Rape Trial Coverage Fiasco

[ElectricPaladin]

I'm just curious... is there anyone out there who thinks that CNN's (and other networks') coverage of the Steubenville rape trial verdict was appropriate? For those of you who weren't paying attention, the coverage of the verdict was dominated by a certain sympathy for the perpetrators and a total lack of sympathy for, or even mention of, the victim.

While it's all well and good to feel a little sorry for a 16 year old kid who will spend years in Juvenile Hall and the rest of his life marked by America's draconic sex offender laws - I mean, the rapists are human, and it's reasonable to feel sad that they've ruined their own lives and squandered their potential - but the coverage seems more than a little... skewed. The victim here is, well, the victim. Anyway, the Internet is exploding over it.

And what do you think?

[Cap'nSmurfs]

The coverage you're referring to was pretty abhorrent. A whole bunch of news pieces didn't have anything to say for the victim at all, which is appalling. Yes, it's not pleasant for these young men, but, you know - maybe don't rape somebody.

All of the defences made for them by this sort of focus - concentrating on their lives, their pain, and not the rape victim's - just add up to a culture of permissiveness for sexual assault, especially if you're famous or "talented".

[Wildeybeast]

I'm just curious... is there anyone out there who thinks that CNN's (and other networks') coverage of the Steubenville rape trial verdict was appropriate? For those of you who don't live in America, the coverage of the verdict was dominated by a certain sympathy for the perpetrators and a total lack of sympathy for, or even mention of, the victim.

While it's all well and good to feel a little sorry for a 16 year old kid who will spend years in Juvenile Hall and the rest of his life marked by America's draconic sex offender laws - I mean, the rapists are human, and it's reasonable to feel sad that they've ruined their own lives and squandered their potential - but the coverage seems more than a little... skewed. The victim here is, well, the victim. Anyway, the Internet is exploding over it.

And what do you think?

Fixed. ;)

[ElectricPaladin]

Fixed. ;)

Oops. Durr... Thanks.

[Wildeybeast]

No worries. :) Is this thing news because of the age of the criminals then?

[ElectricPaladin]

No worries. :) Is this thing news because of the age of the criminals then?

Their age and... promising footballness. AMERICAN footballness - you know, the dumb one with the ovoid ball, not the awesome one with the sphere. And also because these douche-liners (like a douche-canoe, but bigger) compounded their jerkness by documenting the entire thing, producing hideous gut-wrenching photographs that you can find online, if you've got some free time and like to vomit.

[Psychosplodge]

What I've seen of it is two things.

The coverage is disgustingly pro-offender rather than victim.

But also, I think if what I've read is accurate it would have been a lesser charge here of sexual assault and voyeurism.
Still serious, but not the same as the common understanding of the word Rape.

[ElectricPaladin]

What I've seen of it is two things.

The coverage is pro-offender rather than victim.

But also, I think if what I've read is accurate it would have been a lesser charge here of sexual assault and voyeurism.
Still serious, but not the same as the common understanding of the word Rape.

I believe that under the laws of the state in which the offenders were charged, digital penetration - and the various other things they did - count as rape.

The fact is that we're splitting hairs when we talk about exactly what they did.

There are grey areas in sexual assault. If a 30-year-old has sex with a 16 year old who convinces him that she's 18... well, he's sketchy, and legally speaking it's statutory rape, but is the man a rapist? Did he rape her? That's kind of up in the air. Some people are such heavy drinkers that they can seem to be more-or-less in command of their faculties, but actually be out of control and have no memory the next day of what happened. Does their consent count? Is that rape?

But in this case, they took a clearly unconscious girl and used her for their own sexual gratification - details aside. In my opinion, that's a pretty clear case regardless of the exact deeds performed.

We also all agree that it's abominable and inexcusable behavior. These kids didn't mistakenly take advantage of a deceptive minor or do something sexual with someone whose consent they thought was full. In cases where there's ethical uncertainty, I understand a greater degree of sympathy for the actor. There's no grey here.

[Psychosplodge]

There are grey areas in sexual assault. If a 30-year-old has sex with a 16 year old who convinces him that she's 18... well, he's sketchy, and legally speaking it's statutory rape, but is the man a rapist? Did he rape her? That's kind of up in the air. Some people are such heavy drinkers that they can seem to be more-or-less in command of their faculties, but actually be out of control and have no memory the next day of what happened. Does their consent count? Is that rape?
Or perfectly legal here, if a bit icky(plus I remember what a pain the arse a 16 yo old partner was.... doing it again at 30? no thanks lol),

If I recall my pse lessons we have a three year age gap between statutory rape and the age of consent.



I believe that under the laws of the state in which the offenders were charged, digital penetration - and the various other things they did - count as rape.
The fact is that we're splitting hairs when we talk about exactly what they did.

But in this case, they took a clearly unconscious girl and used her for their own sexual gratification - details aside. In my opinion, that's a pretty clear case regardless of the exact deeds performed.

We also all agree that it's abominable and inexcusable behavior. These kids didn't mistakenly take advantage of a deceptive minor or do something sexual with someone whose consent they thought was full. In cases where there's ethical uncertainty, I understand a greater degree of sympathy for the actor. There's no grey here.

You're right, and they live in that state so know things like that.
I certainly didn't mean to sound like I was defending them especially as I've just condemned your news outlets for doing that.

[ElectricPaladin]

I certainly didn't mean to sound like I was defending them especially as I've just condemned your news outlets for doing that.

I didn't really think you were. I've just got a bit of a hair trigger. People are like rape culture and I'm like Heresy! *BLAM*

[Psychosplodge]

People are like rape culture and I'm like Heresy! *BLAM*

which is fair enough

[Earl Harbinger]

There's no reason to feel sorry the teenagers that got sentenced. They knowingly committed what was blatantly sexual assault of a girl that was clearly passed out drunk. As you said this isn't a case of a gray area where there might have been mixed signals or disception. This was teenage boys realizing that a girl was unconscious and deciding to violate her for fun.

That said, teenage girls need to know that going out to a party in a neighboring town, alone, and drinking until you pass out is a really, really, REALLY horrible idea. The absolute best case scenario outcome of that situation is still bad. There's never an excuse to rape somebody but crossing state lines to get black out drunk at a house party and rely on the kindness of strangers (especially drunk male teenage strangers) is monumentally stupid. Either be smart enough to curb your drinking, or go with friends who will look out for you or better yet just stay home.

As a parent and a sane human being the behavior of everyone involved and what it says about our current society we're raising our children in both angers and frightens me.

[Wildeybeast]

Their age and... promising footballness. AMERICAN footballness - you know, the dumb one with the ovoid ball, not the awesome one with the sphere. And also because these douche-liners (like a douche-canoe, but bigger) compounded their jerkness by documenting the entire thing, producing hideous gut-wrenching photographs that you can find online, if you've got some free time and like to vomit.

Ewww. What's wrong with people? We have a similar culture over here where a number of our horrendously overpaid footballers (the ones with the proper ball) seem to think that all women are just begging for them to get into their pants. There was a case a few months back where a promising youth footballer was jailed for rape and in a case of stupendous stupidity one his relatives tweeted the name of the victim (which was supposed to be confidential to protect them).

[Psychosplodge]

removed

[Wildeybeast]

Trying to remember which team it was without googling but I can't. Fill me in.

[scadugenga]

The whole treatment of the case was abhorrent. The town in mention is notorious for protecting the crimes committed by these douchebags.

The hacker group Anonymous got involved and really shined a spotlight on this turd of a town. Watch the YouTube video they presented of the evidence (if you have a strong stomach) and CNN's remarks,will seem even more horrific.

[eldargal]

I've not seen any coverage about, all I know is that they are footballers. But let me guess, some combination of the following:

What was she doing there, she brought it on herself?
What was she wearing?
She probably led them on.
She shouldn't have been drinking (regardless of whether she was or not, even if were relevant)
Oh those poor boys ruining their lives with a little mistake (nevermind the girls life being ruined).

Am I on the right track?:rolleyes: Sadly this isn't unusual, it is the norm. Hence movements like Slut Walk.

[Psychosplodge]

OMG you must be psychic.



American media on the India gang rape: Omg those barbarians are out of control! Look at us, we're so ahead of the times!
American media on the Steubenville rape: Omg look at the lives we're ruining by convicting these 16 year old rapists!

[Power Klawz]

Its sad that the only recourse we have is to ruin their lives, instead of, you know... preventing them from committing the crime in the first place. I'm not going to lose sleep worrying about these people and how awesome their lives won't be now because they decided to rape someone. I can see the tragedy in the situation, but its a tragedy for the victim and of the society which produces such terrible people in the first place.

Its hard not to wish worse on these people.

A year or so in juvie and having to register as a sex offender?

Yeah let me break out the tissues because I'm getting all misty eyed.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I've not seen any coverage about, all I know is that they are footballers. But let me guess, some combination of the following:

What was she doing there, she brought it on herself?
What was she wearing?
She probably led them on.
She shouldn't have been drinking (regardless of whether she was or not, even if were relevant)
Oh those poor boys ruining their lives with a little mistake (nevermind the girls life being ruined).

Am I on the right track?:rolleyes: Sadly this isn't unusual, it is the norm. Hence movements like Slut Walk.

I loathe how Sociopathic our society is. It's truly disturbing and horrifying. On the positive side, one of my friends is one of the leaders of Slut Walk and I am damned proud of her.

[Mr Mystery]

I've not seen any coverage about, all I know is that they are footballers. But let me guess, some combination of the following:

What was she doing there, she brought it on herself?
What was she wearing?
She probably led them on.
She shouldn't have been drinking (regardless of whether she was or not, even if were relevant)
Oh those poor boys ruining their lives with a little mistake (nevermind the girls life being ruined).

Am I on the right track?:rolleyes: Sadly this isn't unusual, it is the norm. Hence movements like Slut Walk.

On the bright side, there seems a good chance they'll.... Uh, gain a new perspective on consent and its implications courtesy of Mr Big in Prison..

[eldargal]

I'm not over fond of The Onion but they were oddly prophetic with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWLJZw9Ws-g&sns=fb

Apparently the victim has been getting death threats. Classy.

So reading more about it:

The coach found out about the rape and helped the rapists and their friends destroy evidence.
He is friends with the town sheriff who initially declined to take action.
The family went to the town prosecutor (if that is the correct title) who advised them that it would be very difficult to find evidence and take it to trial. Her son is on the football team.
It took a local blogger and the hacker group Anonymous to get this evidence to light.
Some of the videos taken by witnesses include people implicating themselves in the crime yet they have not been charged and the sheriff refuses to make more arrests.

So in addition to the heinous rape itself you have corruption of breathtaking boldness in this local community. On the credit side the local police chief apparently was quite keen to let outside police investigate.

Watching some of the videos taken by witnesses/rapists it is truly staggering how absolutely foul these young men are.

[Deadlift]

And they got sentenced to 1 year, there's justice for you, ****ing incredible. Must have been all the crocodile tears in court.

[eldargal]

The whole thing is rotten. Apparently they were going to be tried as adults but that was mysteriously changed after a meeting between the sheriff, town prosecutor and an influential town personage.

[Wolfshade]

Could be worse you could have Bill Roache (Ken Barlow) running around telling them that it was the viticims fault because of their past lives...

[Nabterayl]

And they got sentenced to 1 year, there's justice for you, ****ing incredible. Must have been all the crocodile tears in court.
Do you have a source for that? All I can find are articles referring to the minimum sentences, which are two years for Mays (rape + distributing pictures) and one year for Richmond (rape). I can't find any sources for the actual sentences, either for the actual amount of juvenile detention time (up to the age of 21 in both cases), or for how long they are going to have to register as sex offenders (potentially for the rest of their lives, as I understand it).

I have to say, while I agree with everything that's been said about the crime in particular and rape culture in general (I haven't been following this enough to comment on the networks' coverage), I don't have a strong sense that justice has miscarried. How can I? No sentence has been given yet (as far as I can tell). They've been adjudicated guilty (well, "delinquent," which is the technical term for guilty in juvenile cases). Well and good. I can hardly fault the court for not passing sentence the same day guilt is determined.

It might be worth bearing in mind that if they had been tried as adults, Ohio law (http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2907.02) provides a penalty of five to eleven years in prison (http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2929.14). Obviously that is much greater than the two to four years that Mays faces or the one to five years that Richmond faces, and obviously there is a big difference between Ohio prisons and Ohio juvenile delinquent facilities. But from a justice standpoint, what I'm more interested in is what level of the sex offender registry they'll be in/for how long after their incarceration (I admit I have a fairly dim view of the justicial value of incarceration). That seems like the real punishment here to me. As I think we've discussed before, registering as a sex offender in the United States is an enormous stigma, both socially and professionally.

Okay, apparently (http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/17/justice/ohio-steubenville-case), the court is reserving that part of the sentence until after their incarceration. I ... can see that. But in any case, I don't see even a sentence for incarceration, so I can't feel outraged at how much or how little time they've been given. And since I think the real punishment here is the sex offender registry, I can't really feel outraged at the level they've been ordered to register at on a permanent basis, because they haven't gotten a permanent order yet.

[Deadlift]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/highschool--steubenville-high-school-football-players-found-guilty-of-raping-16-year-old-girl-164129528.html

I read this

The way I read it was one got a minimum of one year and the other got an additional year for distributing photos etc. Obviously as the article I linked says they could get longer depending on an evaluation. Is this likly ?

[Nabterayl]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/highschool--steubenville-high-school-football-players-found-guilty-of-raping-16-year-old-girl-164129528.html

I read this

The way I read it was one got a minimum of one year and the other got an additional year for distributing photos etc. Obviously as the article I linked says they could get longer depending on an evaluation. Is this likly ?
I don't know enough juvenile sex crime cases, or Ohio state judges, or Judge Lipps, to speculate. From the little I've been able to piece together about Lipps specifically, I get the impression that he's very cognizant of the fact that the guilty parties are children but doesn't seem especially impressed that they're hometown football heroes. The fact that he's waiting to determine how long they'll have to register as sex offenders (the minimum for rape in Ohio is 10 years, I believe, but a court can order registration for longer) certainly suggests to me that he's theoretically open to not ****ing the whole rest of their lives. The facility where the AG wants to put these guys apparently has a reputation for the quality of its work with juvenile sex offenders, so it kind of seems like he's willing to wait and see what they look like coming out of that program before deciding how much of the book to throw at each of them. That in turn suggests to me that he's genuinely interested in the recommendations of the child-services experts that the article mentions as to final incarceration lengths.

[eldargal]

So you can rape a girl over a period of hours, dragging her to three different parties while unconscious, photograph her, send the photos to others and get one year in a correctional facility. That totally send the message that rape is a serious crime.

People wonder why I and a lot of women get absolutely enraged by cases like these. You can get more than that for driving intoxicated in Ohio.


The fact that he's waiting to determine how long they'll have to register as sex offenders (the minimum for rape in Ohio is 10 years, I believe, but a court can order registration for longer) certainly suggests to me that he's theoretically open to not ****ing the whole rest of their lives
But the victims life is ruined, FOX News has even named her. She has been getting death threats for gods sake. So much consideration is given for the rapists future and so little for hers. **** the rapists, let's hear how they are planning on helping the victim. Because so far the only people talking about that are bloggers and the odd journalist.

