Is a man accused of rape guilty until proven innocent?

[APBrasRule]

I have listened to a lot of debate about rape over the years and I felt it was a great step forward when a woman who had been raped was given anonymity in court.

However listening to Woman's Hour this morning I felt we now want to change the burden of poof from proof of guilt to the man having to prove he is innocent.

I think something has to change but I don't think it should be guilty until proven innocent.

What needs to change is the perception that the woman is somehow responsible. More and more women don't report for fear of being blamed or having people think they 'asked for it'.

Rape victims should not feel ashamed.

No, you can't change the law to anyone being guilty till proven innocent, not for any crime in any circumstances.

There are undoubtedly other changes that could be made to the legal system to help women feel able to report rape and get through the court experience, and that's where the work should be put in. Plus education to lawyers, judges and the public - as Shiny says, plenty of people still think it's less "culpable" if the woman was out late at night, drinking, wearing a short skirt, taking a shortcut down a dark alley etc. We have to get away from that culture to one where it should be assumed that a woman can do those things without having to feel she is being reckless of her own safety.

I don't think we should, it would be a revenge gold mine. But listening to Harriet Harman over the years I think she would not be too uncomfortable with such a change.

She appears to be comfortable with the concept that better a few men are tarnished and all that follows than have a guilty man go free. Isn't this the exact opposite to our approach to hanging?

I don't think, in reality, it would be possible for all men accused of rape to be considered guilty until proved innocent. That would involve keeping all men accused of rape in prison on remand until trial. That is clearly unworkable.

I think the point is to improve rape conviction rapes so that they are similar to other European countries, because at the moment it is so hard to get a conviction for rape that no man accused of rape is ever really proved innocent in the eyes of all of society. We know that we don't have an effective legal system for sexual and other violent crimes against women, so the outcome is fairly meaningless. I certainly don't assume that a man found not guilty is innocent, and won't do until the legal system works.

What do other countries do differently? Or do they just have different attitudes to rape, i.e. the onus is on the man to not commit rape, rather than the woman's ability to keep herself safe and sober?

I don't know Shiny, but I suggest the the Government should fund some major studies into it rather than continue with their current plans which seems to be based on no research at all.

"I certainly don't assume that a man found not guilty is innocent"

MillyR, do you apply this approach to all crimes, and to both sexes, or just to men found not guilty in rape cases?

I do Noyoucan't.

The verdict "Not Guilty" does not mean Innocent. It just means that there wasn't enough evidence to convict someone beyond reasonable doubt. That applies to all crimes.

However, in other crimes, there is a higher level of convictions, so a Not Guilty verdict is more credible. It is almost impossible to get a Guilty verdict in a rape trial, therefore, the Not Guilty verdicts lack credibility.

With all crimes, depending on the circumstances, individuals, background to the crime etc., whether the Not Guilty verdict is credible, really comes down to the individual case. (OJ Simpson is a good example, I don't believe he is innocent and neither do the police, who aren't looking for anyone else.) We use our individual judgement about the cases we hear about, while bearing in mind that we can't know for sure. Rape is no different from any other crime in that sense, except that it has a much higher rate of non-conviction, presumably leading to higher rates of scepticism about not guilty verdicts.

Jesus Christ. I promised myself I'd not come in this section again, but you cannot be serious. Suggesting you can make anybody "guilty until proven innocent" of any crime under British law is total madness and undermines the way in which our legal system is supposed to work. And the vengeance potential would be hideous.

I very much doubt if HH is proposing what the OP says, but it will doubtless suit lots of anti-feminists to pretend that she believes that and get irate about it and wring their hands about it having All Gone Too Far. She was the Attorney General FGS, it's unlikely that she doesn't believe in the rule fo law.

Didn't listen to WH but I'll eat my hat if that is really what HH is proposing.

HerBeatitude, so you think that a relatively high percentage of men acquited of rape are actually guilty of the crime with which they were accused?

I would have thought a fair number are guilty noyoucant I don't know how that would compare to the number of guilty burglars who get off because there is enough reasonable doubt. Juries are desperate to give men accused of rape the benefit of the doubt in a way they just aren't desperate to give men accused of burglary the same leeway.

What we do know, is that most rapists don't even get to trial or even reported. There are a hell of a lot more rapists who have never been reported or charged walking around, than who have been found not guilty in a trial. (And even fewer who have been found guilty.)

