"If recording my own rape isn't enough evidence, what is?"

[ReallyAngryNow]

www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/fp/young-woman-who-recorded-herself-being-raped-by-her-ex-slams-his-acquittal/?fbclid=IwAR0wquQcg11GhrXG2mR0zdeqXrLsW6SaagR_zcTVE4pB5t90sK3At9fvQQs

NC for this because it’s in my local area and don’t want my other very outing posts linked together.

I’ve had enough of this shit. Seriously. What can we do? I feel like every day we read about rapists and abusers walking free, and very rarely hear about them ever being punished.

It shouldn't be down to a jury. Most people are thick as pig shit and believe the myths surrounding rape.

They also believe the scum bag lawyers who get these 'men' off by claiming role play or that women like it rough.

How is that justice

I'm not a lawyer but I believe that, in countries which allow this sort of explanation to jurors, it's done via an expert witness, rather than separate training, which I imagine might be seen as influencing the jury in favour of the prosecution.

Using expert witnesses to do this in E&W (not sure about Scotland) would present challenges because, unlike in the US, for example, English courts usually only have 1 expert witness on any given topic, who is supposed to be completely neutral and acting for the court, not siding with prosecution or defence. This is different from the US system in which each side has its own EWs so, if the defence thinks anything that the prosecution's EW has said is wrong or unfair, they can counter it with their own EW.

But I'm sure there must be ways to incorporate guidance to jurors to combat misleading rape stereotypes into the English system. After all, it has been done with coercive control, despite low public awareness or understanding of it, and the fine line between it and bad but non-criminal behaviour.

Other countries have a fact finding type approach rather than the adversarial win /lose and jury system.

Our system which was developed for crimes against property is demonstrably not working to bring justice for victims of sex offences. It wasn't set up for that type of crime and it doesnt work. Many women say they would not report, if their DD was attacked they would not report. How many people say that about burglary? It's evidence that the system is not serving these victims. Which means there are rapists wandering around all over the place.

I don't know what the solution is but I do know that what we have is not fit for purpose for these crimes and in fact things seem to be going backwards fast.

It wasn't set up for that type of crime and it doesnt work.

Absolutely.

Here’s the Julie Bindel article I mentioned

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/21/juries-rape-trials-myths-justice

Our system which was developed for crimes against property is demonstrably not working to bring justice for victims of sex offences. It wasn't set up for that type of crime and it doesnt work

Yes. I was making this point elsewhere yesterday.

Our criminal justice system has had more than a thousand years of evolution for property crimes and open violent crimes. But, because women were essentially property for most of that time, less than one hundred years of evolution in tackling intimate crime (less really: marital rape was only criminalised in 1991).

Were we a thousand years in to developing ways to prosecute intimate crime, we would be doing a better job of it.

I don't know what the solutions are but I know they're out there. It's dreadful that the rate of progress to finding them is so painfully slow.

@GregoryPeckingDuck - Thirty years ago I doubt a hurt would be swayed by the notion of ‘role play’ without convincing evidence that they regularly engaged in such. 30 yrs ago (1989) it wasn't illegal to rape your wife/partner so it wouldn't have even made it to court. Ever since the law on this has changed men have been finding a way of rape cases, so I don't think it has anything to do with the normalization of BDSM.

The reason it's slow is because there's no real appetite to do it better, at societal level.

Rape myths abound, lots of people blame victims, lots of 'good men' are rapists and people don't want to see them pursued for attacks which aren't extreme. The 'rape rape' thing.

Part of the problem is the belief that men have more knowledge than women ourselves of what is going on inside a woman's mind. You would think that a "she consented" defence would be destroyed simply by a woman saying "no I didn't" given that she is the expert on what she did and what she wanted but in many rape cases the man is seen to know more about her than she herself does, hence so many not guilty or not proven verdicts.

@Rufusthebewilderedreindeer
AverageMan Tue 09-Apr-19 21:26:03
Only the jury heard all the evidence. This was one case that didn't result in a conviction, but it's worth bearing in mind that most trials do end up with a conviction. It's better to have ten guilty men go free than have one innocent man suffer.

@differentnameforthis pretty sure that’s incorrect. The common law root stems on the principle that the marriage legitimises the act boiling down to the idea that sex out of marriage is immoral but sex in marriage is fundamental to the purpose of marriage.

@Sarahjconnor - Rape is legal in the UK. Role play and BDSM have seen to that Let's not. BDSM is consensual. Rape has been around generations. Blaming BDSM is just gtaking away guilt from the rapists.