[Nabterayl]

So you can rape a girl over a period of hours, dragging her to three different parties while unconscious, photograph her, send the photos to others and get one year in a correctional facility. That totally send the message that rape is a serious crime.

People wonder why I and a lot of women get absolutely enraged by cases like these. You can get more than that for driving intoxicated in Ohio.
I hear what you're saying, but listen to what you're saying. The minimum penalty for rape by a juvenile offender in Ohio is ten years on the sex offender registry and one year in a correctional facility. Add another year of incarceration for the photography and an indeterminate effect on the sex offender registration. The minimum penalty for intoxicated driving in Ohio, even by an adult, is a $375 fine and no time in a correctional facility (though three days in jail).

Maybe the minimum penalty for rape should be higher. I don't personally think it's facially unreasonable to say that the minimum penalty for first-time rape by a juvenile sex offender should be death. But the comparison you drew is not accurate.

[Deadlift]

The death threats I believe came from a cousin of one of the rapists and her friend and I have read the too are now going to called to account for said threats and the coach will also be up before a Judge for trying to cover up the incident.

[eldargal]

I'm no talking about minimum sentences, I'm talking about sentences actually handed down in other crimes vs what was handed down for this one. You can get more jail time for driving under the influence or stealing money or any number of other third degree felonies. Crimes against property and to some extent men (violent assaults vs men have a higher prison sentence, usually, than rape) are punished more heavily than rape. When you take into consideration that only a fraction of rapes actually get investigated and fewer go to trial due to constant pressure from the authorities on the victims and that if they go to trial the woman is demonised and every aspect of her character is put on trial like she was the criminal you can see there is a situation that is grossly unfair to women. It makes a lot of us extremely angry. This case just highlights the kind of crap we have to put up with. I mean who gives a **** if it has ruined the perpetrators lives? To hell with them, they raped a girl, filmed it, filmed themselves laughing about it. One of the witnesses offered $3 to the first person to urinate on her, thankfully no one took him up on it.

All this and they get one year in a correctional facility and ten years on a registry.

Also remember that NONE of this would have happened if it weren't for a blogger from Steubenville who recorded the incriminating tweets and videos before they were removed and Anonymous who dug up a heap more incriminating evidence. It would have been covered up because the people in this town didn't take rape seriously.
Then you have CNN discussing how the verdict would hurt the rapists not the victim, FOX revealing the names of the victim but not the rapist and there are reports (unconfirmed to be fair) that there have been other rapes before and since by the same boys. Hardly surprising when they call themselves the 'rape crew'.

It isn't just the sentence (though why did they get the minimum sentence when they displayed no remorse to the victim and gross arrogance during and after the crime by boasting about it on social media), this whole things screams of how women are devalued and crimes against us considered less serious than crimes against property.

[Nabterayl]

... they haven't been sentenced yet. Remember?

[eldargal]

Well they have, they just may get more added later. We don't know how much and I don't feel any particular urge to hope it will be significant. Remember it isn't just about the sentence, the whole thing is completely rotten and all the media care about are the perpetrators.

[Deadlift]

Actually Nab, as a practitioner of the law can you explain (in laymens terms lol) just why rape in general does not carry higher sentences than it generally does ?

I am not trying to put you on the spot here, as obviously were all like minded in our views on rape and what an abhorant crime it is. You obviously have more experience in law and sentencing than most of us. I know judges have to abide by precedent and be objective and not let emotions get in the way of what they consider fair sentences. But as a member of the public who considers himself quite liberal I do sometimes feel that Judges are far too lenient in cases such as this one (as you say though a full sentence hasent been made) and I get the feeling the lighter sentences are passed because some judges don't want to be seen to allow emotions to rule their judgements.
I know nobody is defending any of the actions these young men made on these forums. I just want to understand why at the moment these guys seem to have gotten off lightly.

[scadugenga]

Lets also not forget that the rape and degradation was revenge motivated, and they also left her naked and unconscious on her parents front lawn.

This is more than the "typical" lack of prosecution for a rape case, it is an almost unilateral cover up by the town to protect their winning football team.

The blogger who initially championed the cause? They sued her for defamation. She eventually prevailed.

If it were not for Anonymous taking the steps to make sure this case caught national attention, I'm sure there wouldn't even be any charges filed.

[Psychosplodge]

I've not even seen those bits.

Did they have to pay the blogger compensation as well then?

[Nabterayl]

Actually Nab, as a practitioner of the law can you explain (in laymens terms lol) just why rape in general does not carry higher sentences than it generally does ?

I am not trying to put you on the spot here, as obviously were all like minded in our views on rape and what an abhorant crime it is. You obviously have more experience in law and sentencing than most of us. I know judges have to abide by precedent and be objective and not let emotions get in the way of what they consider fair sentences. But as a member of the public who considers himself quite liberal I do sometimes feel that Judges are far too lenient in cases such as this one (as you say though a full sentence hasent been made) and I get the feeling the lighter sentences are passed because some judges don't want to be seen to allow emotions to rule their judgements.

I know nobody is defending any of the actions these young men made on these forums. I just want to understand why at the moment these guys seem to have gotten off lightly.
Let me preface this by saying I'm not a criminal lawyer, and this is one of those areas where intimate knowledge of the way it works in the real world would definitely be helpful. But there are some things I can say with reasonable confidence. Second, let me also point out that I'm not an Ohio lawyer, although my best friend in law school was (well, is). When it comes to criminal law, each state in America is essentially its own sovereignty, and its criminal laws are heavily influenced by that state's culture. I don't know what the closest UK analogue is in this case. Maybe the difference between English/Welch and Scots law.

So ... to shed what light I can.

First off, everybody should understand that sentencing and guilt are very often two separate (though obviously related) procedures. It is quite ordinary for a defendant to be found guilty/delinquent on one day, and sentence to be passed another day. From a media perspective, the moment of guilt or innocence is obviously the more dramatic of the two. However, audiences still want to know what the punishment is - and at the dramatic moment a defendant is found guilty, that is unknown. So reporters frequently substitute the statutory minimum sentence in their stories so they can sound like they're covering everything the reader wants to know. This procedure is frustrating as an observer, but there's a perfectly good reason for it. Sentencing is frequently subject to all sorts of factors that have nothing to do with guilt or innocence. It makes sense for the court to schedule time to consider those in adequate detail, and it makes lawyering sense to give each legal team dedicated time to marshal their arguments. After all, there's only so much time an attorney has to deal with a case given the court's schedule. While they should certainly begin considering how to behave and argue at sentencing from the start, you wouldn't want your counselor spending too much time planning how to get you a reduced sentence before you're even found guilty (or how to get an aggravated sentence before getting a conviction). So to say that they have been sentenced at all is not really accurate.

But on to rape. I would point to three factors that cause American criminal law, in general, to view rape as a less serious crime than some. The first is that a rape victim is not dead (unless s/he is, in which case the solution is to prosecute for rape and some form of murder), and American criminal law has a long history of prizing life as far and away the most serious of the three fundamental rights. The second is a perception that rape is easier to fall into than murder. I should point out here that the history of American rape law has a direction I'm proud of - one can argue whether it's evolved far enough, but I think if you look at the evolution of rape laws even in the modern area pretty much all the developments are positive. However, as much as rape laws have shifted away from being defendant-friendly, I think American criminal law still has some feeling that rape is one of those crimes that people can commit almost accidentally (technically speaking, you can commit rape accidentally, since one of the major historical reforms was to place the focus entirely on the victim's consent - legally speaking, the intent of the offender is irrelevant). And thirdly, the right that rape really impinges upon - human dignity - does not have a long history of recognition in American law (as it doesn't in English law, though I get the impression that modern British jurisprudence follows the European fashion of giving dignity legal weight much moreso than does American law). The closest thing it impinges upon that does have a long history of recognition in American law is the right to pursue happiness, and rape only sort of impinges upon that right. I know plenty of rape victims intimately, and although I've never asked I feel pretty confident that they don't feel their right to pursue happiness was violated. It was their dignity - their sense of autonomy, of self-determination, of the sanctity of their will - that was violated. So to some extent I think American criminal law inherited a historical philosophy that is not well suited to rape, and while our laws have largely modernized, our generalized legal philosophical culture kind of hasn't.

That said, Ohio's rape laws do treat it as a pretty serious crime. The only crimes in Ohio that are more serious than rape (speaking from my read of their criminal code) are murder and aggravated murder. Not only is rape a first degree felony, it is a first degree felony with a mandatory minimum sentence greater than the normal minimum sentence for a first degree felony, and one that carries the additional penalty of the Ohio sex offender registry. If you use force (or the threat of force) or drug your victim using a controlled substance in the commission of your rape, the penalty is greater than that for murder. Whether the penalties Ohio prescribes for rape are sufficiently harsh is a matter of personal philosophy, but if you compare the penalty for rape to the penalty for other crimes under Ohio law, I think it's fair to say that relatively speaking Ohio treats rape as an extremely serious crime.

So there are two more things to consider, I think. One is whether rape convictions in Ohio tend to carry sentences at the lower end of the first degree felony range than do other first degree felony sentences. That I don't know; I'm not close enough to the Ohio legal world to speculate. I do know that Ohio (as a whole) takes its justice system (as a whole) unusually seriously for an American state, but of course there are always blind spots.

And lastly, why weren't these kids charged as adults? I think there are three possible answers to that, one more rage-inducing than the others. It's possible that the attorney general didn't want to throw the book at these kids because they're hometown heroes. It's also possible that the attorney general was simply concerned by the fact that they're kids, period. The third possibility I can think of is that the victim herself, or her family, didn't want them hammered as hard as the law allows. Certainly they've gone on the record as not wanting further prosecutions. That could be because they were just shell-shocked by how hard being the victim in a rape trial can be, but it could also be because of their own sense of mercy. Ohio is essentially part of the Bible Belt; it's not crazy to think that a rape victim could be moved by a religious sense of compassion towards her attackers. It's also not crazy to think that a rape victim of any persuasion could not push for minimum mercy from the AG. The rape victims I know very well are, honestly, much less hateful towards their attackers than I am.

As for how much weight any of those three possibilities held, or whether it was something else altogether ... I don't know, but my personal suspicion is that once the case went forward (and of course it almost didn't, for completely execrable reasons) the AG didn't push for adult charges because they aren't adults. I don't know if it seems crazy to non-lawyers. It doesn't seem crazy to me. I can certainly say from my own experience that law has made the concept of minor incapacity much more real to me. I think legal education will tend to do that, and I expect that criminal practice even moreso. I have to say that as a lawyer, I really don't think they understood what they were doing - and I doubt I would feel that way quite so strongly if I wasn't a lawyer.

[Deadlift]

Thank you Nab.
I think it's a general rule for most members of the public that some serious crimes don't seem to carry sentences to match or are just not taken seriously in the first place, looking further afield to India and what's happening there its obvious that its not just a western perception either. But to get some insight is always good.

Going back to your post and the final part where you say it's possible that both boys didn't realise they were actually committing rape. I had read that theory too elsewhere. Basically because these boys have been able to get away with whatever they like for such a long time, coupled with the fact the girl wasn't attacked per se and clothes ripped off etc they didn't realise they were actually committing rape. One of the boys fathers admitted in court that his parenting skills had been nonexistent and lacked any moral guidance. Now whilst I can "understand" this I think we can all agree at a certain age especially theirs we should have some moral responsibility for our actions. I don't think the fact the town, which tried to cover up this case either has really helped these boys or others in this lauded team to understand the heinous crime they have committed. It sounds like its not an isolated case either.
Personally I would like to see them both made an example of, but if you like it or not the law is the law.

Not sure if it works the same where you are but I have a friend who is a magistrate and as I understand it here in the UK when it comes to sentencing he has to have advice on what sentence he is able to pass down, to ensure he isn't either to lenient or harsh. But mostly we talk about bikes.

Once again thanks for the insight.

[ElectricPaladin]

Going back to your post and the final part where you say it's possible that both boys didn't realise they were actually committing rape. I had read that theory too elsewhere. Basically because these boys have been able to get away with whatever they like for such a long time, coupled with the fact the girl wasn't attacked per se and clothes ripped off etc they didn't realise they were actually committing rape...

I think the boys understood that they were doing something sexual to a girl against her will. Perhaps they justified it by insisting to themselves that she was drunk, or that it didn't count as "really rape" because they weren't being violent. But really? I think they knew what they were doing. They obviously didn't have the moral center to take a different course. They clearly didn't think about the consequences of their actions until afterwards, when they tried to cover it up. But they did it, and they knew it was bad, or they wouldn't have tried to cover it up in the first place. In fact, I think that one of the heinous online videos involve one of the boys saying to someone else "she is so raped."

I think when people say "I didn't know it was rape," they're talking about situations in which they were also drunk or high, in which case it's ambiguous who raped who. Or they're talking about a situation in which their partner was one of the rare people who can get black-out drunk without seeming black-out impaired. Or cases of statutory rape in which the minor managed to deceive the adult about his or her age.

But really? How often do these things happen? Were the law just, it would take them into account, certainly. While a 30 year old who has sex with a 15 year old pretending to be an 18 year old should probably get help to improve his or her judgment, this person probably doesn't deserve to be on a sex offenders list for the rest of his or her life. I've heard of a handful of cases in which two drunk people have sex and, in the morning, the man is arrested, because in some states the law is worded such that the man is always considered the rapist even if both are drunk. So, there are grey areas, and fuzzy lines, and perhaps a few people being punished more severely than they really deserve.

But I don't think these kids didn't understand that they were raping a girl. They knew what they were doing, and they knew it was wrong. They just thought that it was an ok sort of wrong, a relatively minor offense, like streaming Warhammer 40k pdfs. Because their moral centers were completely out of whack and they lived in a town that treated them like nobility because of their football skills.

[Deadlift]

I agree entirely EP, I think they knew exactly what they were doing and I think they should have been treated as adults in this case too. I wouldn't want anyone to think I sympathise with this scum. I was just reiterating what I had read in reference to their understanding of what they had done, or supposed lack of understanding.

[ElectricPaladin]

I agree entirely EP, I think they knew exactly what they were doing and I think they should have been treated as adults in this case too. I wouldn't want anyone to think I sympathise with this scum. I was just reiterating what I had read in reference to their understanding of what they had done, or supposed lack of understanding.

Fair enough.

Wow... we all agree that we hate these people. How is it possible for so many different people from such different backgrounds to all sit down and agree to hate one thing? I mean, we can't even agree to hate Orks or Eldar, or whether or not we should hate the Blood Angels or the Dark Angels, or whether Games Workshop hates us more or less than Privateer Press hates Monsteropolis. And yet, we all agree to hate rapists. And we all hate them just as much.

It's kind of heartwarming, really.

[Nabterayl]

Thank you Nab.
I think it's a general rule for most members of the public that some serious crimes don't seem to carry sentences to match or are just not taken seriously in the first place, looking further afield to India and what's happening there its obvious that its not just a western perception either. But to get some insight is always good.

Going back to your post and the final part where you say it's possible that both boys didn't realise they were actually committing rape. I had read that theory too elsewhere. Basically because these boys have been able to get away with whatever they like for such a long time, coupled with the fact the girl wasn't attacked per se and clothes ripped off etc they didn't realise they were actually committing rape. One of the boys fathers admitted in court that his parenting skills had been nonexistent and lacked any moral guidance. Now whilst I can "understand" this I think we can all agree at a certain age especially theirs we should have some moral responsibility for our actions. I don't think the fact the town, which tried to cover up this case either has really helped these boys or others in this lauded team to understand the heinous crime they have committed. It sounds like its not an isolated case either.
Personally I would like to see them both made an example of, but if you like it or not the law is the law.