"However listening to Woman's Hour this morning I felt we now want to change the burden of poof from proof of guilt to the man having to prove he is innocent. "

So did anyone actually say that this is what they wanted? Or did you infer it?

It would be helpful if you could see if there is a link to listen to the program and tell us how far in these comments happen.

I find it hard to believe that anyone (especially a high profile politician) has called for rape cases to be guilty unless proven innocent.

i suspect that the title of this thread is simply an effort to get everyone in a fight, with people who dislike feminism / attempts to improve matters re rape convictions piling in to say "yes it's disgusting outrageous that this is what they want blah" (as I see has already happened). And everyone else saying what eh? Who has said this? What are you on about?

Of course no-one on woman's hour, let alone harriet harman, has seriously proposed changing the law so that men accused of rape are guilty until proven innocent.

UQD you can't believe WHO is serious?

My initial reaction to the proposed change re. anonymity was to think that it was not unreasonable, given some of the recent stories in the press about the consequences for some men who were wrongly accused.

But having read some of the arguments on here I have to admit I could see a lot of the logic in them, particularly in regard to encouraging other possible victims to come forward.

However if HerBeatitude's view - that a significant proportion of people found innocent in the eyes of the law for a given crime are actually guilty - is widely held, then if anything I think that makes the point for why anonymity IS a good idea.

I don't think it's fair for someone who has gone through due process and who is innocent in the eyes of the law to have that stigma attached to them.

That's in no way to be sympathetic to men who do commit rape and who get away with it, nor to disagree with the notion that it would be better if there were a higher proportion of rapists convicted. But if a lot of people are going to look at a large percentage of people acquitted of rape as rapists then perhaps there is some merit in protecting their identity.

But it's not a stigma noyoucant.

Most people simply aren't bothered by rape.

It's probably more of a stigma to be found not guilty of burglary - people believe you actually might have done it then, but got lucky and got a good verdict, whereas with rape, most people don't believe men ever do it, except in the stranger jumps out of bushes scenario.

So there's no need to protect men from a stigma, seeing as how the stigma is non-existent. Unless of course, you're suggesting that all people accused of all crimes have anonymity.

I'm not sure how you can say there is no stigma. Between the media reports of men whose lives have been negatively affected by the stigma they have experienced, and the fact that from what you've said, and the impression I've got from reading threads on the subject on here, that a lot of women seem to think that many men found not guilty of rape are actually guilty, then surely that does lead to an increased stigma compared to many other crimes.

You yourself said above that people are more like to 'accept the innocence', so to speak, of someone found not guilty of a crime that has a higher conviction rate, rather than that of someone convicted of rape as it has a much lower conviction rate. If that belief is relatively widespread across society then I think that that is a strong argument in favour of anonymity for rape defendants.

Also I don't think that the issue is that people generally don't think that 'date rape' happens and that the only kind of rape that occurs is 'stranger rape'. I think it's more that 'date rape' is harder to obtain a conviction for because you're talking about an action where there is no argument about whether or not it took place, and no argument over whether or not it was the defendant who enaged in the action; rather it too often comes down to simply one person's word against another's, and given that you need proof 'beyond reasonable doubt' I don't think in that context that it's so surprising that rape has a lower conviction rate than other crimes, where the evidence is less subjective.

I have to admit that I harbour suspicions about people found not guilty of all sorts of different crimes. Don't know what that says about my personality but there you have it.

But my belief isn't widespread across society.

Most people believe that the main problem with rape, is mad women inventing incidences of it, rather than the reality, which is that most women don't even report it.

And noyoucant - it depends on whether you think that men's reputations are more important than women's safety.

It is unfortunate that the low conviction rate makes acquittals inevitable and therefore untrustworthy; but it is more than unfortunate, it is horrific, that so many women are being raped and not getting the protection of the law. I personally think that that is a bigger problem than stigma. But then, I think women's lives are just as important as those of men and that being raped is every bit as important as being accused of rape and should be treated with the same outrage and seriousness. But that'll be the day.

Intuitively I'd suspect that a higher proportion of men than women would regard people found not guilty of rape as 'innocent'. Do you think that would be the reality? I'm curious about the general perception of women to such people though? Do you think that the majority of women would agree that in general most men found not guilty of rape are indeed innocent of the crime?

As with ISNT I think we all can look at individual cases - not just involving rape -where we think "hmmmmm" after an acquital (though to be fair this is often based on media reports which may not necessarily give the same insight that you'd have got had you actually heard all the evidence). But how widespread is the perception that a large number of men acquitted of rape were actually guilty?