It's better to have ten guilty men go free than have one innocent man suffer. Spoken by someone who hasn't been raped/a true rape apologist! It's BETTER TO HAVE 10 GUILTY MEN GO FREE??? What the actual fuck.

It's better to have ten guilty men go free than have one innocent man suffer.

Wtf? The ideal is that men don't rape women but if they do they go to prison. Also that the very, very few men who are falsely accused are identified and the women are punished. Your statement is beyond ridiculous.

I really do think that the law should change so that 'rough sex' just cannot be allowed as a defence.

And if you like hurting your partner during sex, even if it's all consensual blah blah blah, then tough shit if something happens and you find yourself in court. Get your kicks some other way. Sorry if that's not very liberal or sex positive or its kink shaming but I don't give a fuck.

Sick of women being harmed and men getting away with it.

It's better to have ten guilty men go free than have one innocent man suffer.

Yep. Better to have ten women suffer than one man. Of course, why on earth would women think it should be any other way?

We have a real problem with jury trials for rape and sexual assault. When I was called for jury duty it was a sexual assault case and anyone who had been assaulted, not even reported, just saying they had, was excused - lots of women left. Similarly, a friend lucky enough to have avoided assault was on a jury a few years later, which was about sexual abuse. She got upset, so they switched her for someone else.

So then you are selecting from a sample of people with no real experience of how it happens, who can remain emotion-less throughout, who believe the myths, who were shocked by Me Too etc.

This is a jury of peers for the accused but not the victim and that has to change. It it is obviously wrong to subject traumatised jurors to such a trial in the name of fairness, so the panel of experts is a logical and humane solution.

I agree that we should not focus on blaming BDSM we should focus on our legal system which is not up to the job of properly prosecuting intimate crimes

However as pointed out progress has been made with coercive control, some of this must surely speak to the problems involved with prosecuting intimate crimes?

@Letssplashmummy, the scenario outlined in your post suggests to me that juries absolutely do need to be educated about rape myths, as per @Isabel I am wondering about the legal arguments against this?

Re the statement it's better to have ten guilty men go free than one innocent man suffer, I also find this statement upsetting but I thought it was a sort of principle of the legal system (sorry I don't know the right terms) - as I've heard solicitors and barristers say this before? Maybe lass or another lawyer can explain? I've always found this troubling.

It is really hard, when I have discussed this sampling issue there are people (men) who think that a problem is that women can just leave jury duty without having to prove their assault, that only women who have been through the court process should be allowed to leave. I have no doubt that many of the men left in the room felt the women were claiming assault to get out of jury duty - that sense of injustice is not going to help the process. A number of women I have discussed this with have mostly worried about the detail "would x count, would I be unbiased?" which in itself shows the issue.

They didn't say "leave if you were assaulted," there was a list of reasons and if you fitted any of them, but for my one experience, a lot more women left. As I'd left, I had to come back for a fraud trial a few months later and fewer people left, so I'm assuming the assault caveat was part of it. I actually left for a medical reason that time, and it wasn't publicised why people left, so it's possible I've jumped to the wrong conclusion.

It was about 8 years ago, but my friend was removed for getting upset fairly recently, so it shows they haven't yet found the balance between the emotional wellbeing of the jurors and a fair trial.

www.hud.ac.uk/news/2018/september/rape-case-jury-bias/
I really think we need to get over the idea that the jury system is the best way to deliver justice to women. It's not just Julie Bindel others agree.
There has to be changes now, I'm getting close to considering vigilantism.

kiwiblue

Yes it’s an old legal idea known as Blackstone’s ratio. The basis is that we must always err on the side of caution in exercising the power of the state.

It's called Blackstone's ratio, and it's a central tenet of our legal system. We must err on the side of innocence.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

Phew, lucky there’s a man here to explain it, thanks AverageMan.

This situation where women are allowed to be excused from jury duty if they have been assaulted, on the face of it might seem reasonable and fair but when you look at the implications it becomes sinister

it's well known that many people find jury duty to be a chore and a burden, and many people will do anything they can to wriggle out of it, it's a right pain in the arse.
Here women have an opportunity to get out of it that men cannot access, there is an incentive for women to claim that they've been sexually assaulted when they haven't or to exaggerate the seriousness of the sexual assault because here is a situation where they can personally get an advantage from doing so.

So the men in the jury right before they go on to deal with a rape or sexual assault case are presented with a situation in which women are incentivised to lie about rape.
so the men in the jury are kind of preloaded with a feeling of resentment towards women who use this power to their advantage.
It kind of feels like we're all being stitched up here?

(Please note, I'm not claiming that women on the jury are lying, I'm just trying to explore the implications of the way that things are set up)