Not sure if it works the same where you are but I have a friend who is a magistrate and as I understand it here in the UK when it comes to sentencing he has to have advice on what sentence he is able to pass down, to ensure he isn't either to lenient or harsh. But mostly we talk about bikes.

Once again thanks for the insight.


I think the boys understood that they were doing something sexual to a girl against her will. Perhaps they justified it by insisting to themselves that she was drunk, or that it didn't count as "really rape" because they weren't being violent. But really? I think they knew what they were doing. They obviously didn't have the moral center to take a different course. They clearly didn't think about the consequences of their actions until afterwards, when they tried to cover it up. But they did it, and they knew it was bad, or they wouldn't have tried to cover it up in the first place. In fact, I think that one of the heinous online videos involve one of the boys saying to someone else "she is so raped."

I think when people say "I didn't know it was rape," they're talking about situations in which they were also drunk or high, in which case it's ambiguous who raped who. Or they're talking about a situation in which their partner was one of the rare people who can get black-out drunk without seeming black-out impaired. Or cases of statutory rape in which the minor managed to deceive the adult about his or her age.

But really? How often do these things happen? Were the law just, it would take them into account, certainly. While a 30 year old who has sex with a 15 year old pretending to be an 18 year old should probably get help to improve his or her judgment, this person probably doesn't deserve to be on a sex offenders list for the rest of his or her life. I've heard of a handful of cases in which two drunk people have sex and, in the morning, the man is arrested, because in some states the law is worded such that the man is always considered the rapist even if both are drunk. So, there are grey areas, and fuzzy lines, and perhaps a few people being punished more severely than they really deserve.

But I don't think these kids didn't understand that they were raping a girl. They knew what they were doing, and they knew it was wrong. They just thought that it was an ok sort of wrong, a relatively minor offense, like streaming Warhammer 40k pdfs. Because their moral centers were completely out of whack and they lived in a town that treated them like nobility because of their football skills.

I should clarify - when I say "I don't think they understood," I don't mean that they didn't understand that they were engaging in sexual conduct with a person who was not their spouse when that person's ability to resist or consent was substantially impaired," which is the Ohio definition of rape relevant to this case. I think they absolutely understood that. They'd be guilty even if they didn't (note that the crime is defined by the victim's actual state, not the offender's belief about the victim's state), but I think that they did.

When lawyers talk about "incapacity" or "incompetence," they don't necessarily mean an inability to understand basic level facts like that. We don't prevent sixteen year olds from signing contracts or suing people on the grounds that they can't understand the terms of the contract, their causes of action, etc., nor again on the grounds that they're their parents' property or some such nonsense. The sense in which a teenager is incompetent is in that we (meaning the law/society at large) don't trust them to understand the consequences of their actions, let alone act in accordance with those consequences.

So I think these kids knew what rape is in physical/legal terms, and I think they had it in their heads that they were either raping their victim, or coming damn close. I don't think they understood (or understand) what rape is in moral, spiritual, and philosophical terms - not even for the offender, let alone the victim. Moreover, I must admit that after law school, I don't really think teenagers as a whole understand those things. Maybe that seems crazy. Maybe it's because I'm crazy. Maybe it's a craziness I share with a lot of lawyers.

Now mind, I don't think this lessens their culpability, either morally or legally. I hope that, when the sentence is handed down, it's a heavy one (and if I'd be okay with a light period of incarceration and a long period of sex offender registration, that's only because I view the sex offender registry as a heavier and better punishment than incarceration). But if the AG shared my view that no teenager can be expected to understand the moral, spiritual, and philosophical implications of rape,* it might explain why they were moved to juvenile court. My lawyer's view of puberty is that it's an odd time, legal-philosophically: a time when you bear a moral responsibility for actions that you are incapable of understanding on a level deep enough to deter a morally reasonable adult from committing. The juvenile justice system is intended to strike a compromise suited to that disconnect between responsibility and capacity.

So ... I guess I feel that so long as the sentence handed down to these delinquent children is sufficiently heavy, I won't feel like justice has miscarried just because they aren't guilty adults. It's not necessarily the call I would have made, but I can see how an attorney general who genuinely wants to see justice done - even if he didn't care a fig for their football hero status, and even if he neither knew nor cared what the victim and her family wished - could still wrestle with the bare facts of their teenager-ness. I know I would, regardless of the call I ultimately made.

EDIT: *I should distinguish this from knowing that what they were doing is wrong. My two year old sometimes gets it into her head that what she is doing is wrong - sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly. I am pretty confident that she never understands the true reason why what she is doing is wrong, even when she correctly believes that it is wrong. That's what I'm talking about here - the capacity not to know right from wrong, but the capacity to know why something is right or wrong. Of course, you may still think I'm crazy for not believing that sixteen year olds as a body don't have the capacity to know why things are right or wrong on a deep level.

[Psychosplodge]

You know what.


Hang them.

[eldargal]

Despite being against capital punishment sometimes I agree with that.


She shouldn't have gone to the party.
She shouldn't have been raped.

She shouldn't have drank
She shouldn't have been raped

She shouldn't have gone out alone
She shouldn't have been raped

She should have worn something sensible
She shouldn't have been raped.

She should have known better
She shouldn't have been raped.

To quote a placard I saw at Slut Walk once:

Don't tell your daughter what to wear or not to drink, tell your son not to rape

[Psychosplodge]

I honestly feel it's a worse crime than manslaughter.

[Deadlift]

I honestly feel it's a worse crime than manslaughter.

For me it's not just the rape itself, but all that happened afterwards with the cover up and how the media handled it. Chilling to be honest.

[Psychosplodge]

For me it's not just the rape itself, but all that happened afterwards with the cover up and how the media handled it. Chilling to be honest.

That is equally disturbing.

Do they have a "perverting the course of justice" equivalent crime in the US?

[eldargal]

For me it's not just the rape itself, but all that happened afterwards with the cover up and how the media handled it. Chilling to be honest.

Yep. As if rape wasn't bad enough the authorities in this town tried to bury it and there are rumours that they have succeeded in the past. This isn't isolated either, it happens all over. In the US only 3% of rapists ever serve jail time.

[scadugenga]

Its worse than that because of the premeditated nature of their intent.

They used another person to lure her to the party.

They (iirc) gave her a date rape drug.

Then they raped her publicly.

And photographed it, and then shared said photographs.

Then they bragged about their actions on the Internet. (Twitter, etc.)

When brought to light, the town did its damnedest to cover for these jackholes.

Go old school, I say. Bury them alive at a crossroads, or walk them around the tree...

[eldargal]

Quite. She was dragged around to three separate parties, vaginally, anally and digitally raped, photographed and verbally abused over the course of hours. This was videotaped and the perpetrators congratulated themselves and boasted about it on social media. It was a sustained, brutal violation of this young girl and it took a blogger and a dubious hacker group to get her any semblance of justice. In court the two rapists who were actually charged and convicted apologised to their families for 'what they put them through' but not to the victim. The media focused not on the girl whose human rights were violated in an incomprehensibly savage crime but on the perpetrators. Because their promising football careers being cut short is just so much more ****ing tragic than a 16 year old girl being sexually assaulted for hours.

This isn't rare, or isolated. One in four women will be raped in the US and one in five in Britain. 97/100 times they won't see justice done.

[tawelwch]

That is equally disturbing.

Do they have a "perverting the course of justice" equivalent crime in the US?

I hope so. Over here it's hard enough to get people put in jail even without any such interference.

This link shows some of this and some case studies

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/100000-assaults-1000-rapists-sentenced-shockingly-low-conviction-rates-revealed-8446058.html

Some crime is too horrible and too dangerous to be forgiven. I normally think though that murder by the state is still murder. God will judge them.

[Earl Harbinger]

Despite being against capital punishment sometimes I agree with that.


She shouldn't have been raped.

She shouldn't have been raped

She shouldn't have been raped

She shouldn't have been raped.

She shouldn't have been raped.

To quote a placard I saw at Slut Walk once:

The fact that other people are willing to commit criminal behavior in no way absolves anyone of personal responsibility. To advocate that somebody can behave with reckless disregard for their well being because everybody else should be behaving properly is idiotic. As a parent I try to instruct my children in how to make good decisions I don't encourage them to do whatever they want because other people should know better than to try to assault them. If you make bad decisions and put yourself in a bad situation the odds of a bad outcome greatly increase. The boys actions in this case are inexcusable and horrific but that in no way means that the decisions made by the victim are beyond reproach or shouldn't be examined. Relying on other people to protect you from yourself is a terrible counter productive morally bankrupt philosophy.

[Earl Harbinger]

This isn't rare, or isolated. One in four women will be raped in the US and one in five in Britain. 97/100 times they won't see justice done.

That is a completely bogus statistic. The idea that 25% of the female population in the US has been raped must be some kind of grotesque joke. There is no data to support that claim. For that statistic to be accurate there would need to be tens of millions of rapists and rape victimes. Everybody would know multiple rapists and victims within their circle of friends/acquaintences. Girls would stop attending colleges because there would be multiple rapes on every college campus in the country every weekend. The fact that many rapes go unreported doesn't entitle people to pull numbers out of the air to manufacture a crisis of sexual violence that cannot be supported by empirical or even anecdotal evidence.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/263834/are-one-five-college-women-sexually-assaulted-heather-mac-donald

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html

[Wildeybeast]

engaging in sexual conduct with a person who was not their spouse when that person's ability to resist or consent was substantially impaired," which is the Ohio definition of rape relevant to this case.

Nab, can you clarify something? I'm reading that as meaning that you can't rape your wife in Ohio. Am I misreading that? Our rape laws used to say it was impossible to rape your wife, but we changed that a while ago when we realised it was wrong. Have our colonial cousins not caught up on that or does this mean something else?

[Gotthammer]

The big, big issue is that so often a rape victim is pilloried because her actions are "examined". Like what she was wearing, that she chose to walk alone, or how many boyfriends she's had previously. To go to court as a rape victim is often the prelude to having one's life torn apart in every detail in a way that wouldn't happen were it a non-sexual assault.
For instance if you got beaten up randomly would the defence point out that you were wearing a t-shirt? I mean obviously by showing off your biceps you were out looking for a fight! If you're going to go around dressed like that you should expect people to attack you!
Walking home from the bus stop a stranger stops you and asks the time. Look at your watch and he drags you into the bushes and stabs you. Obviously you should have been more careful! I mean walking alone near your house, you should have arranged for someone to drive you the two hundred metres home!

Go to a party with your schoolmates, people you've probably known for years. Get drugged and abused for hours on end. Nothing but foolish recklessness there :rolleyes:

[Earl Harbinger]

The big, big issue is that so often a rape victim is pilloried because her actions are "examined". Like what she was wearing, that she chose to walk alone, or how many boyfriends she's had previously. To go to court as a rape victim is often the prelude to having one's life torn apart in every detail in a way that wouldn't happen were it a non-sexual assault.
For instance if you got beaten up randomly would the defence point out that you were wearing a t-shirt? I mean obviously by showing off your biceps you were out looking for a fight! If you're going to go around dressed like that you should expect people to attack you!
Walking home from the bus stop a stranger stops you and asks the time. Look at your watch and he drags you into the bushes and stabs you. Obviously you should have been more careful! I mean walking alone near your house, you should have arranged for someone to drive you the two hundred metres home!

Go to a party with your schoolmates, people you've probably known for years. Get drugged and abused for hours on end. Nothing but foolish recklessness there :rolleyes:

So you don't think people have personal responsiblity for their actions? Should people accused of certain crimes not be allowed to defend themselves in court with whatever strategy their lawyers think is best? If you want rape to be treated as a serious crime and carry very serious penalties you should understand that people are going to try to avoid being found guilty in court.

The big problem with rape convictions isn't the wardrobe of the victim it's the frequent lack of witnesses. In this particular case in Ohio you had photos, video, posted remarks etc. which made the prosecution's case much easier. Often rape cases are simply a he said/she said case which is inherently difficult to prosecute. In such a case the prosecution is trying to convince a jury that the victim's version of events is the true one in the absence of corraborating eyewitnesses and physical evidence. The jury has an obligation to thoroughly evaluate the victim's character because her trustworthyness is all the prosecution has. Likewise the defense will try to prove she shouldn't be trusted. It would be irresponsible not to examine the actions of the two parties leading up to the alleged rape.

[eldargal]

The fact that other people are willing to commit criminal behavior in no way absolves anyone of personal responsibility. To advocate that somebody can behave with reckless disregard for their well being because everybody else should be behaving properly is idiotic. As a parent I try to instruct my children in how to make good decisions I don't encourage them to do whatever they want because other people should know better than to try to assault them. If you make bad decisions and put yourself in a bad situation the odds of a bad outcome greatly increase. The boys actions in this case are inexcusable and horrific but that in no way means that the decisions made by the victim are beyond reproach or shouldn't be examined. Relying on other people to protect you from yourself is a terrible counter productive morally bankrupt philosophy.
Uh yes, it ******* well does actually. She isn't responsible for the attack, her attackers are. It doesn't matter a jot that she was out partying, or drinking because none of those things are an invitation to rape. She didn't do anything wrong, her attackers did. The end. This argument only gets trotted out for rape. If some guy gets punched without provocation while waiting a night club line no one says 'Well he shouldn't have been out clubbing
'. I mean look at what you are actually saying:
Girls shouldn't go to parties.
Girls shouldn't drink
Girls shouldn't go out alone
Girls shouldn't wear anything that could be considered sexy
etc.
Because these are all 'reckless'.

In other words girls have to live in a self imposed prison and behave in a constrained way because a lot of men don't realise that rape is monstrous or simply don't care. **** that. The problem here is NOT the girls behaviour, it is the behaviour of the rapist. This girl wasn't walking through a bad neighbourhood on her own after dark, she went to a party. The moment you say her actions are reproachful you shift the blame from the criminal to the victim.

That makes YOU part of the problem. YOU are contributing to a rape culture that says it is the girls responsibility not to get raped. Because there is a difference between saying to a girl 'if you go partying on your own you need to be careful' and 'if you go partying on your own you are being reckless and some of the responsibility for your rape will be yours'.

[Earl Harbinger]

Uh yes, it ******* well does actually. She isn't responsible for the attack, her attackers are. It doesn't matter a jot that she was out partying, or drinking because none of those things are an invitation to rape. She didn't do anything wrong, her attackers did. The end. This argument only gets trotted out for rape. If some guy gets punched without provocation while waiting a night club line no one says 'Well he shouldn't have been out clubbing
'. I mean look at what you are actually saying:
Girls shouldn't go to parties.
Girls shouldn't drink
Girls shouldn't go out alone
Girls shouldn't wear anything that could be considered sexy
etc.

In other words girls have to live in a self imposed prison and behave in a constrained way because a lot of men don't realise that rape is monstrous or simply don't care. **** that. The problem here is NOT the girls behaviour, it is the behaviour of the rapist. This girl wasn't walking through a bad neighbourhood on her own after dark, she went to a party. The moment you say her actions are reproachful you shift the blame from the criminal to the victim.

That makes YOU part of the problem. YOU are contributing to a rape culture that says it is the girls responsibility not to get raped.

