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.

IME people are more suspicious of the true guilt/innocence of people who are charged with non-sexual crimes, and get off. Than people charged with sexual crimes, who they don't want to believe did it in the first place. Often they carry on not believing it after a guilty verdict.

The response to that 8yo girl who was raped, the headlines in the papers saying "SEE!!!! She WAS lying!!! We knew it all along. Now STOP the trial! Those poor poor boys..." shows the prevailing attitudes in our society to people accused of sexual offenses, and their victims.

I wonder if there have been any studies? PLenty of artciles etc linked on these threads which show that juries will do their absolute darndest to find and believe any trivial excuse or reason for assault.

HerBeatitude Which I think this thread proves beautifully. The moment that we discuss changes in rape laws, a million people appear to ask "but what about teh mens"?

The idea that anyone would put themselves through the trauma of a trial to make a false accusation is frankly insane. And this kind of rhetoric has been around since the 17th century - if only I were at home, I could find the article that quotes a 17th Justice suggesting that a change in law would make malicious accusation easier.

Anonymity for a defendent does not happen in any other criminal prosecution. It will always be the case that some people hoist their bosoms and lean on the fence to discuss the fact that there's no smoke without fire. To respond to this by granting anonymity to the defendent in rape cases would be to enshrine the belief that most women are lying when they bring a rape accusation to trial. And thus the circle would continue.

Apologies: I'm really quite angry about this, apparently.

I'm not sure there's much difference in men and women when it comes to belief or not in verdicts noyoucant. I think women are just as likely to believe a man to be innocent, because they don't want to believe it could happen to them and so they're happy to underplay the likelihood of rape.

But I have no evidence of that, it's only blithe assertion.

I'm not sure how "men's reputations" and "women's safety" are so mutually exclusive. I don't think that anonymity for defendants will have a huge impact on the conviction rate.

And I don't think that arguing for anonymity means that you think women's lives are less important than those of men, or that rape shouldn't be "treated with the same outrage and seriousness".

The reasons why rape has an unusually low conviction rate will still exist, regardless of whether or not anonymity comes in. I think anonymity is a red herring in terms of trying to improve the conviction rate.

It won't change the fact that in a lot of cases a conviction will come down to one person's word - "she consented" - against another's - "I didn't". And given the nature of 'date rape' what realistic measures can we come up with to improve the conviction rate for it?

I'm on my way out now so can't answer you, but all this has been discussed on the rape threads - can someone else please link to them for noyoucant as I have to go and gallivant? Thanks!

PerfectDromedary, the problem with your point that "The idea that anyone would put themselves through the trauma of a trial to make a false accusation is frankly insane" is that as other anti-Anonymity posters have pointed out, independent reasearch has shown that a small minority of women in 'rape' cases do make false allegations.

I take your point that in general terms it's unlikely that too many women would ever want to do such a thing, particularly when they will likely be subjected to intrusive and aggressive cross-examination into all areas of their life, morals, character, etc. But equally you can't simply say "well this woman is hardly like to have made her story up therefore the defendant is guilty". Everyone is entitled to due process.

Do we have to go through all the reasons again for not having anonimity?

PLus the other reasons that we have thought of in the meantime?

Are we going to have to go over again the fact that the vast majority of cases which get to court are the ones that have corroborating evidence, photographs of injuries and so on?

The ones where "it's her word against his" are on the whole filtered out by a long process starting with the victim "I won't report it as there's no evidence it's his word against mine" and ending with teh CPS "we won't take this to trial as it's her word against his and we are unlikely to secure a conviction".

That is why the conviction rate for cases which get to trial is not bad, but the proportion of reported rapes that actually get to trial is so low.

I have serious doubts about the innocence of lots of people found Not Guilty, or who have had the case against them dropped. The killers of Stephen Lawrence, for example, have never been found guilty of anything. OJ Simpson, as someone mentioned above,and this lowlife.

Just because the state doesn't find them guilty, doesn't mean I can't believe they are, that's up to me. You can't build a justice system around how people might think individually, that's why we have a jury and not a judge. People react differently and we have to go with the jury's consensus. Most times I think the consensus of 12 people who've heard the evidence is worth more than my own opinion. But where it's clear that the reason for letting the accused off is not because the jury believes them innocent, but because the police or prosecution have not done their jobs properly WRT collecting evidence, why shouldn't I believe them guilty?

I mean, if your neighbour came to the door with a head wound and said they'd been beaten up by their partner, you'd probably believe the partner guilty, wouldn't you?

Hadn't realised that ISNT. What is the actual conviction rate for rape cases that go to trial? And how does it compare to that for other crimes like say assault, robbery, murder, etc.? Apologies if this has been done to death elsewhere.

The false report rate for rape is thought to be similar/less than the flase report rate for other crimes (apart from reports for insurance fraud which are very high). It is also the case that in most false reports, the person making the accusation in mentally unstable and doing it for attention, and thus do not actually name their attacker. The point is not that they want someone caught.

I fail to see how being falsely accused of rape (which is unlikely) is worse and more damaging than being falsely accused of murder, child sex offenses, fraud etc etc etc

original thread re anonimity

Only 1002 posts. Give me 2 minutes to have a quick read!

noyoucan't

off the top of my head, the conviction rate for rape cases that go to trial is more than 50% which compares well with other crimes

it might be in the stern report i'll have a look

If you google stern report then you get a lot of articles like this talking about the figures.

I can't find one for conviction rates overall at the moment but remember seeing somewhere that the 58% conviction rate for rapes that get to trial is comparable.

Thanks. In that case I think the balance between not having anonymity, to encourage more women to come forward, overall outweighs the need to protect the identities of those acquitted. I thought I had picked up somewhere that the convictionn rate was around 10%.

Have fun with those 1001 posts

There are a lot of links on that thread to pertinent research and articles, I think.

I think it is around 60-70% guilty at trial. This is roughly comparable with other crimes (You will have to google or go through thread for exact figures though).

Most rapes are either -

a) not reported
b)dropped during the investigation stage by police or the accuser

dittany, surely putting the burden of proof re. consent on the defendant is in effect making him "guilty until proven innocent"? Nowhere else in UK law (in my limited knowledge of it) is there any burden of proof on the defendant. Is it not always up to the prosecution to proof its case (in this example, that consent was not given)?

I appreciate the need to improve conviction rates, but I don't think such a fundamental change to UK law would be the way to do it.

In the specific example you quoted, I'm not sure how your proposed change would make any difference. Presumably there was an argument in court over consent, and the facts you outlined must have emerged. If, on that basis, the jury regarded that as consent - and I share your disbelief - then I see no reason why they would have behaved any less irrationally if the burden of proof had been reversed.

Good on you for changing your mind, NYC, and for listening to what we've said on here.

How does one prove one has "actively sought" consent? It's often one person's word against another. Unless you have it in writing it's pretty difficult. Or should men all carry a portable mp3 player and tape their drunken conversations with women in taxis? I'm almost not serious.

Yes, we can all say up to a point what ISN'T it, but what, precisely, is? That's what a court of law would want to know.