they had given and received consent, rather than the current situation where women and girls have to provide that they didn’t consent. In this time of technology it surely wouldn’t be that hard for solutions to emerge - a whole plethora of tools are at our fingertips to communicate, transfer money, purchase online etc, a “consent app” isn’t beyond the realms of possibility. Of course such an approach could also be abused but we really are starting from ground zero so things can’t get worse surely.

Internal injuries and psychological trauma should count as evidence

Agreed. Funny how lacerations to any other part of the body in any other type of assault would count. But not when rape is alleged. Sickening.

I was thinking about the tea consent clip. Imagine if three or four people forced 1 person to have tea and that person had a burn or an injury from the tea.

Bumblebuzz I think they have to make misogyny the crime. Some language is not allowed. It's incitement to terror or hatred. I think the texts like those 'men' typed are incitement to abuse/rape or at the very least rape culture. That sort of language should be cracked down on. It should disappear off any platform that is moderated.

"In other words, do you have the courage to admit that what you really want is a system where a females testimony is all that is required to convict a man?"

I haven't read all the posts so far, so I don't know if anyone has made this point - I don't think they have, but in my view it's crucial.

In a rape trial, the defendant can say anything they like to blacken the name of the witness, including references to her past sexual conduct or her history or her personality, stuff she's said on social media - anything to blacken her name.

The witness cannot say what she likes about the defendant, because it might be prejudicial to the case. So she cannot say that he's been accused of rape before, or that he's made jokes about rape, or even that he's been convicted of rape, or that he's known to be a liar or a generally shitty person. None of that is allowed, so the whole thing is utterly and completely unequal.

In other words, women don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of securing a conviction.

When I say "witness", I mean "prosecution".

Effic -

Probably a hangover from when women were property and rape was essentially a crime against another man's property (one that was not a crime if he did it to his own property).

It'd never be just a woman's testimony.

No woman would ever take it to court without other evidence.

They need to do something though. They need to change something.

At the moment what terrifies society is that one man somewhere might go to prison for a rape that was a bit consensual a bit rapey. That seems to terrify the men and they will do anything to avoid that. What they don't really object to at all is thousands and thousands and thousands of women being raped every day and every year and having no chance at all of securing a conviction.

where