It surprises me that you chose to twist my post into that myopic viewpoint. Here, let me try it: Listen to what you're saying, women don't need to know how to defend themselves, they shouldn't take the time to evaluate the decisions they make, they don't need to develop situational awareness or judge the character of the people they go out with and they need never drink responsibly. Why should women live such a reckless hedonistic lifestyle? Because if something bad happens to them it's not their fault. Wow, that felt rather petty but surprisingly good.;)

In every single post I've made in this thread I've stated that there is no excuse to commit sexual assault or rape. The rapists made a conscious decision to commit rape, they bear full responsiblility for the exercise of their free will.

I fail to understand why you think it helps women or society in general to act as if the roofie laced alochol, the house party and the "rape crew" fell out of the sky and landed in this girl's living room. Women need to be careful, they need exercise caution and wisdom if they're going to go out to party. It would be great if we could change society and human nature to create a utopia where men never try to have sex with women against their will but until such a time it would benefit women greatly and reduce the odds of them getting raped if they avoided placing themselves in situations conducive to getting assaulted.

You're a woman, you're in a hallway with two doors, behind door A is a room with your friends, having a few pints, watching the telly, listening to music etc., behind door B is a group of boisterous drunk hooligans in a pub. If you had to walk through one of the doors which would you choose? I agree with you 100% that whichever door you choose nobody has the right to sexually assault you and that anyone who does should prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We're in agreement there but you can't honestly argue that a woman should treat both doors as the same because men should know better than to rape a woman. If women take simple common sense steps to minimize their chances of getting assaulted they will be much less likely to get assaulted, I don't know why you seem to have a problem with that logic.

[ElectricPaladin]

I've had my car broken into a couple of times.

Once I was angle-parked - which created a secluded space between my car and the car next to me - and I left a big black case (my army bag, btw) in the front seat, which attracted attention. Someone broke into my car and the car next to mine with a champaign bottle and stole stuff.

Now, was it my fault that my car was broken into?

No.

I behaved ethically. I did something that by all rights I should have been safe doing. Some douche-battleship decided to parasitize me and steal from me. He deserves nothing but scorn, and I deserve sympathy.

Now, are there things I can do to make myself safer? Absolutely. I could have put my army bag in the trunk instead. I could have driven a bit longer and found a more exposed parking spot. I could have not gone to that particular store for game night, on the edge - as it is - of a lousy part of Oakland. And that's what I've done from now on.

Here's the thing, though. When I called my wife in tears because my entire Blood Ravens army had been stolen, she didn't respond with "well, you should have been more careful." She was empathetic. She comforted me. She helped me plan to replace it.

When a girl is raped and the immediate response is "here's all the things you're doing wrong that makes this your fault," something is seriously f^cked up.

Secondly - and this is by far more disturbing - while it's one thing to acknowledge that people can do certain things to make themselves safer, it's something else entirely to put the onus entirely on the victim. When people talk about how girls need to dress differently, act differently, and so on in order to prevent themselves from getting raped, and don't bother to talk about how men need to behave differently... really? I mean, what would you do if the mayor of your city got up and said "we've given up on policing our streets - here's a list of things you can do to make yourself less likely to be the target of criminals. Good luck folks."

If I have daughters, I will teach them to protect themselves. I'd be stupid not to. No one has ever said that feminism means failing to acknowledge the painful realities of the world we live in. But I will also teach my sons to be proud, decent, compassionate men who would never hurt a girl (you know, unless she's into that sort of thing and asks really nicely). And I will never stop advocating, agitating, and protesting for the kind of laws and policies that will stop people from raping each other. Because the onus of the law belongs on the perpetrator, not the victim.

Secondly, let's go back to my car.

My car was broken into a second time because someone got into the garage under my apartment building. Luckily, nothing of value was taken. I say luckily, because my car was under my freaking apartment building. I had every reason to believe that it was safe. I might very well have left an army bag, or my phone, or my wallet, or whatever in there. Luckily, I didn't.

A lot of people think that rape is like having your car broken into on the street. The fact is, though, that that's wrong. Statistically speaking, most rapes are not violent rapes. Most rapists aren't random monsters roaming the streets. They are boyfriends and girlfriends, co-workers, best friends, roommates, dorm-mates, uncles and aunts, fathers and mothers. Most girls that are raped aren't raped because they were dressed like a "slut" and "drunk" in the "wrong part of town." They're raped because their boyfriends drug them, because their bosses coerce them, or their parents attacked them. They're raped because their friend who they trusted to be the designated driver decides to take advantage of them.

We like to think that rape is about random strangers because that's an easier face to deal with. You have an image of "rapist," and he's a stranger, his face hidden, walking down the street at night, looking for someone to hurt. What you can't deal with - what you try to ignore, regardless of the facts - is that the rapist looks like everyone else. He doesn't stalk his victim. He takes advantage of someone in a moment of entirely understandable weakness. And it isn't anyone's fault but the rapists.

[scadugenga]

The fact that other people are willing to commit criminal behavior in no way absolves anyone of personal responsibility. To advocate that somebody can behave with reckless disregard for their well being because everybody else should be behaving properly is idiotic. As a parent I try to instruct my children in how to make good decisions I don't encourage them to do whatever they want because other people should know better than to try to assault them. If you make bad decisions and put yourself in a bad situation the odds of a bad outcome greatly increase. The boys actions in this case are inexcusable and horrific but that in no way means that the decisions made by the victim are beyond reproach or shouldn't be examined. Relying on other people to protect you from yourself is a terrible counter productive morally bankrupt philosophy.

This is so repugnantly ignorant I have a hard time believing its not just a pathetic attempt to troll.

If, by some unholy reason you are serious, then you actually need to read the facts surrounding this case, and then modify your stance, or shut your trap. Because, indeed, you are exactly part of the problem.

[Earl Harbinger]

This is so repugnantly ignorant I have a hard time believing its not just a pathetic attempt to troll.

If, by some unholy reason you are serious, then you actually need to read the facts surrounding this case, and then modify your stance, or shut your trap. Because, indeed, you are exactly part of the problem.

If suggesting that a girl should take the time to seriously consider the possible consequences of getting into a car with strangers, accepting alocholic beverages that have already been opened from those strangers, and cross state lines to attend a house party full of strangers and alcohol makes me part of the "problem" then I will gladly be part of the "problem." You seem to equate the idea of being cautious with blaming the victim. I don't see how you can conflate the two. It's never okay to rape somebody. It's also not a good idea to place your well being at the mercy of strangers. You can take smart simple common sense precautions and still get assaulted. There are plenty of bad people out there that do bad things, trying to minimize your exposure to such people is smart. What happened to that girl wasn't inevitable. It's unfortunate that you seem so intent on belittling the idea that women should empower themselves by taking responsibility for their personal safety.

Where did her parents think she was going? Did they know who she was traveling with? Did they have a way to contact her? Did they ask her to check in with them? Did they try to contact her? There's lots of steps that people can take to reduce the chances of running into trouble. Hopeful trouble doesn't run into you but you try your best to prepare for that too. This incident should make women/girls reflect on how they handle their own safety, their friends' safety, their children's safety. If examining how it happened, how it could have been avoided and how you should handle your own behavior is going to be shouted down with accusations of blaming the victim then we're not doing all we can to stop this kind of thing from happening again.

[Nabterayl]

Nab, can you clarify something? I'm reading that as meaning that you can't rape your wife in Ohio. Am I misreading that? Our rape laws used to say it was impossible to rape your wife, but we changed that a while ago when we realised it was wrong. Have our colonial cousins not caught up on that or does this mean something else?
Mostly I was just quoting the part of the statute that is relevant to this case. All fifty states define marital rape as a crime, often under the general rape statute, though the effective definition of "marital rape" may be slightly different than "regular" rape. In Ohio, the way it's treated is that a separate part of the rape statute makes it a crime to engage in sexual conduct with anybody through the purposeful use or threat of force. That applies even to cohabitating spouses (there is a specific call-out that marriage is not a defense to yhis section). That does make marital rape slightly narrower in Ohio than non-marital rape. Specifically, it excludes the cases of sexual conduct with a person 13 or younger and with a person whose ability to consent is substantially impaired. The first is fine, since you can't legally have a spouse that young in Ohio anyway. The second is, I suppose, more up for debate. Personally I think that sexual conduct with one's drunk or unconscious spouse should not be considered rape absent other factors, but I can see the argument otherwise. I am a little iffier on the fact that in Ohio I can get my spouse intoxicated specifically to lower her resistance to sexual advances, engage in sexual conduct with her, and it STILL doesn't count as rape. But I can see the argument - consenting spouses might well get intoxicated to lower inhibitions, and is that so wrong?

But anyway, that's the law.

[Deadlift]

The fact that other people are willing to commit criminal behavior in no way absolves anyone of personal responsibility. To advocate that somebody can behave with reckless disregard for their well being because everybody else should be behaving properly is idiotic. As a parent I try to instruct my children in how to make good decisions I don't encourage them to do whatever they want because other people should know better than to try to assault them. If you make bad decisions and put yourself in a bad situation the odds of a bad outcome greatly increase. The boys actions in this case are inexcusable and horrific but that in no way means that the decisions made by the victim are beyond reproach or shouldn't be examined. Relying on other people to protect you from yourself is a terrible counter productive morally bankrupt philosophy.

I dont usually resort to this, but you are a prick. Nothing, BUT nothing excuses anybody from harming somebody else in this kind of way and your excuse or justification of this makes me wonder, are you living in Ohio ?

[eldargal]

I want to elaborate a bit more on why Earl Harbingers statement is so repugnant.

He says the victim bears some responsibility because she was reckless in going to the party and drinking. Look at that for a moment. Going to a social gathering and imbibing alcoholic beverages is reckless behavior for a woman. Why? Because a man might rape them. So here women are being held responsible for the actions of men. The message here is that it is the womans responsibility to avoid being raped, not the mans responsibility not to rape.

What message does this send to young men? That it's ok, you may have raped that girl but it isn't really your fault, it's hers. So if you find yourself in a similar situation you can be forgiven for doing it again, right? Oh and when you do rape a girl you only have a 3% chance of serving prison time, so what have you got to lose?

Thus springs forth the rape culture that permeates many societies.

It is an unfortunate precaution that girls have to go to parties in groups, literally watch what we drink and generally be on guard at parties. It isn't a responsibility, it is a BURDEN. It's not just something we have to do with strangers, either. Most rape victims know their attacker. We have to be on guard ALWAYS not because of anything we have done but because a lot of men can't control themselves and when someone like Earl Harbinger shifts responsibility to the victim he is in a small way contributing to the culture that allows this behaviour to continue.

Alcohol facilitated rapes actually make up only a small amount of reported rape cases, but they are in effect the poster boy for rape and so the attitude that people display towards them is important. When people shift the blame onto the victim, it sends the message that the rapists were not fully responsible for their crime. Which is despicable, repugnant and simply untrue.

On a happier note, the responses to Earl Harbinger from the chaps on this forum make me happy and proud. Raise your sons like that and tell them to raise their sons and call out friend when they make jokes about rape and so forth and one day we might have a society that genuinely does not tolerate this behaviour.

[Psychosplodge]

God will judge them.

Really? so He'll watch (being everywhere) but wait till they're dead to possibly doing owt?

@EP, the way I read Harbingers comments it's your fault for owning a car. Which is ridiculous.

[Denzark]

EEG - I am not convinced by your figures of 1/4 Us and 1/5 UK woman have been raped. I just do not believe if you lined up the 35-odd million women in this country, that 7 mill will have been raped.

Subjected to some sort of sexual assault, maybe pressured into sex but actual rape?

[ElectricPaladin]

@EP, the way I read Harbingers comments it's your fault for owning a car. Which is ridiculous.


I know. I'm one of those naughty, reckless car owners who really ought to know better. Don't you remember the good old days where car owners knew their place and street thugs weren't tempted? All those smooth glass windows, those big round tires... it's no surprise that car break-ins are up.

But you know, those things only happen in the big cities, where people have no ethics. In the country and the suburbs, people don't break into each others cars. It's because they still follow traditional values. And also because those car owners know how to behave.


EEG - I am not convinced by your figures of 1/4 Us and 1/5 UK woman have been raped. I just do not believe if you lined up the 35-odd million women in this country, that 7 mill will have been raped.

Subjected to some sort of sexual assault, maybe pressured into sex but actual rape?

I'm in a rush right now, but if I can find the studies, I'll post them here. Suffice it to say, for now, that I used to think the same as you, and then I took a fact to the knee.

Also suffice it to say that even if the rape rate were much lower, we could agree that it was too high.

Final point: "rape" and "coercive sex" are the same thing. "Violent rape" and "coercive sex" are different things. "Coerced into sex" and "pressured into sex" are different things. If a teenage boy whines and complains about blue balls until his girlfriend blows him, no one would call that rape, no matter how bad she feels in the morning. That's no part of the rape statistics. However, all sorts of coercive situations - from landlords taking advantage of impoverished tenants to uncles molesting their nieces - do count as rape.

Basically, "rape" is defined as "using force of some kind to coerce someone into sex." That force can be violence or threats of violence, or threats of other kinds of retribution (ie. "let me do this to you or I'll fire you/evict you/whatever").

Oh, and by the way, the monster hole of rape culture goes a lot deeper than that. In the US, 1/4 of all women have been raped (and even more sexually assaulted or molested in a less serious way), but so have about 30% of men.

Note: I'm not saying this because it takes men being raped to make it "real," I just want to put out there that rape culture, as a phenomenon, has deep roots in how we deal with sex, violence, power, and authority. It isn't a "girl issue." It's a problem for all of us to examine.

[eldargal]

The figures are problematic and vary. One issue is that the line between sexual assault and rape differs depending on who is compiling the data (do you count digital rape in with vaginal rape for example when both are classed as 'sexual assault with penetration)) and some question whether the distinction even matters. Is rape specifically vaginal penetration by a penis or is it any forced sexual act, with sexual assault being slightly less horrible things like groping and whatno. Then you have the fact that there is significant under reporting or rapes and sexual assault, only around 20% are reported to police.

The official guvmint statistics (http://www.justice.gov.uk/statistics/criminal-justice/sexual-offending-statistics) indicate that each year around 2.5% of women were sexually assaulted each year since 2009 with 0.5% being the most serious category (sexual assault with penetration). That is each year, and most anti rape advocacy and support groups believe these figures are ridiculously conservative.

Basically the official figures indicate that one fifth of British women suffer through sexual assault at some point in their life, but these figures are considered extremely conservative. I go with some of the statistics given by rape support groups which put it at much higher (I'm still being conservative, some rape support networks in the US say the stats they see put it as high as 1 in 3).

Also coercing someone into sex is still rape. This is another factor that complicates the statistics as even a lot of women don't realise some things are rape, like being bullied into sex by a boyfriend whether it gets physical or not. That is still rape, a particulalry insidious kind because it often leaves the woman feeling violated and then feeling confused about why and thinking perhaps something is wrong with her.

[scadugenga]

EEG - I am not convinced by your figures of 1/4 Us and 1/5 UK woman have been raped. I just do not believe if you lined up the 35-odd million women in this country, that 7 mill will have been raped.

Subjected to some sort of sexual assault, maybe pressured into sex but actual rape?

Denz,

Back in Uni I worked in a crisis response job.

The stats EG posted are accurate. 1 in 4 women and 1 in 12 men are victims of sexual abuse/assault.

