Do we have a thread for the DC Rachel Fletcher misconduct hearing?

[DoneByTheFuckingRainbowUnit]

I've had a search and I can't find one. She's the chair of Police SEEN, and is up for gross misconduct, for making the following comments in the police station where she was based:

1. all men should be on a curfew
2. see, that wouldn’t have happened if men were on a curfew (in response to a reported rape)
3. all men are rapists
4. I hate men
5. trans women are all cocks in frocks.

The tribunal tweets coverage is here:
tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/police-misconduct-hearing-dc-fletcher

Well hello and welcome. I believe you. The all men are rapists is such a hackneyed old phrase.

FWIW my husband has said that all men are potential rapists, it’s just a matter of self control.
Not such a shocking view to express either.

Yes they picked on you, i hope you get justice it is seemingly been a long road for many women.

@FellOutTheLoft hope you are coping okay this place can be an immense source of support, even if you just watch rather than contribute.

Keep going.

@FellOutTheLoft total support for you from me and I expect many, many others on here.

I have donated to your gofundme and wish you well in this and your ET. Presumably the ET can use the evidence of this kangaroo court and the lack of evidence provided to it by the force. I cannot believe any organisation in the UK is insisting that biological females do body searches for biological men who identify as women and imagining that they are not going to be sued to Kingdom come.
Wishing you the best

Absolutely support you. Best wishes for the ET and any appeal of this decision if it goes ahead.

Sending you good wishes Rachel. I know from my own experience that misogynistic organisation judge women more harshly.

You agree all men are rapists?

All men have the weaponry. A huge proportion of men would- and do- if the circumstances were right and they’d get away with it. I think most men could think of a time when they were pushing over the consent line. They wouldn’t phrase it like that. They’d think in terms of helping her relax by giving her another drink, persuading her, getting her to try something new that she wasn’t sure about etc. little coercive nudges. The nagging…

So you agree all men are rapists? Like DC Fletcher you'd have no credibility in a rape investigation, a danger to the prosecution case in the witness box. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but that makes you unsuited to a career in the police force.

I'm sure Prized is devastated.

It wasn’t too long ago that a husband couldn’t be charged with rape against his wife.
We only need to read some of the posts on here where a man has not accepted a ‘no’ from a woman and carried on having sex with her. This, by definition, is rape. Men who coerce their partners into having sex, men who withhold things to force their partners into having sex and so on. I suspect there are far more women who have been raped this way than we know.
The idea that a rapist is a violent, stranger crime is outdated. No always means no, otherwise it’s rape.

@PrizedPickledPopcorn I’d also add that basic safeguarding is based on the premise of possibility. We have no idea who the paedophiles or rapists are, so we base safeguarding on the assumption that it could be any man.

It’s a no brainer, isn’t it? We don’t share a bed with or take our clothes off with any but a very select set of men. If we were less careful, court would assume we’d ‘asked for it’.

Like rape gets anywhere near a witness box in 99% of cases.

Back in the day, it was considered completely normal to ply a women with drink, or take her out to dinner, or buy her chocolates, purely in order to get sex from her.

In fact, it was considered a seduction technique. Showing a man exactly how he could get an unwilling woman to have sex.

Most sitcoms couldn't have been made without it.

Well let's throw away the other 1%. I'm sure the woman victim will be cool with that.

Let's remember that Rachel said she didn't say "all men are rapists" but "all rapists are men" (which is true in English law). The hearing found against her, but I very much doubt that the hearing she was subjected to used the test applied in the English courts, namely that it was "beyond reasonable doubt" that she'd said those things.

So on the basis that in law a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, perhaps we could all stop assuming that she said the things she is accused of saying.

I don't, but that's not what DC Fletcher said, she said that all rapists are men, which is true, given the definition of rape in UK law.

x posted with RoyalCorgi.

The test used in this HR misconduct hearing & in ETs is "on the balance of probabilities" as used in civil law not "beyond reasonable doubt" as used in criminal law.

It's unlikely 'on the balance of probabilities' that a trained, experienced police officer would assert that 'all men are rapists'.

They'd be busy all day arresting random men if they thought that, wouldn't they?

But it is reasonable for a trained, experienced police officer to note that all the rapes that they - or anybody else - have investigated have been committed by men.

That's a statement of fact.

@FellOutTheLoft I'm in the minority here as a man (he said mannily). But not in the sense that I fully support you. Wish you all the very best in this awful situation.

Jo Bartosch has written about this in the Critic

https://archive.ph/bZNHh

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-cold-bill/

Superb from Jo.

And she makes this excellent, bang on the money point:

In an exquisite piece of timing, only hours before Fletcher was dismissed, the High Court rejected Sex Matters’ challenge to search guidance issued by British Transport Police and the NPCC. The ruling leaves open a route by which a detainee can be searched by an officer of the opposite sex where both consent. The revised guidance, issued before Fletcher’s hearing, explicitly states that officers who decline such searches should suffer “no career detriment”.
But Fletcher’s story makes that assurance look rather less reassuring. Consent is not meaningfully free in a workplace where a woman may be professionally punished for expressing the beliefs that inform it. Fletcher said, bluntly, that she would not search men. Those remarks then formed part of the gross-misconduct case that ended with her dismissal and placement on the barred list.