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.

ElephantsAndMiasmas It's certainly interesting to get a different perspective from what I've picked up from other media on the subject. I had the (erroneous) impression that a much larger percentage of men were acquitted, hence my views on anonymity.

In terms of improving the overall conviction rate, what is easier - improving the rate for cases going to court, or improving the number of cases that make it to court? And what can be done to facilitate this? (And am I asking questions that have been done before? )

The idea of having to prove the "seeking" is the interesting one. If a woman's verbal statement of "I didn't consent" is considered a strong piece of prosecution evidence, then is the verbal statement of "yes, she did" from the man not considered an equally valid piece of defence evidence?

Or does the defendant need more than a verbal statement, i.e. one side requires more evidence than the other side requires? And if so, what should that be - a signed letter? A recording? Photograph album? (How many of the above could be forged?) And doesn't this imply that the swearing on oath to tell the truth in court is meaningless, because anything the defendant provides verbally is invalid without backup?

It may sound as if I am being a little flippant (and maybe I am, a bit, or playing devil's advocate) but if you require "X" you should be clear exactly what the law should accept AS "X".

dittany, surely putting the burden of proof re. consent on the defendant is in effect making him "guilty until proven innocent"?

how does this work in burglary cases? does the state have to spend time proving that actually, the householder did not consent to have someone break a window, climb in and then help themselves/ransack the place?

i may be wrong but it is not a defense to a burglary charge to say 'i genuinely thought they wanted me to kick their door in and nick their telly whoops (sand besides, they liked it when i did har har)'

it seems to me that they start from an assumption that people don't want to have their houses broken in to unless they explicitly indicate otherwise

i apologise for making a crass analogy between burglary and rape/sexual assault

can anyone give me a really compelling reason why the same assumption can't be extended to women, that is, that we do not exist in a perpetual state of consent to any and all sexual activity with whoever unless we explicitly state otherwise

btw there is an outstanding blog post on here today re: what about teh menz and having to put up with the same old stupid antifeminist derailing arguments and how a woman can get heartily sick of it, frankly

it's the one with hanging chads in the title

dittany, ISNT, elephants, i think i love you

noyoucan't the stern report and other studies have noted many shortcominsg in the police/criminal process which are lacking

things like

police buying into "rape myths" eg she was drunk and what did she expect and treating the complainants accordingly

police "on the ground" beliveing that most women are lying and treating them accordingly

evidence not being collected

evidence being collected too late

complainants being discouraged from pursuing the complaint - "this won't go anywhere love, is it worth the trouble"

the CPS only being prepared to prosecute the more "cut and dried" cases

and so on

In the case of john worboys 12 women reported him before he was arrested. These women all told the same story, yet it took 12 before the police made a move. Why? Because, despite these cases going to the specialist rape unit (sapphire), many of them were not believed, were dismissed because they had been drinking, were told that a black cab driver wouldn't do that. I read somewhere that one of the victims said police laughed at her.

When the police and prosecutors start taking it seriously, maybe then we will start to see improvements.

Some women even have to undergo physicals by male doctors FGS. I am sure that in itself makes a lot of women change their mind about proceeding.

This idea that all the rape cases beign reported/going to trial are "his word against hers" "misunderstandings" and so on.

It's ridiculous.

The majority of those cases are filtered out by the women themselves - most women do not report "date rape" cases where they have no injuries as they know there's no point.

The cases that get reported are usually the ones where there is some kind of supporting evidence.

And women are not all mentally unstable lunatics. It is not normal or even likely or even slightly likely that women who have a few drinks and a one night stand will wake up in the morning and think "ooh that was a bit silly. i know. I'll report him for rape!!!". Yet apparently there are hordes of women doing just this. I would instead suggest that when a woman says she has been raped, usually, she has been raped, and the man who was doing the raping, was well aware of what he was doing. All this talk of "misunderstandings" is ridiculous. If you look at somwhere like the thread on MN where women recounted their stories, it is obvious that the men involved knew damn well what they were doing. It is further obvious from talking to people in RL and and here, that women who have been raped, are often unwilling to call it that, and put it down to a "misunderstanding" themselves, and find it hard to actually acknowledge that the man did anything wrong. Women who say "well he pushed me down and took my clothes off and had sex with me and I hated it, but i didn't say no, so it wasn't rape".

I have little understanding of how the legal system works. But it seems to me that a many men accused of rape have multiple rape allegations made against them. Is there no way that there could be a change in the law so that when a number of unconnected rape allegations had been made against one man he could be tried using the combined weight of evidence against him?

I am assuming a similar process happens with things like fraud - where multiple instances of fraudulent activity are all looked at in one trial to demonstrate that it isn't some kind of misunderstanding of error.