Because of the oppositions placed on the victim, offtimes by the cops/prosecutors, very few cases make it to court.

Most cases go unreported because of yh

[Earl Harbinger]

I've had my car broken into a couple of times.

Once I was angle-parked - which created a secluded space between my car and the car next to me - and I left a big black case (my army bag, btw) in the front seat, which attracted attention. Someone broke into my car and the car next to mine with a champaign bottle and stole stuff.

Now, was it my fault that my car was broken into?

No.

I behaved ethically. I did something that by all rights I should have been safe doing. Some douche-battleship decided to parasitize me and steal from me. He deserves nothing but scorn, and I deserve sympathy.

Now, are there things I can do to make myself safer? Absolutely. I could have put my army bag in the trunk instead. I could have driven a bit longer and found a more exposed parking spot. I could have not gone to that particular store for game night, on the edge - as it is - of a lousy part of Oakland. And that's what I've done from now on.

Here's the thing, though. When I called my wife in tears because my entire Blood Ravens army had been stolen, she didn't respond with "well, you should have been more careful." She was empathetic. She comforted me. She helped me plan to replace it.

When a girl is raped and the immediate response is "here's all the things you're doing wrong that makes this your fault," something is seriously f^cked up.

Secondly - and this is by far more disturbing - while it's one thing to acknowledge that people can do certain things to make themselves safer, it's something else entirely to put the onus entirely on the victim. When people talk about how girls need to dress differently, act differently, and so on in order to prevent themselves from getting raped, and don't bother to talk about how men need to behave differently... really? I mean, what would you do if the mayor of your city got up and said "we've given up on policing our streets - here's a list of things you can do to make yourself less likely to be the target of criminals. Good luck folks."

If I have daughters, I will teach them to protect themselves. I'd be stupid not to. No one has ever said that feminism means failing to acknowledge the painful realities of the world we live in. But I will also teach my sons to be proud, decent, compassionate men who would never hurt a girl (you know, unless she's into that sort of thing and asks really nicely). And I will never stop advocating, agitating, and protesting for the kind of laws and policies that will stop people from raping each other. Because the onus of the law belongs on the perpetrator, not the victim.

Secondly, let's go back to my car.

My car was broken into a second time because someone got into the garage under my apartment building. Luckily, nothing of value was taken. I say luckily, because my car was under my freaking apartment building. I had every reason to believe that it was safe. I might very well have left an army bag, or my phone, or my wallet, or whatever in there. Luckily, I didn't.

A lot of people think that rape is like having your car broken into on the street. The fact is, though, that that's wrong. Statistically speaking, most rapes are not violent rapes. Most rapists aren't random monsters roaming the streets. They are boyfriends and girlfriends, co-workers, best friends, roommates, dorm-mates, uncles and aunts, fathers and mothers. Most girls that are raped aren't raped because they were dressed like a "slut" and "drunk" in the "wrong part of town." They're raped because their boyfriends drug them, because their bosses coerce them, or their parents attacked them. They're raped because their friend who they trusted to be the designated driver decides to take advantage of them.

We like to think that rape is about random strangers because that's an easier face to deal with. You have an image of "rapist," and he's a stranger, his face hidden, walking down the street at night, looking for someone to hurt. What you can't deal with - what you try to ignore, regardless of the facts - is that the rapist looks like everyone else. He doesn't stalk his victim. He takes advantage of someone in a moment of entirely understandable weakness. And it isn't anyone's fault but the rapists.

Nobody is responsible for the actions of another person (with the obvious exceptions for young children and the mentally ill/disabled who are incapable of being responsible for themselves). Park your car wherever you want, its location doesn't make you responsible or liable for the actions of others or justify somebody else's criminal behavior against you.

It's not your fault that somebody stole your Blood Ravens. That sucks and you have my sympathy, I'd hate to have any of my armies stolen. It's unfortunate that that type of crime usually goes unsolved. While you're not responsible for the crime hopefully after you got over the initial pain/shock you were able to look back on the events and see if there's cause to modify your behavior. Do you keep your armies in different places in the car now, like in the boot instead of on a seat? Do you toss a jacket or blanket over the carrying case so that it's not visible from outside the car? Have you rethought where you park or what hours you park there? Did you relate your experience to the rest of your gaming club/friends to make them aware of their potential vulnerabilty? That strikes me as a rational course of action, I doubt you just shrugged and lamented that people shouldn't steal.

After your car got broken into when it was parked in your garage did you tell you neighbors/room mates/whomever about it to warn them? Caution them not to keep valuables in their cars overnight? Call it in to the police and file a report? Again, I don't think your response was a fatalistic wish that people shoudn't rob you.

You made a very salient point, a lot of rapes/molestation occur between friends and relatives. Of all the women I've known, 2 of them were rape victims, one was date raped once at college and the other was serially molested as a child by her uncle. It's a sad but necessary that we stay very vigilant with who we trust and guard our vulnerabilities.

[ElectricPaladin]

The figures are problematic and vary. One issue is that the line between sexual assault and rape differs depending on who is compiling the data (do you count digital rape in with vaginal rape for example when both are classed as 'sexual assault with penetration) and some question whether the distinction even matters. Is rape specifically vaginal penetration by a penis or is it any forced sexual act, with sexual assault being slightly less horrible things like groping and whatno.

This is a good point that I knew, and forgot to mention.

[eldargal]

Also remember that the trauma and sense of violation doesn't necessarily scale with the perceived severity of the sexual assault nor is it consistent between women. By which I mean that just because a woman was subjected to what is legally considered a less serious form of sexual assault it doesn't mean the trauma to her will be any less.

For example I know one woman who gave a presentation in front of her colleagues at her work and after finishing she was slapped on the bottom by her boss and had her buttock squeezes. She felt like she has been humiliated, degraded and reduced to a piece of meat in front of her work friends and co-workers and it completely destroyed her confidence and self esteem to the point she tried to take her own life. It took her three years of counseling to get to the point she could work again and she still has panic attacks seven years later.

[Earl Harbinger]

EEG - I am not convinced by your figures of 1/4 Us and 1/5 UK woman have been raped. I just do not believe if you lined up the 35-odd million women in this country, that 7 mill will have been raped.

Subjected to some sort of sexual assault, maybe pressured into sex but actual rape?

That's because the numbers are wrong and don't hold up under scrutiny. Don't take my word for it, examine the studies that have been done.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/263834/are-one-five-college-women-sexually-assaulted-heather-mac-donald

http://mypages.valdosta.edu/mwhatley/3600/bogustat.htm

http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html

http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/race-and-gender/in-making-campuses-safe-for-women-a-travesty-of-justice-for-men/

[eldargal]

Or you could read something with actual evidence, like this (http://drkathleenyoung.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/national-statistics-about-sexual-violence-on-college-campuses/), with sources and footnotes to back its claims rather than relying on simplistic interpretations of a complex issue or ideologically driven filth.

[Denzark]

EG - in English/Welsh law, rape used to be penetration of vagina or anus with a penis. Now it is any penetration with any object, with a sexual intent. Roughly speaking.

As to the figures, I could be very surprised I suppose. It smacks to me as hard to imagine that if i picture any significant gathering of females (family wedding, parade, Marks and Sparks on Saturday whatever) that 1 in 5 of them (UK) would be victims of rape.

As to Harbinger's comment, I feel that he has expressed himself poorly. I would hesitate to go down what I think he is saying because my grasp of language is insufficient. I think the point he is trying to make though, is just an acknowledgment that some people through commission or ommission of their own actions, leave themselves vulnerable to circumstance. This is emotive - I am NOT blaming rape victims for bringing it on themselves - and the comment 'teach your son's not to rape' as opposed to 'teach your daughter not to wear short skirts' or whatever - resonates.

[Psychosplodge]

That's because the numbers are wrong and don't hold up under scrutiny. Don't take my word for it, examine the studies that have been done.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/263834/are-one-five-college-women-sexually-assaulted-heather-mac-donald

http://mypages.valdosta.edu/mwhatley/3600/bogustat.htm

http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html

http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/race-and-gender/in-making-campuses-safe-for-women-a-travesty-of-justice-for-men/

You've got five links by two people.

You've missed the point, the Stat EG refferred to wasn't just for students, she was referring to the general population.
Now think about the your ten closest female friends.
I know at least two of mine are victims. but let me put that in context THAT I KNOW ABOUT. It's not generally something that people walk around announcing at the top of their lungs.
So I can well believe it's on the conservative side when it comes to the statistics.

[Mr Mystery]

George Takei just raised a good point on Facebook....

When a man is raped, you never hear about what he was wearing.

Sadly the actions of other men have given me a real complex. Several of my female friends have been either assaulted, abused or raped. When you help to pick up the pieces, you see the damage done. I never, ever want to be so much as unfairly accused of anything remotely like that. This means I play it ridiculously safe. Hands are kept to self. Comments are self moderated. This means I do miss out on promising leads. But I'd far rather go without than take what was not on offer. I need her to make the first physical contact, or its not happening.

[eldargal]

Also one of those articles consists of nothing more than 'if rape were really endemic at college campuses female students wouldn't attend'. Just like if child abuse were rampant in catholic schools parents wouldn't keep sending their kid there, right? Because it isn't like these women might not recall the attack, or feel too ashamed to take action, or be too scared to take action or simply not realise that there is a support network there for them?

Also reading through those articles the bias is almost palpable. I mean when an article basically starts of by stating rape is a feminist issue you know something is amiss.

Here are some actual government statistics (http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/SV-DataSheet-a.pdf)for you. But of course these will be dismissed because obviously the guvmint has a vested interest in making itself look even less competent and enforcing its laws than it actually is.

Inanationally representative surveyof adults:1
• Nearly 1 in 5 (18.3%)women and 1 in 71 men
(1.4%)reported experiencing rape atsome time in
theirlives.
• Approximately 1 in 20women and men (5.6%and
5.3%,respectively) experienced sexual violence
otherthan rape,such asbeing made topenetrate
someone else,sexual coercion, unwanted
sexual contact, or non-contact unwanted sexual
experiences, in the 12 monthspriorto the survey.
• 4.8%ofmenreportedtheyweremade topenetrate
someone else atsome time intheirlives.
• 13%ofwomen and 6%of men reported they
experienced sexual coercion atsome time in their
lives.
Remember that the official statistics are considered to be conservative by most rape support groups and anti rape activist groups. You know, the people actually helping the victims. But of course they are all just evil lying feminists.


Edit: The other articles are just as bad. They poke holes in surveys from the early nineties while providing little evidence of their own and cite two examples of 'fake rape' as if that somehow counterbalances the hundreds of thousands of rape cases that are genuine. I recommend reading this review (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/books/reviews/waragainstboys0703.htm) of one of Sommers books to get an insight into her modus operandi. Spoiler: It is scathing.

[Deadlift]

George Takei just raised a good point on Facebook....

When a man is raped, you never hear about what he was wearing.

Sadly the actions of other men have given me a real complex. Several of my female friends have been either assaulted, abused or raped. When you help to pick up the pieces, you see the damage done. I never, ever want to be so much as unfairly accused of anything remotely like that. This means I play it ridiculously safe. Hands are kept to self. Comments are self moderated. This means I do miss out on promising leads. But I'd far rather go without than take what was not on offer. I need her to make the first physical contact, or its not happening.

Keep it up, be a gentlemen and you will hook a keeper and not a one night fling. :)

[Earl Harbinger]

Or you could read something with actual evidence, like this (http://drkathleenyoung.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/national-statistics-about-sexual-violence-on-college-campuses/), with sources and footnotes to back its claims rather than relying on simplistic interpretations of a complex issue or ideologically driven filth.

Did you even read the articles? Some have footnotes too, since apparently footnotes=truth. Colleges take rape seriously, society takes rape seriously. If millions of women were being raped on college campuses year after year it would noticeable, it would be national news and it would be addressed. There isn't a college in the country that doesn't have a system in place to allow students to report rapes.

If your claim of the number of rape victims is accurate then rape is nearly as prevalent as cancer yet gets a tiny fraction of the attention. How exactly is the "rape culture" conspiring to keep tens of millions of women silent? Violent crime has been on a consistent decline for over a decade why is rape a supposed outlier crime?

[Mr Mystery]

Perhaps because all too often the victims are labelled sluts, told they were asking for it, that they should share the blame?

[ElectricPaladin]

If your claim of the number of rape victims is accurate then rape is nearly as prevalent as cancer yet gets a tiny fraction of the attention. How exactly is the "rape culture" conspiring to keep tens of millions of women silent? Violent crime has been on a consistent decline for over a decade why is rape a supposed outlier crime?


Say it with me now: "rape is not a violent crime."

Violent rape is a subset of rape. Violent rape happens, but like all violent crime, it is in decline. Most women who are raped are drugged, coerced with threats of violence, or coerced with threats of material retribution, like firing, eviction, blackmail, and so on. Others are raped by people in authority, like adults when they are minors.

This gives the lie to teaching your daughters not to be victims. Yeah, she was totally dressed like a hooker when she went to work that day. She was totally asking for it when that guy put a roofie in her drink. Rapists are not ordinary guys who are overwhelmed by lust because of how their victim-to-be was dressed. They are predators who seek out victims and are perfectly happy to use various tools of coercion to create them.

Yes, people of all sexes and genders should do what they can to avoid becoming a victim - that's just smart - but anyone can be taken advantage of by a predator, which is why the weight of action belongs on the predator, not the victim or potential victim.

[Earl Harbinger]

Say it with me now: "rape is not a violent crime."

Violent rape is a subset of rape. Violent rape happens, but like all violent crime, it is in decline. Most women who are raped are drugged, coerced with threats of violence, or coerced with threats of material retribution, like firing, eviction, blackmail, and so on. Others are raped by people in authority, like adults when they are minors.

This gives the lie to teaching your daughters not to be victims. Yeah, she was totally dressed like a hooker when she went to work that day. She was totally asking for it when that guy put a roofie in her drink. Rapists are not ordinary guys who are overwhelmed by lust because of how their victim-to-be was dressed. They are predators who seek out victims and are perfectly happy to use various tools of coercion to create them.

Yes, people of all sexes and genders should do what they can to avoid becoming a victim - that's just smart - but anyone can be taken advantage of by a predator, which is why the weight of action belongs on the predator, not the victim or potential victim.

I've never claimed that the victim ever bears any responsibility for the crime. Examining the events that led up to the crime, by both parties and objectively looking at actions could be taken to avoid such crimes isn't blaming the victim. I've also replied to your car break in post and about a half dozen other posts yet those seem to have disappeared in the limbo of moderator review.

[Earl Harbinger]

How long is the typical lag between submittal, mod review and posting? I've tried to respond to everyone's comments yet there's at least a half dozen posts that haven't shown up yet.

[Mr Mystery]

There isn't any. I'm like, posting this right now. Live and stuff.

[ElectricPaladin]

Yeah, we don't do that there. Sh*t just gets posted.

[YorkNecromancer]

Firstly, Eldargal, *highfive*

Secondly, here's a handy graphic looking at American rape rates. It makes the statistics startlingly clear. It's depressing as all get out.

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18asmh2vy91enjpg/original.jpg

These are two individuals who gangraped an underage girl, made images of it, joked and laughed about it, felt absolutely no remorse... Do i need to go on?

