Why has the Tory minister arrested for rape not been named?

[Dervel]

Just that really. Does your party being in power shield you from this sort of thing?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53625829

I hadn't heard of rape being 'virtually decriminalised'. How can it be?

I too hope there will be no cover up, it's far too serious for anything like that. Surely the police will do their utmost to investigate, they must have had some suspicions to have arrested the man in the first place.

Oh well, we'll find out sooner or later.

@jessstan2

Vera Baird (Victims' Commissioner) described it that way last week, after it emerged that only 3% of rape complaints result in charges being issued. (That's not even going as far as asking how many result in convictions - just how many actually result in a man being charged!)
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/13/rape-decriminalised-due-catastrophic-decline-prosecutions-says/
www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/14/we-are-facing-the-decriminalisation-of-warns-victims-commissioner

De jure, it remains a crime. De facto, if a man is that way inclined, he knows that in reality he can rape away to his heart's content with only a vanishingly small chance of ever being caught, charged and found guilty.

Because he may be innocent?

@Pillypocket666

Because he may be innocent?

Legally speaking, he is of course presumed innocent until/unless proven guilty. (And rightly so - abhorrent as the low rate of conviction in rape cases is, throwing out the principle that innocence is presumed rather than guilt would utterly undermine our justice system).

However, anonymity is different. There is no right for defendants to remain anonymous as a general rule. This is for a number of reasons.

(1) The presumption in this country is that justice should be seen to be done in public to ensure everyone's right to a fair trial. (In fact, the one area which has abandoned this - the family courst - is the one with the biggest question marks over it in terms of fairness.)

(2) It gives a chance for other victims to come forward (e.g. the Worboys case).

(3) By the same token, it can also help the accused, if for instance, someone sees his name in the paper and thinks "but he was with me the night this is meant to have happened" and comes forward with an alibi.

I suspect the reason his name is being withheld is because in this instance it would uniquely identify the woman who brought the accusation (and victims are given anonymity in rape trials).

Rape is basically decriminalised, few women come forward, of those that do few are believed by the police, those few who are believed only few will see their abuser convicted. It goes on from there, of those that are convicted can get laughably short sentences.

I did some very rough back of the envelope calculations, a few years ago so I wouldn’t swear by them but it gives an idea nevertheless. A low ball estimate puts 6% of men will commit a rape/sexual assault of some kind. Taking out women and those who are underage. That would leave us with about 1.5 MILLION men guilty of said crimes. The prison population when I looked was something like 85,000 people. An earnest desire to get even half that number locked up would require such an increase in the police and prison estate by many magnitudes.

I’m inclined to make the argument there should be a tax only men should pay specifically to tackle this one issue, and my god it would have to be a HUGE one. Simply to provoke the response of how unfair that would be. In order to counter with how much time, energy and mental calculus every woman has to perform merely engaged in the activity of trying to stay safe, I’m not a woman but I’m given to understand it’s a lot. It’s not as if women are realistically safe from this anywhere they could go. Not safe at home, not safe in the streets, not even safe if they have a job in the houses of sodding Parliament!!

I cannot help but wonder if this is one of the sources of the biggest differences between women and men. Women are unequal because they are not at liberty to be as equally involved in society as men. Sorry for going on at length.

A low ball estimate puts 6% of men will commit a rape/sexual assault of some kind.

6% is the number American criminologist David Lisak found when he did surveys of male American campus students. His "undetected rapists" as he calls them admitted to an average of 5 rapes each - the same as the numbers found for convicted, incarcerated rapists, suggesting that the populations don't differ in what they do/how often they do it, simply in whether they get caught.

5 * 6% brings you to 30% upper estimate on the number of women in the population who've been raped. Allowing for the fact that some women have the misfortune to be raped more than once, that accords quite well with the 20 to 25% estimate given by asking women.

So, whether your methodology is to ask men, or to ask women, the numbers come out about the same. It's a horrifyingly frequent crime, with a horrifyingly large percentage of perpetrators, almost all of whom are getting away with it.