Sorry if I am being a bit stupid. I am typing from a position of ignorance. It just seems that there are so many cases of murder of women or children where the perpetrator had a past history of rape allegations. My friend was abducted and murdered by someone with a series of rape and domestic violence allegations against him, and I just feel there must be ways of stopping this escalating behaviour. By saying that I am not trying to make the act of rape itself into some form of triviality, but it does seem as if we keep trying to normalise rape as some kind of misunderstanding and pretend that it is separate from other violent and sadistic patterns of behaviour.

dittany, you get so very cross so very easily. I too wish there were an ignore button. Woop-de-do, we agree.

Did you not see I have accepted for the sake of argument (despite the issues that can be debated around it) your suggestion that the defending needs to "actively prove seeking consent"? And I'm just asking, in an attempt to take that on further, what form(s) that evidence should take - a verbal statement, or something more.

And if not a verbal statement, what implications does that have for statements given under oath? Because it seems to suggest that the verbal statement given under oath is automatically not a strong piece of evidence.

I think it's a sensible question. Does nobody else think it's a sensible question?

(I also note I am not the one equating the violating of women and the burgling of property.)

And these attempts to drive a wedge seem to forget the one very important point - that neither men or women think rape is particularly acceptable and that we ALL want the same thing: for more actual rapists to be found guilty and to be sent to prison.

Er, and if you wish there's an ignore button why did you address mine?... I seem to recall being rebuked by you in the past for not addressing you directly. It's now clear I'm not expected to have an opinion at all in your Esteemed Presence.

Someone I know has managed to get away with a rape charge (and managed a subsequent good character sentence disocunt on another chrage as a result) becuase the only winess refused to testify on the basis that the victim was a prostitute so it's not the same.

Cases like that make me furious.

Guilty until proven innocent though is wrong of course.

This perception about women being responsible- we have a responsibility to ourselves to keep as safe aspossible but should we choose to walk naked and drunk down the high street at 3 am then any man that touches us is still 10%% wrong and guilty.

If we say or indicate no, or cannot give a sign of agreement to sex for any reaon then it is rape and it is worng. We may have failed in a duty to oursepves but that is not to have a bearing on a rape charge.

IMO.

Are there any compelling reasons why a woman should NOT be presumed to consent to any/all sexual activity, at any time, and with anyone

I would love for someone to explain why the current status quo of assumed perpetual consent is justified and right

There have been loads of surveys and studies and things (which I don't have any links handy for) that show things like

Men think it is OK to force a woman to have sex under certain circumstances
That women say no when they mean yes
That women will struggle and shout etc when they are raped and if they don't do that then it wasn't rape
That women are at leat partly to blame if they have been drinking/flirting etc

and so on and so on

I think that it is far from certain that everyone apart from rapists thinks rape is unacceptable, indeed many don't think it's even rape unless all of the "stranger/dark alley/women not drunk/loads of injuries" etc boxes are ticked. Up until a couple of decades ago it was legal to rape your wife. I am not sure that the public in general do broadly accept that rape is always unacceptable.

Also intersting the choice of words "neither men or women think rape is particularly acceptable". which has wriggle room. Even making the point it is seemingly accepted that to say " men and women think rape is totally unacceptable" is a stretch.

Dittany you can't tell people not to respond to your posts on a public forum; ignoring posts you feel are aimed at you (rightly or wrongly) is far more productive.

Oh, dittany...(Why do you never come into any of the threads where people are having a laugh and agreeing with me?!) I shall continue to say what I like, when I like. The arrogance of telling me I'm not "allowed" to respond to you is breathtaking - and I doubt that is viewed with all that much approval by those who run this place. You can ask them, if you like...

I would have thought most women would actually prefer men to have an opinion on these things and attempt to engage with the arguments - even if they don't always agree with YOU - rather than shrugging and saying "well, I don't really give a shit, to be honest." But it seems you prefer the latter.

OK dittany as you want to be straight can I comment?

you make excellent and valid points on many threads; I am intersted in hearing your views on subjects even though I don't always agree but

sometimes I look on to see what your POV is and you ahve been drawn into off-topic arguments with people and the thread has ceased to be about X Y or Z.

personally I would prefer to ehar your informed feminist take on the points provided, and for you to ignore the many posters you don;t get on with.

Becuase I can't learn anything, whetehr or nto I agree with it, from that.

And see? off topic LOL.

Anyone who rapes or condones rape is a bastard and society needs to wise up to a women's right to her own body and security of knowlkdege that only she can decide who might access it. tehre are still far too many myths about women meaning yes when they say no about, too many idiots like that BNP bod who claims women like sex so rape is OK, for society to allow any leeway at all.

And can we also have less of the loaded and somewhat sexist "pub vomit"/ "throwing your weight around" comments? I have put my comments in a perfectly reasonable way on this thread. I don't think they deserve to be dismissed like that.