Their "punishment" is a joke. If they were 45 and ugly, I strongly doubt there'd be any defense of them at all. But they're young, successful, blah blah blah, whatever. They need to be in prison, and for a longer stretch than they've been given, but they won't be, because rape culture exists.

As for the rape apologists on this thread:

If the likelihood of rape depends on how revealing a woman's clothes are, the number of rapes would increase significantly in summer. But they don't.

If rape only happens to women who have had consensual sex in the past, virgins wouldn’t get raped. But they do.

If rape is more likely to happen to attractive women based on conventional standards, obese women wouldn’t get raped. But they do.

STOP VICTIM BLAMING. The moment you start to say "yeah, but..." YOU ARE A RAPE APOLOGIST, AND YOU ARE PART OF THE FRAKKING PROBLEM. There is never an excuse for rape. Never.

[Wildeybeast]

Mostly I was just quoting the part of the statute that is relevant to this case. All fifty states define marital rape as a crime, often under the general rape statute, though the effective definition of "marital rape" may be slightly different than "regular" rape. In Ohio, the way it's treated is that a separate part of the rape statute makes it a crime to engage in sexual conduct with anybody through the purposeful use or threat of force. That applies even to cohabitating spouses (there is a specific call-out that marriage is not a defense to yhis section). That does make marital rape slightly narrower in Ohio than non-marital rape. Specifically, it excludes the cases of sexual conduct with a person 13 or younger and with a person whose ability to consent is substantially impaired. The first is fine, since you can't legally have a spouse that young in Ohio anyway. The second is, I suppose, more up for debate. Personally I think that sexual conduct with one's drunk or unconscious spouse should not be considered rape absent other factors, but I can see the argument otherwise. I am a little iffier on the fact that in Ohio I can get my spouse intoxicated specifically to lower her resistance to sexual advances, engage in sexual conduct with her, and it STILL doesn't count as rape. But I can see the argument - consenting spouses might well get intoxicated to lower inhibitions, and is that so wrong?

But anyway, that's the law.

Thanks for the response Nab. Not sure my cold-addled brain fully comprehended it, but I appreciate your efforts to explain.

[Earl Harbinger]

Yeah, we don't do that there. Sh*t just gets posted.

I have had multiple posts not post directly. I get a little window that says my post will be posted pending moderator approval. It doesn't happen to every post but it's happened.

*I just tried to submit a post and got the same message regarding moderator review, it seems that if I use Advanced instead of Quick Reply the post goes into review limbo.

[Earl Harbinger]

Firstly, Eldargal, *highfive*

Secondly, here's a handy graphic looking at American rape rates. It makes the statistics startlingly clear. It's depressing as all get out.

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18asmh2vy91enjpg/original.jpg

These are two individuals who gangraped an underage girl, made images of it, joked and laughed about it, felt absolutely no remorse... Do i need to go on?

Their "punishment" is a joke. If they were 45 and ugly, I strongly doubt there'd be any defense of them at all. But they're young, successful, blah blah blah, whatever. They need to be in prison, and for a longer stretch than they've been given, but they won't be, because rape culture exists.

As for the rape apologists on this thread:

If the likelihood of rape depends on how revealing a woman's clothes are, the number of rapes would increase significantly in summer. But they don't.

If rape only happens to women who have had consensual sex in the past, virgins wouldn’t get raped. But they do.

If rape is more likely to happen to attractive women based on conventional standards, obese women wouldn’t get raped. But they do.

STOP VICTIM BLAMING. The moment you start to say "yeah, but..." YOU ARE A RAPE APOLOGIST, AND YOU ARE PART OF THE FRAKKING PROBLEM. There is never an excuse for rape. Never.

That's a meaningless graphic without the actual numbers represented and the source.

[Mr Mystery]

Now you mention it, that happened when I first joined. Give it a bit :)

[Wolfshade]

I have had multiple posts not post directly. I get a little window that says my post will be posted pending moderator approval. It doesn't happen to every post but it's happened.

*I just tried to submit a post and got the same message regarding moderator review, it seems that if I use Advanced instead of Quick Reply the post goes into review limbo.
Your first couple of posts/threads require approval, then once you have had enough sucessful posts then you won't need to. If in doubt message one of the mods :)

[Earl Harbinger]

Now you mention it, that happened when I first joined. Give it a bit :)

I'm not mad bro, I just didn't want to have to retype everything.

[ElectricPaladin]

Now you mention it, that happened when I first joined. Give it a bit :)

Weird... that never happened to me.

[Mr Mystery]

That's be because you're a bunghole. Bunghole!

[Necron2.0]

While it's all well and good to feel a little sorry for a 16 year old kid who will spend years in Juvenile Hall and the rest of his life marked by America's draconic sex offender laws

I don't really have much to add to this conversation that hasn't been expressed in one way or another, except to comment to this. Recently I ran across this woman's (http://suzzan-blac.deviantart.com/) art gallery on DeviantArt. Her paintings reflect the emotions in her that resulted from years of sexual abuse. Looking at these images, and given all the high profile rapes we've been hearing about all over the world, involving both men and women, I can only conclude that the world's sex offense laws aren't nearly draconian enough, not even by half. This crap has gone on way too long, and it needs to stop! If people are going to act like barbarian throw-backs, they should be punished like barbarian throw-backs. Personally, I feel live gibbeting should be involved.

[ElectricPaladin]

That's be because you're a bunghole. Bunghole!

It's... it's true. I am. *sob*


If people are going to act like barbarian throw-backs, they should be punished like barbarian throw-backs. Personally, I feel live gibbeting should be involved.

So, I kind of have a problem with this.

Look, if we're going to view raping people as "cheating" as "getting ahead undeservedly," then it makes sense to do this. What do you do when someone gets something they don't deserve? You take it back, of course, or somehow punish them. So, when Moneybags T. Jerkbutt steals a bunch of money from his company, you take the money away from him and give it back to the people he took it from, and then you put him in a position where he won't be trading anything but cigarettes for a while.

(Oh, wait, we don't do that with people who steal billions of dollars from corporations? Oops. Oh, well - I'm talking about an ideal legal system, anyway).

Right, so, the thing is that I don't view someone who rapes someone else as getting ahead. They're not getting something good at the expense of someone else and need to suffer in order to "balance the books." In my opinion, they're expressing a deep psychological flaw. They're in pain, and they have the bad judgment to express that pain by hurting others.

Remember: rape isn't about lust. It isn't about sex. It's about power, violence, and anger. Depression can manifest that way, as can PTSD, which is a common side effect of... being the victim of abuse one's self.

Now, I'm not saying that rapists should get slapped on the wrist and sent on their way. I think that the first step should be to isolate them away from normal people where they can't do anymore harm. That's basic triage - first you prevent further harm, then you treat the harmed. However, I would be a lot more comfortable if after that, we viewed sex offenders as humans in need of healing, rather than tried to dehumanize them so we can hurt them without feeling bad about it. Even these two douche-battleships from Ohio.

What bothers me about about the coverage isn't that there's a thread of sympathy for the rapists. There's a time and a place for that. It's two things:

Firstly, there was no sympathy for the victim. I mean, however much I feel sorry for how screwed in the head you've got to be to do that to someone, I feel sorrier for the person who was victimized, and I always will.

Secondly, the sympathy for the rapists was in terms of how this conviction would effect their lives. Not how their own choices will effect their lives. Not how screwed up and pained they were to have done this in the first place. You know, I feel this way, too, sometimes. When one of my students hands me what looks like a beautiful piece of work, but I gradually realize that it's riddled with flaws and plagiarisms, I have a moment of regret for the thing it could have been - the thing I thought it was. However, that's in the context of realizing that this thing never really existed.

The talking heads are experiencing grief for what the world thought these boys were, but weren't. For fine, upstanding young men with the world ahead of them. In fact, they were damaged, cruel, vindictive time bombs. It's delusional to say "what a shame that bomb exploded, it was so pretty" - what you mean is "damn! I thought that bomb was a work of art. I really wish it hadn't been a bomb."

And to say that to exclusion of "OMG, that girl got her fingers blown off!" is just... inexcusable.

[Nabterayl]

Thanks for the response Nab. Not sure my cold-addled brain fully comprehended it, but I appreciate your efforts to explain.
Cliff's Notes - according to Ohio law:

I have compel a woman to have sex with me by force. Rape, even if the woman is my spouse.
I have sex with a woman after threatening to use force. Rape, even if the woman is my spouse.
I have sex with a woman after deliberately getting her drunk. Rape only if the woman is not my spouse.
I have sex with a woman who happens to be drunk. Rape only if the woman is not my spouse.
I have sex with a woman is drunk, whether I got her that way or not. She asks me to have sex with her. Rape only if the woman is not my spouse.

As to Earl Harbinger's general point about personal responsibility ... I guess I agree, but only in a fairly trivial sense. I think it's true, as a point of criminal law philosophy, that nobody deserves to be victimized by crime. Nevertheless, I agree that one can recklessly expose oneself to a crime. For instance, suppose there's a neighborhood in my city known to be haunted by a robber who mugs people for cash between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00 AM. If I go into that neighborhood at 3:30, talking loudly on my cell phone about how I really have to get to an ATM because I have $10,000 cash in my wallet. The robber mugs me.

Did I recklessly expose myself to that crime? Yes.
Did I deserve that crime? No.

Same thing is true of rape, but the real question is, what constitutes recklessly exposing oneself to rape? Dating people? Having sex with people? Getting drunk? Wearing revealing clothes? Walking alone? Walking alone at night? No, no, no, no, no, and no. I suppose if there was a neighborhood known to be haunted by a rapist who attacked people between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00 AM, and a woman walked into that neighborhood during that time talking loudly to herself about how nobody knows where she is right now, she has no self defense skills, and golly gee she hopes she doesn't get raped ... sure, I could call that recklessly exposing herself to rape.

But she still wouldn't deserve it.

[ElectricPaladin]

As to Earl Harbinger's general point about personal responsibility ... I guess I agree, but only in a fairly trivial sense. I think it's true, as a point of criminal law philosophy, that nobody deserves to be victimized by crime. Nevertheless, I agree that one can recklessly expose oneself to a crime. For instance, suppose there's a neighborhood in my city known to be haunted by a robber who mugs people for cash between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00 AM. If I go into that neighborhood at 3:30, talking loudly on my cell phone about how I really have to get to an ATM because I have $10,000 cash in my wallet. The robber mugs me.

Did I recklessly expose myself to that crime? Yes.
Did I deserve that crime? No.

Same thing is true of rape, but the real question is, what constitutes recklessly exposing oneself to rape? Dating people? Having sex with people? Getting drunk? Wearing revealing clothes? Walking alone? Walking alone at night? No, no, no, no, no, and no. I suppose if there was a neighborhood known to be haunted by a rapist who attacked people between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00 AM, and a woman walked into that neighborhood during that time talking loudly to herself about how nobody knows where she is right now, she has no self defense skills, and golly gee she hopes she doesn't get raped ... sure, I could call that recklessly exposing herself to rape.

But she still wouldn't deserve it.


This is exactly what I was trying to say a few pages ago - thank you.

[Necron2.0]

So, I kind of have a problem with this.

Look, if we're going to view raping people as ....

EP, I'm sure those are some fine words, and heartfelt too, but for me they are a whole bunch of "I don't care." So what if the rapist is damaged goods? Hell, that's not what I'd call a revelation. I seriously and thoroughly do not care at all what motivates a rapist. That is entirely irrelevant. I don't even care if there was some other bung-hole standing over him with a sword to his back "forcing" him to rape the girl. He had a choice, and he chose wrong. His actions were wrong, regardless of what the motivations might have been, and that is all that matters. Full stop - end of story. That is fundamentally why our "justice" system is so pear-shaped - too much time worrying over motives when it is behavior and behavior alone that the Justices should be concerning themselves with. The woman (the REAL victim) deserves justice. Above any and all other forms of compensation, she deserves to see her antagonists bloodied.

And don't think I'm being an ivory tower hard case. I come from a fairly long line of mercenaries, vigilantes, assassins, murders, thieves and maybe even one or two rapists. In a nutshell, cast-off European gentry. Each of my ancestors, when Karma came back around, at least had the decency to own their fates. If these boys couldn't do the time, they shouldn't have done the crime.

++++

Adding a game related theme to this, in a D&D game I ran several years back, the major antagonist was a female anti-paladin. She had started life as a sweet little princess, growing up in an abusive family, in the midst of a Machiavellian court. Was she a victim? Yes. Was her life tragic? Yes. Was she born evil? No. Was she thoroughly evil by age 16? Yes. Did she hurt people? Yes. Did she need to die? OH, HELL YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ElectricPaladin]

EP, I'm sure those are some fine words, and heartfelt too, but for me they are a whole bunch of "I don't care." So what if the rapist is damaged goods? Hell, that's not what I'd call a revelation. I seriously and thoroughly do not care at all what motivates a rapist. That is entirely irrelevant. I don't even care if there was some other bung-hole standing over him with a sword to his back "forcing" him to rape the girl. He had a choice, and he chose wrong. His actions were wrong, regardless of what the motivations might have been, and that is all that matters. Full stop - end of story. That is fundamentally why our "justice" system is so pear-shaped - too much time worrying over motives when it is behavior and behavior alone that the Justices should be concerning themselves with. The woman (the REAL victim) deserves justice. Above any and all other forms of compensation, she deserves to see her antagonists bloodied.

I dunno, man... I think I'd rather see problems solved than just kicked down the road a little. I really do get where you're coming from, but I don't see how it actually helps to take one person's pain, then add more pain. What good does it do? What does it achieve? Someone who's deranged enough to rape isn't going to say "woah, wait a minute - I could go to jail if I do this!" If they had that much forethought or capacity to think of others, they would have found a more productive - or at least less self-destructive - channel for their pain. So the rapist goes to jail for a while, and then he gets out and... what? He rapes someone else. Or he manages to stop doing that, and maybe gets a job somewhere, where he makes life a living hell for his employees? Or cons someone into marrying him, and produces a kid or to, and abuses them in some way? And now we've got all this additional pain in the world, but when he had that son of a b*tch in our hands, we just smacked him around and sent him back out.

We could have done so much more. We could have taken a stab at solving the problem. It seems like a waste.

I think I just don't see "justice" as the same thing as "retribution." Justice isn't giving someone what they deserve, it's making the world right again. I give to charity because I want to give people what they need; I don't worry about whether or not they deserve it. The money I give might end up going to pay for drugs, or it might go to pay for the housing of a dude who's a total jerk, but I don't care. I'm trying to make the world right by helping someone in need - "deserve" doesn't come into it.

Sometimes making the world right again involves causing someone pain. If you take a rapist and put him in an institution, away from his family, and force him to confront his deeds, and force him into therapy, and keep him there until you think he's ready to rejoin society - his entire life, if need be - well... that's going to be painful, sure. But at least we're trying to make things right, rather than just hurting someone.

I don't want to criticize you too much. I really get where you're coming from. I just don't agree with your conclusions.

The one thing I really will argue with is your claim that our legal system spends "too much time worrying over motives." Our system doesn't give a rat's @ss about motives. America doesn't care if you're selling pot because you were trying to keep your sister in school, or if you were pressured into it by your big brother, or if you do it because you're saving up the cash to get out of the house where you're being molested by your dad... if you're a black kid and they catch you with enough pot, you're going to do time. And if you have a little more money and the right kind of background, you don't. We don't care. Maybe there'd be more justice in the world if we did.