Naming the MP will enable people to identify the victim. It is for the privacy of the victim.

I cannot help but wonder if this is one of the sources of the biggest differences between women and men. Women are unequal because they are not at liberty to be as equally involved in society as men. Sorry for going on at length.
No need to apologise for that comment
I think men need a license before being allowed out after 10. They would have to demonstrate they understood consent

I feel conflicted about agreeing with that. Not because I think you’re wrong, but agreeing with you on a forum on something I highly doubt there would be the political will to enact would be too cheap.

I think I would broadly consider a reduction in my own liberty if it men women had more. That I promise you is no small thing to me as Liberty is a a hugely sacred principle to me.

Thing is I think the Liberty principle looms just as large if the status quo is allowed to continue. As such I don’t think anything should be off the table in terms of discussing solutions.

The closest direct experience I’ve had on this issue is rushing to a woman’s aid as she was being attacked in the dark one night. I’m a big bloke, but by no means a fighter so if he’d done pretty much anything other than bolt I’d have probably been in big trouble. Please don’t congratulate me or any such nonsense I’m not bringing this up for any praise I just do get it just a little bit, the blind fear, the panic, feeling sick. I just feel like discussion around this topic is like that night: a woman is screaming and nobody is doing anything. Thing is I’m a father now so I’m not sure I’d make the same call if it happened again, and I feel a little ashamed by that.

The victim had said she's really upset he hasn't been suspended.

The approach of the Tory party here is pretty questionable, given that.

I am so sorry for this young woman, I believe her, and I hope she is doing as well as can be expected with the weight of all this hanging over her.

Agree with the posts about where male sexual violence leaves women as a class in terms of women’s liberty. Eg women are made to self curfew or travel in groups or be on high alert constantly if we are eg night workers and/or work with the public or just you know want to go out at night and take part in things.

But also that women as a class bear costs in terms of long term stress and anxiety, because of constantly risk-assessing our situation. Also financially it is a tax on women that we have to pay to get to and from places safely often solely because of fear of what men may do to us if we don’t.

And that having performed those ultimately non-protective ‘precautions’, we are still not safe, and then if we are sexually assaulted or raped, we are still not effectively protected by the law and are left with a dilemma about reporting and pursuing justice. The fact that we could end up undergoing another trauma If we bring a case because it may go nowhere except to lose us our own privacy is just shocking.
If we were taking a public health approach to minimising sex attacks on women, I have no doubt men would be required to have a curfew and various other measures needed for daytime.

It’s very very depressing to think about as a woman. As much as we may feel confident that some of the individual male people we know might be safe to be around, that’s always going to be the minority of men we know and meet and have to deal with in some way, in life. The experience of rape being so statistically widespread and then in general handled so shamefully afterwards is a national disgrace. Especially given Dianaslasso has mentioned a ratio of around 6% of men and around 30% of women. (Great post Dianas)

How those men can get away with an R rate (or however we want to describe it) of raping 5 women. I blame that squarely on the rapist obviously, but also on the rest of society that collectively we haven’t taken the right steps to punish and deter and take that 6% of men out of circulation by whatever means would be most effective.

More in The Times today

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-dismissing-violence-against-women-by-not-suspending-rape-suspect-l0f5v6v9v?shareToken=be33139de517fef66c0551d4e6bfe92d

And comment

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-the-tories-failure-to-suspend-an-mp-accused-of-serious-sexual-crimes-bad-judgement-m6h3f8075?shareToken=22f4c605c657d70f7b5ccf836dd35025

My daughter is a journalist. Naming the induvidual isnt allowed because it would lead to discovering the name of the victim who has anonymity. Her employer, a national newspaper, would be heavily fined for doing so.

If the victim is entitled to lifelong anonymity (which I don't dispute), what will happen if the Tory MP is charged and found guilty? He presumably has to resign (or "be resigned") and then we'll know who it is, and could work out who the victim is? (I am assuming that he has a limited number of interns.)

Is there a double bind here that he can never be named because it will jeopardise her anonymity?