And don't think I'm being an ivory tower hard case. I come from a fairly long line of mercenaries, vigilantes, assassins, murders, thieves and maybe even one or two rapists. In a nutshell, cast-off European gentry. Each of my ancestors, when Karma came back around, at least had the decency to own their fates. If these boys couldn't do the time, they shouldn't have done the crime.


Maybe that's the difference. I come from a long line of Jewish tailors who were killed, beaten, raped, and chased out of their homes. I see the world as a problem to be solved; if retribution worked, we'd be living in heaven by now.

[Nabterayl]

That is fundamentally why our "justice" system is so pear-shaped - too much time worrying over motives when it is behavior and behavior alone that the Justices should be concerning themselves with.


The one thing I really will argue with is your claim that our legal system spends "too much time worrying over motives." Our system doesn't give a rat's @ss about motives.
If I can interject on this point - you're both being overly broad. Whether or not American justice cares about motives varies from crime to crime. To stick to Ohio, whether sexual conduct is a crime is independent of motive. The crime is engaging in sexual conduct under one of a variety of factual circumstances. The offender's intent is irrelevant, as are the offender's beliefs. It doesn't matter if the offender believes that the conduct was welcome, for instance, even if he had every reason to believe that. It also doesn't matter if the offender's intent was to show his ardent devotion to the victim. Suppose I show up at a party in Ohio where there is a girl who I have a major crush on. Unbeknownst to me, she (a) finds me repulsive and (b) got high before coming to the party. I start chatting her up and, joy of joys, she reciprocates my advances. She hauls me upstairs and demands that I have my way with her right then and there. Because I really like this girl and am excited that she apparently really likes me, we have sex. Because we were in Ohio, I have totally raped that girl. My entirely sincere belief that she consented to our hook-up and my entirely sincere motivation to show her how into her I am are, in Ohio, completely irrelevant.

On the other hand, homicide is rarely independent of motive or belief. In fact, if all you know is that I killed a man, you don't even known enough to tell that I've committed a crime. Nor is it enough to know that I killed a man who was at the time of death in coitus with my wife in our bed. In order to tell whether my homicide was a crime - let alone which crime - you have to know about my motives and beliefs.

I don't personally think the American justice system is overly concerned with the motives or beliefs of the accused, but it's simply not true to say that it's obsessed with motives and beliefs or to say that it doesn't care.

[Necron2.0]

I don't want to criticize you too much. I really get where you're coming from. I just don't agree with your conclusions.

What!!!! <*gasp, shock, horror*> :D

I thought on the internet, everyone had to agree. I thought there was a law or something. ;)

[Wildeybeast]

Cliff's Notes - according to Ohio law:

I have compel a woman to have sex with me by force. Rape, even if the woman is my spouse.
I have sex with a woman after threatening to use force. Rape, even if the woman is my spouse.
I have sex with a woman after deliberately getting her drunk. Rape only if the woman is not my spouse.
I have sex with a woman who happens to be drunk. Rape only if the woman is not my spouse.
I have sex with a woman is drunk, whether I got her that way or not. She asks me to have sex with her. Rape only if the woman is not my spouse.


Right, I got it this time, ta. :)

[Necron2.0]

I have sex with a woman is drunk, whether I got her that way or not. She asks me to have sex with her. Rape only if the woman is not my spouse.


And I'll be honest, this is just blatant asshatery in the extreme, calling it rape when it's the woman who initiates the sexual encounter. I knew of a case where a boy was kicked out of college and labeled a sexual predator because he had sex with a girl after a party, in which she got drunk. The thing was, he wasn't at the party. She got drunk, went to his dorm room (where he was sleeping), stripped naked, got into his bed, and had sex with him. In the morning, she claimed he raped her, because she'd said months earlier that she would never sleep with him. And somehow, despite all the evidence and witnesses otherwise, that was good enough for the Dean and the local police. :rolleyes:

When I think of rape and the consequences of it, I think of an act so heinous that it can leave behind the kind of mental anguish and damage that is so evident in this woman's (http://suzzan-blac.deviantart.com/) art, not something that is "Oh, I made a mistake and humiliated myself, so I'm going to get someone else in trouble so I can save face and pretend it wasn't any of my doing."

And guess who'd be the one being "raped" for the rest of his life if that girl had gotten pregnant?

[scadugenga]

Did you even read the articles? Some have footnotes too, since apparently footnotes=truth. Colleges take rape seriously, society takes rape seriously. If millions of women were being raped on college campuses year after year it would noticeable, it would be national news and it would be addressed. There isn't a college in the country that doesn't have a system in place to allow students to report rapes.

If your claim of the number of rape victims is accurate then rape is nearly as prevalent as cancer yet gets a tiny fraction of the attention. How exactly is the "rape culture" conspiring to keep tens of millions of women silent? Violent crime has been on a consistent decline for over a decade why is rape a supposed outlier crime?

Just because there is a place to report college rapes doesn't mean they will be used. Quite similar to the fact that we have 911 available to anyone and it doesn't always get used. In fact, the very people who are supposed to protect them often victimize them all over again: from nurses/doctors who refuse the morning after pill, or do not do a rape kit, to DA's who verbally brutalize the victim into not pressing charges because prosecuting assault cases is not easy, and have a low win rate. And DA's are measured on the cases that they win.

Anecdote time: while at university, I had more than a dozen women friends who were victims of sexual assault. And that was before I went into crisis management/response stuff. None of their attackers were brought to justice. There was a entire fraternity busted for making GHB (date rape drug) in a 50 gallon drum and there were no criminal charges, and damned few university sanctions leveled against them.

In fact, two of my friends were drugged and assaulted while at a party at that frat prior to the drug-making discovery. And yes, no charges.

I have seen what happens to rape victims, and it's soul-destroying to watch.

I have seen previously vibrant and joyous ladies become withdrawn and suicidal. I have seen them shrink from any human contact, and violently so if the contact was from a guy. I have also seen women go the opposite route and sleep with anyone that approaches them. Their reasoning? "If I give it away, they can't take it.

I have seen much more rare instances where the lady becomes stronger after the adversity...but even they still are emotionally scarred and may never be the same.

I could be even more specific, but that's not really public forum material.

The bare fact is that making love to someone should be the pinnacle of a loving and joyous expression between two people. Rape destroys that...sometimes to the point where it can never be experienced, or can impact the victim's ability to form and maintain normal personal relationships.

That is why I have such a draconian zero tolerance philosophy. The punishment rarely if ever fits the crime.

[eldargal]

Did you even read the articles? Some have footnotes too, since apparently footnotes=truth. Colleges take rape seriously, society takes rape seriously. If millions of women were being raped on college campuses year after year it would noticeable, it would be national news and it would be addressed. There isn't a college in the country that doesn't have a system in place to allow students to report rapes.

If your claim of the number of rape victims is accurate then rape is nearly as prevalent as cancer yet gets a tiny fraction of the attention. How exactly is the "rape culture" conspiring to keep tens of millions of women silent? Violent crime has been on a consistent decline for over a decade why is rape a supposed outlier crime?

I did actually read them, funnily enough. Maybe you should? Only ONE of them has academic standard citations and footnotes. The studies cited were all from the early nineties and the articles at no point produce their own evidence, they simply poke holes in these few studies. They may well have selected simply because they were flawed studies, but the fact is there are innumerable, more recent studies which show similarly high rates of rape in Britain and the US.

Colleges SAY they take rape seriously and society SAYS it takes rape seriously. The fact is actions speak louder than words, only 3% of rapists ever serve time in prison. As has already been mentioned just because there is a system to report something in place doesn't mean something will be reported. How the victim expects to be treated is important, if they don't think their report will be taken seriously or fear they will be victimised then they tend not to report it. This is exactly what happens with most rapes. The police will treat you like a suspect, the defense lawyers will tear every aspect of your character to shreds and you will have scum on internet forums telling people it was your responsibility to stop the men committing a crime.

So a lot of women just don't bother. They are denied justice because justice is made incredibly hard to get through insitutionalised victimisation of rape victims.

Then there is the fact that our brains are very durable things and a lot of women repress the memories of rape especially when they occur at a young age. The trauma manifests in other ways but until they undergo treatment they ma not realise they have been raped.


Did I recklessly expose myself to that crime? Yes.
Did I deserve that crime? No.

Same thing is true of rape, but the real question is, what constitutes recklessly exposing oneself to rape? Dating people? Having sex with people? Getting drunk? Wearing revealing clothes? Walking alone? Walking alone at night? No, no, no, no, no, and no. I suppose if there was a neighborhood known to be haunted by a rapist who attacked people between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00 AM, and a woman walked into that neighborhood during that time talking loudly to herself about how nobody knows where she is right now, she has no self defense skills, and golly gee she hopes she doesn't get raped ... sure, I could call that recklessly exposing herself to rape.

This is the thing isn't, look at what people consider 'reckless' behaviour in women:
Going to a social gathering.
Drinking alcohol
Going outside at night
Wearing clothes (seriously, it doesn't matter what. Rape predates the mini-skirt)
Walking around with an escort

So if woman are to avoid rape they have to stay inside, not drink and wear a burka. Is any of this reckless behaviour for men? Not really. Maybe walking through a strange, violent neighbourhood at night but that's it. If a man gets seriously injured when someone punches them in an unrpovoked attack at a party no one says 'well he shouldn't have been at the party should he?'.
Now I know you aren't arguing in favour of this Nab, I'm just making the point again.

Of course this is all nonsense. Rapes are motivated by what a woman wears, they are motivated by a desire for domination. More rapes happen in the victims home than anywhere else, the vast majority of rapes are planned and committed by people known to the victim.


One last point I want to address in those ludicrous articles earl harbinger posted is the argument that the reported rapes aren't all rapes because the surveyor decides what is or isn't rape. There are several reasons for this:
Rape is a legally defined thing, even if the definitions are somewhat contentious.
Most women don't realise what these definitions are.

For example a lot of women think rape isn't rape if the man is your husband boyfriend. It still is. These women have internalised and normalised abuse. These are still rapes, they are still harmful. An analogy can be made with wife beating the mid 20th century. It was considered something that was ok, necessary discipline. It was still abuse and it still hurt women more than just physically, but they thought it was normal.

An awful lot of women think that their boyfriend raping them isn't rape if they have bought them presents. It still is, of course, they are just ****** with the womans head by trying to guilt trip her into sex or making her feel guilty for denying them sex.

A lot of women also think that rape has to have a violent component, that if they are blackmailed into sex or simply held down and not actually beaten or raped at the point of a knife/gun it isn't rape. It still is.

In other words because a lot of women have internalised the idea that when they are in a relationship they have an obligation to perform sex acts with/on their boyfriend they don't perceive being forced into those acts regardless of their feelings as 'rape'. But it is legally rape and the people doing the surveys know it.

[ElectricPaladin]

I agree that, as a man, the idea that I could have consensual sex with someone and the next morning I could be accused of raping her is pretty terrifying. But, dudes, it doesn't really happen all that often. There have been a handful of high-profile cases, but really? It's not at all common. In most cases where the accused made that his defense, it was either obviously false, and proved so by other evidence, or the dude got off. We have a legal system that favors the accused - quite justly - and that doesn't actually change when its a rape case.

I mean, seriously. I don't think you could find very many cases where the dude even bothered with this defense, and even fewer of them where it was a credible defense; I doubt you could find even one where it resulted in a conviction that was later proven to be in error. I mean, there probably was at least one, but I doubt you'll find it, out there in the vast wilderness of information that is the Internet.

[eldargal]

Estimates of false rape claims vary, the FBI says 2% but there methodology is considered troubled. The Home Office here says up to 8% but that relies on police judgement and the study itself points out that there is still a culture of suspicion against the victim. Other countries report a similar rate. In fact is is generally accepted that 2-8% is considered a safe bet.

A few studies produce much higher rates, and are usually universally condemned (except by anti-feminists with an agenda, funnily enough). I remember reading about one where a researcher declared a rape to false because 'she didn't look disheveled enough'. Because that right there is an objective measurement.:rolleyes:

So it is reasonably rare, but when it does occur it is shameful on many levels. Apart from slandering an innocent man it ultimately does womens rights a lot of damage by furthering the impression that this is common or something women do as a matter of course.

[Mr Mystery]

And this is why I don't try anything when drunk. It's not worth the risk either way!

As for going for drunk girls whilst sober, I see not difference to having slipped her a roofie.

[eldargal]

Sensible.:) It is still rape if you are both drunk.

I want to address the 'false rape' thing again.

This is what you get when you report a rape:

Police interrogation
General suspicion
Every aspect of your behaviour on the night of the alleged incident questioned
Your character in general questioned
A 3 in one hundred chance that the alleged rapist will be punished.

If you want to punish a man for some real or perceived slight, pretty much anything has a better chance of success than making a false rape claim.

[Earl Harbinger]

I did actually read them, funnily enough. Maybe you should? Only ONE of them has academic standard citations and footnotes. The studies cited were all from the early nineties and the articles at no point produce their own evidence, they simply poke holes in these few studies. They may well have selected simply because they were flawed studies, but the fact is there are innumerable, more recent studies which show similarly high rates of rape in Britain and the US.

Colleges SAY they take rape seriously and society SAYS it takes rape seriously. The fact is actions speak louder than words, only 3% of rapists ever serve time in prison. As has already been mentioned just because there is a system to report something in place doesn't mean something will be reported. How the victim expects to be treated is important, if they don't think their report will be taken seriously or fear they will be victimised then they tend not to report it. This is exactly what happens with most rapes. The police will treat you like a suspect, the defense lawyers will tear every aspect of your character to shreds and you will have scum on internet forums telling people it was your responsibility to stop the men committing a crime.

So a lot of women just don't bother. They are denied justice because justice is made incredibly hard to get through insitutionalised victimisation of rape victims.

Then there is the fact that our brains are very durable things and a lot of women repress the memories of rape especially when they occur at a young age. The trauma manifests in other ways but until they undergo treatment they ma not realise they have been raped.


This is the thing isn't, look at what people consider 'reckless' behaviour in women:
Going to a social gathering.
Drinking alcohol
Going outside at night
Wearing clothes (seriously, it doesn't matter what. Rape predates the mini-skirt)
Walking around with an escort

So if woman are to avoid rape they have to stay inside, not drink and wear a burka. Is any of this reckless behaviour for men? Not really. Maybe walking through a strange, violent neighbourhood at night but that's it. If a man gets seriously injured when someone punches them in an unrpovoked attack at a party no one says 'well he shouldn't have been at the party should he?'.
Now I know you aren't arguing in favour of this Nab, I'm just making the point again.

Of course this is all nonsense. Rapes are motivated by what a woman wears, they are motivated by a desire for domination. More rapes happen in the victims home than anywhere else, the vast majority of rapes are planned and committed by people known to the victim.


One last point I want to address in those ludicrous articles earl harbinger posted is the argument that the reported rapes aren't all rapes because the surveyor decides what is or isn't rape. There are several reasons for this:
Rape is a legally defined thing, even if the definitions are somewhat contentious.
Most women don't realise what these definitions are.

For example a lot of women think rape isn't rape if the man is your husband boyfriend. It still is. These women have internalised and normalised abuse. These are still rapes, they are still harmful. An analogy can be made with wife beating the mid 20th century. It was considered something that was ok, necessary discipline. It was still abuse and it still hurt women more than just physically, but they thought it was normal.