"Is there a double bind here that he can never be named because it will jeopardise her anonymity?"

Pretty much.

Stating that she was his employee makes it impossible to name him, ever. Assuming you want victim anonymity to be waivable only by the victim.

If convicted, he would have to quietly stand down at next election to spend more time with his family. Or earlier if there is plausible ill-health and no obvoius link to this case (as that would in itself violate her right to anonymity)

The Times should not be berating the party for failing to break the law! And journalists who first published the employment link between them need to take a hard look at the consequences of their action.

I think the Tory party could act to safeguard their staff, they just can’t announce it. I can’t see any reason why they can’t tell him to go home and keep his mouth shut, and why they can’t tell the office that he’s not coming and they will not be answering questions about it. Whereas I can see plenty of potential legal liability if they allow an alleged rapist to hang out in the office with his victim, and numerous other potentially vulnerable staff members.

Or if you follow that to its logical conclusion, they can’t jail him if found guilty, because that would out the victim too.

To be clear, I don't think the press should be reporting on him being suspended. But there’s no reason the Tory party can’t act behind closed doors to protect their staff, and the evidence suggests they are not doing this (because he is apparently still working in the same office as his victim).

The victim has said she didn't work for him, and she's an ex parliamentary worker, so no longer working with/near him.

I don't understand why she went to the chief whip & JRM rather than the independent complaints service or the police first.

I don't understand why she went to the chief whip & JRM rather than the independent complaints service or the police first.
Given the appalling state of affairs re: prosecuting rape, I'm not surprised she didn't immediately go to the police.
She has the right to be protected from harassment at work. If harassment is being raised as a work related issue, grievance procedure is to try to resolve in house before going to an independent body. In fact many independent bodies won't take on a grievance unless that's been done.
The conservative party are definitely at fault here, if it was a normal workplace she could take them to tribunal for this.

I can understand that she perhaps thought JRM might have had some leverage.

I'm also not really up for the idea that a rape victim reported the wrong way.

This is a women who worked at parliament having to report that a senior MP from another dept raped her.

I respect maintaining her anonymity. Not convinced the Tory party have handled this well however.

If convicted, he would have to quietly stand down at next election to spend more time with his family.

You cannot continue to be an MP if you are convicted of a crime resulting in a sentence of more than a year in custody, and pretty obviously if this man were convicted he's get a sentence above that. Therefore he couldn't carry on till the next election, he would have to be sacked or resign immediately.

But 'In house' in Parliament IS the independent complaints and grievance body. It was set up for exactly this situation- because the recent report showed that the parties don't deal with harassment properly.
They have the properly trained people.
I'm not criticising her- I just don't understand why you wouldn't go to someone independent to talk to, rather than chief whip, who is more likely to want to protect 'the party'

Therefore he couldn't carry on till the next election, he would have to be sacked or resign immediately

And where does that leave the victim's right to anonymity?

He must e removed from office, therefore she has no right to anonymity.

I'm not sure I wouid want charges pressed if it had to go public. It would certainly be a deterrent to making a complaint. The reporters, who exposed the existence of the working link and made her identifiable, have shut off any chance of finding out who he is without removing her right to anonymity.

The party said (correctly) 'go to the police'. The reaction of responsible Parliamentary bodies has not been reported.

Disciplinary actions towards the suspect is impossible at present.

But the press seem so avid in trying to blame the Tories, that they are not pointing the finger at themselves. They are the real people who let the victim down, by ignoring what her right to anonymity actually means.

The rush to the political story by the press is the problem.

If MP was convicted, and there was nothing in public domain about (former) working link, then a way to imprison/sack/name him (whilst not narrowing down who she might be) would have been found. This way round, impossible.

So she's going to be outed, whether she's happy with it or not, if he gets a custodial sentence. I suppose at least she gets some time to,get used to the idea, but the whole concept that the price of a guilty verdict is loss of anonymity absolutely stinks.

The way the press reported this is so careless of the victim's rights that they need to be held to account

I imagine he will be named if he is charged. And quickly.