An awful lot of women think that their boyfriend raping them isn't rape if they have bought them presents. It still is, of course, they are just ****** with the womans head by trying to guilt trip her into sex or making her feel guilty for denying them sex.

A lot of women also think that rape has to have a violent component, that if they are blackmailed into sex or simply held down and not actually beaten or raped at the point of a knife/gun it isn't rape. It still is.

In other words because a lot of women have internalised the idea that when they are in a relationship they have an obligation to perform sex acts with/on their boyfriend they don't perceive being forced into those acts regardless of their feelings as 'rape'. But it is legally rape and the people doing the surveys know it.

So rapes go unreported because women don't realize they've been raped and because the police/DA discourage taking rape claims to trial? The logic in the first case is absurd and the second case is likelymostly due to the difficulty in turning accusations into convictions. The idea that women are rape victims but just don't realize it because they've been brainwashed by a misogynystic society into accepting it and therefore need to embrace their victimhood so they can be empowered is bunk. If a boyfriend/husband asks their SO for sex and she says no and he asks again and she says yes that's consensual sex. If the woman is sober and gives the man a verbal commitment response of consent you can't call it rape. If a man asks for sex from his SO and she says no, never relents and the man forces himself on her that's rape, that's the definition of nonconsentual sex. Going through the process of asking for sex more than once before getting an affirmative response does not make a man a rapist and using such a definition to categorize millions of women as rape victims is insidious.

Secondly, lack of prosecution of rape allegations has a lot to do with the mechanics of the criminal justice system and its politics. Going with the stipulation that most rapes aren't violent rapes and are instead acquaintance/date rapes there is a lot less physical evidence to support forced sex. Getting dragged into an alley, getting slapped around and your clothes ripped off and raped creates plentyof physical evidence to support a rape allegation. There is much less in an instance of snuggling with somebody after a date and then he won't take no for an answer when he wants sex or having a friendtake you home after drinking at a party and he takes advantage of you. Without eyewitnesses or supporting physical evidence you get a he said/she said case where the strongest evidence for the prosecution is the woman's word. The woman may be 100% true in her testimony but it's hard to get convictions if that's all there is to the case. The accused is still innocent until proven guilty and if the victim's testimony is the crux of the case than the defense attorneys will try to shred her character and make her seem as unreliable as possible because that's their job. Since that makes convictions difficult and since prosecutors build their careers on high conviction rates they won't be in a hurry to go to trial and if they're professionals they'll give the victim an honest assessment of the odds of winning the case.

[Mr Mystery]

To me, it's more about knowing it was consensual. Odd I know, but I need a firm yes before it's action stations. Or at least letting her remove the clothing.

And this us why I don't get laid very often!

[Nabterayl]

To me, it's more about knowing it was consensual. Odd I know, but I need a firm yes before it's action stations. Or at least letting her remove the clothing.

And this us why I don't get laid very often!
Exactly. In fact I think the most important reform of rape law in the Anglo tradition world was the shift away from the law asking, "Did she resist?" to "Did she say yes?"

If the question the law wants us to ask is "Did she say yes?" (and personally, I think that's as it should be), then it follows inescapably that you cannot have legal sex with an intoxicated person (though we might make an exception for spouses, as Ohio does). Drunk people, legally speaking, are incapable of say yes to anything - they can't sell their houses, they can't make wills, etc. Heck, we don't even trust their judgment enough to drive. Lesson: don't trust what drunk people say, whether it's "I love you guys," "I will totally sell you my entire eldar collection for $5," "I am fine to drive," or "I want you to **** me."

[Wildeybeast]

Exactly. In fact I think the most important reform of rape law in the Anglo tradition world was the shift away from the law asking, "Did she resist?" to "Did she say yes?"

If the question the law wants us to ask is "Did she say yes?" (and personally, I think that's as it should be), then it follows inescapably that you cannot have legal sex with an intoxicated person (though we might make an exception for spouses, as Ohio does). Drunk people, legally speaking, are incapable of say yes to anything - they can't sell their houses, they can't make wills, etc. Heck, we don't even trust their judgment enough to drive. Lesson: don't trust what drunk people say, whether it's "I love you guys," "I will totally sell you my entire eldar collection for $5," "I am fine to drive," or "I want you to **** me."

I disagree. Freely given consent is freely given consent whether you are drunk or not. Your judgement may be impaired and you may regret it the next morning, but having sex with a drunk woman who says 'eff me six ways from sunday' is not rape. If she doesn't clearly express it, then there is a case to answer, but not if she has clearly given consent and not at any stage withdrawn it.

[Mr Mystery]

I disagree. A drunk person has lowered inhibitions, and a tendency to do dumb stuff.

Plus it's a really great way to wind up with unplanned pregnancy and a choice of diseases. I get what you're saying, but its not something I would do myself. One could say alcohol's detrimental affect upon stiffies is natures little hint about going for drunken rumpy pumpy!

[Wildeybeast]

I agree it might not be the most sensible course of action, I'm just pointing out that saying 'yes' is exactly the same whether you are drunk or sober.

[Mr Mystery]

Less likely to me it, and far less likely to remember :)

Adds up to too high a risk for me. And you know, sometimes the answer to yes is no!

[Earl Harbinger]

If there is a bad part of town (and every good sized city has them) it makes sense to avoid it as much as possible. You have the right to walk down a public sidewalk anytime you want (and I would gladly stand shoulder to shoulder with you on the ramparts to fight against the tyranny of those that would deny you that right) but I would discourage anyone from doing so in an area and at a time that increases the possibility of being waylaid by people with bad intentions. Now, some would argue that by altering my life and avoiding that part of town the bad guys "win." I don't see it that way. To me, the bad guys win when they rob and savagely beat me when I'm walking through the ghetto in the middle of the night for no good reason. I can live a perfectly happy and fulfilling life without every strolling through the projects at 2AM so why would I? I'm only responsible for my own actions, me walking in the ghetto doesn't make me responsible for somebody else's decision to stab or bludgeon me, they decided to commit that crime of their own free will. However, I do bear responsibility for choosing to walk down that street at night, nobody forced me to do it. Taking ownership for your own choices and actions doesn't make you responsible for the actions or choices of others.

True story, a few years back the wife of a childhood friend of mine was driving to the story with their children and while stopped at a red light a distracted driver behind her didn't see that the light was red and rear ended her at speed. My friend's wife did nothing wrong, she was obeying the law, doing right, while going grocery shopping, the accident wasn't her fault. Their son was also in the car, he almost died, spent 6 months in pediatric intensive care and suffered irreparable brain damage. Bad things can and do happen to good people who aren't doing anything wrong. Knowing that is why I think it's a rational and morally justifiable position to encourage people to try to minimize the risks they expose themselves to.

A stranger on the street steps up to a woman and offers her a beverage in a plastic cup. Should the woman accept it and drink it?

A male student at a college party offers a coed that hardly knows him a drink in a red solo cup. Should she drink it?

A girl's friend says that her cousin's friend knows of a big party happening at somebody's house in a nearby town and the cousins is willing to pick them up and bring them along. Should the girl respond with Sounds like fun, YOLO or should she say suggest that they do something else that night?

Saying no in all 3 scenarios doesn't guarantee that life will be all sunshine and rainbows and saying yes doesn't make the girl responsible for the actions of any scumbag that tries to assault her in any way. What's the best course of action? What should I advise my daughter to do when she's 16?

Nobody in this thread is saying that wearing a miniskirt is an invitation to rape. I don't think anybody in society would actually argue that it does. That seems to be a bit of a straw man.

[Earl Harbinger]

I did actually read them, funnily enough. Maybe you should? Only ONE of them has academic standard citations and footnotes. The studies cited were all from the early nineties and the articles at no point produce their own evidence, they simply poke holes in these few studies. They may well have selected simply because they were flawed studies, but the fact is there are innumerable, more recent studies which show similarly high rates of rape in Britain and the US.

Colleges SAY they take rape seriously and society SAYS it takes rape seriously. The fact is actions speak louder than words, only 3% of rapists ever serve time in prison. As has already been mentioned just because there is a system to report something in place doesn't mean something will be reported. How the victim expects to be treated is important, if they don't think their report will be taken seriously or fear they will be victimised then they tend not to report it. This is exactly what happens with most rapes. The police will treat you like a suspect, the defense lawyers will tear every aspect of your character to shreds and you will have scum on internet forums telling people it was your responsibility to stop the men committing a crime.

So a lot of women just don't bother. They are denied justice because justice is made incredibly hard to get through insitutionalised victimisation of rape victims.

Then there is the fact that our brains are very durable things and a lot of women repress the memories of rape especially when they occur at a young age. The trauma manifests in other ways but until they undergo treatment they ma not realise they have been raped.


This is the thing isn't, look at what people consider 'reckless' behaviour in women:
Going to a social gathering.
Drinking alcohol
Going outside at night
Wearing clothes (seriously, it doesn't matter what. Rape predates the mini-skirt)
Walking around with an escort

So if woman are to avoid rape they have to stay inside, not drink and wear a burka. Is any of this reckless behaviour for men? Not really. Maybe walking through a strange, violent neighbourhood at night but that's it. If a man gets seriously injured when someone punches them in an unrpovoked attack at a party no one says 'well he shouldn't have been at the party should he?'.
Now I know you aren't arguing in favour of this Nab, I'm just making the point again.

Of course this is all nonsense. Rapes are motivated by what a woman wears, they are motivated by a desire for domination. More rapes happen in the victims home than anywhere else, the vast majority of rapes are planned and committed by people known to the victim.


One last point I want to address in those ludicrous articles earl harbinger posted is the argument that the reported rapes aren't all rapes because the surveyor decides what is or isn't rape. There are several reasons for this:
Rape is a legally defined thing, even if the definitions are somewhat contentious.
Most women don't realise what these definitions are.

For example a lot of women think rape isn't rape if the man is your husband boyfriend. It still is. These women have internalised and normalised abuse. These are still rapes, they are still harmful. An analogy can be made with wife beating the mid 20th century. It was considered something that was ok, necessary discipline. It was still abuse and it still hurt women more than just physically, but they thought it was normal.

An awful lot of women think that their boyfriend raping them isn't rape if they have bought them presents. It still is, of course, they are just ****** with the womans head by trying to guilt trip her into sex or making her feel guilty for denying them sex.

A lot of women also think that rape has to have a violent component, that if they are blackmailed into sex or simply held down and not actually beaten or raped at the point of a knife/gun it isn't rape. It still is.

In other words because a lot of women have internalised the idea that when they are in a relationship they have an obligation to perform sex acts with/on their boyfriend they don't perceive being forced into those acts regardless of their feelings as 'rape'. But it is legally rape and the people doing the surveys know it.

No means no, a woman's refusal of sexual advances is unequivocal. That's a bright shining line supported by society and the legal system. If a woman initially says yes but later changes her mind and says no her no trumps the earlier yes. Any man that testified that he forced himself on a woman after she said no would be convicted of rape.

There's a binary set of responses to the query for sex, yes or no. A willful yes, given by a sober woman is an unequivalent yes. You cannot argue that a woman that gives a willful yes because she's "pressured" by her boyfriend really meant no and is a rape victim. Asking for sex is not coercion. Using charm and/or persistence is not the equivalent of force. Sure, a woman could be in an unhealthy emotional abusive relationship with a man who does things like try to guilt trip her into having sex with lines like If you love me you'll have sex with me. That would certainly be despicable and it would be a definite sign that the woman should seriously re evaluate her relationship. However, it would be a pretty high mountain to climb to convince a judge or jury or the public at large that the willful consent of the woman in such a circumstance didn't count as consent.

If a man is sitting on the couch playing Battlefield 3 on Xbox live and his girlfriend asks him to go have sex with her and he says not right now I'm busy and the girl sits next to him and starts fondling his genitals until he says yes does that make the man a rape victim and the woman a rapist? I can honestly say that's happened to me and I didn't feel like a victim it just seemed like she made a very persuasive argument.

If a woman willfully gives consent and both parties believe it to be a valid consent and then have sex I take issue with calling it rape because the woman doesn't realize that it is. That seems to be a pretty extreme position to take. I will concede that if you use a definition of rape so broad that it counts yes's as no's then yes there is a huge chunk of the female populace that are unreported rape victims. It seems that one could take issue with trying to use such a broad definition as the de facto definition of rape and not be a woman hating fiend.

[Nabterayl]

I agree it might not be the most sensible course of action, I'm just pointing out that saying 'yes' is exactly the same whether you are drunk or sober.
If that's your moral philosophy, then that's your moral philosophy and good for you for being consistent. However, it isn't the law's philosophy. A drunk person is generally incompetent at law, so it makes sense for rape law to be consistent with that. If you're intoxicated, for instance, you cannot make me your heir apparemt no matter how much you want to at the time. Neither can you sell me any of your property, or bind yourself by contract, etc. you can't get married, either. Given all that, it makes sense that you cannot legally consent to sex.

[Deadlift]

But what if the shoes on the other foot, I go out, get quite pissed and a woman asks me to go back to have sex with her. I say yes and in the morning feel like I have been taken advantage of and decide I have indeed been raped. What are the police actually going to do about that then ? Besides laugh their faces off and send meon my way ? Obviously non of this is going to happen in my world ;) but when the sex is reversed it comes across a bit absurd.

[eldargal]

I agree it might not be the most sensible course of action, I'm just pointing out that saying 'yes' is exactly the same whether you are drunk or sober.

But it isn't, one occurs when judgement is severely impaired, one does not. Consent solicited from someone whose judgement is impaired (which is not something that just legally applies to women) is not consent. If you have sex with a drunk woman (as opposed to mildly inebriated) you are taking advantage of that and if the woman is inebriated enough it can be classified as drug facilitated rape. Usually she has to be unconscious or nearly unconscious for it to count, contrary to popular opinion it isn't just being inebriated.

It is also worth remembering that while hard to estimate only around 5% of reported sexual assaults use drugs of which alcohol is the most common. Of those most again are cases where the drugs were covertly or openly administered with the goal of lowering the victims capacity to resist. You see some really nasty crap at universities with this in mind, one of my friends was raped after attending a party on campus. She didn't drink, she just ate some fruit salad. The ******* had soaked some of the fruit in vodka.


But what if the shoes on the other foot, I go out, get quite pissed and a woman asks me to go back to have sex with her. I say yes and in the morning feel like I have been taken advantage of and decide I have indeed been raped. What are the police actually going to do about that then ? Besides laugh their faces off and send meon my way ? Obviously non of this is going to happen in my world ;) but when the sex is reversed it comes across a bit absurd.

That is a valid concern, female-male rape (while unusual) isn't as rare as people think and it isn't taken seriously. It IS rape if you drink too much and a woman takes advantage.

[scadugenga]

But it isn't, one occurs when judgement is severely impaired, one does not. Consent solicited from someone whose judgement is impaired (which is not something that just legally applies to women) is not consent. If you have sex with a drunk woman (as opposed to mildly inebriated) you are taking advantage of that and if the woman is inebriated enough it can be classified as drug facilitated rape. Usually she has to be unconscious or nearly unconscious for it to count, contrary to popular opinion it isn't just being inebriated.

It is also worth remembering that while hard to estimate only around 5% of reported sexual assaults use drugs of which alcohol is the most common. Of those most again are cases where the drugs were covertly or openly administered with the goal of lowering the victims capacity to resist. You see some really nasty crap at universities with this in mind, one of my friends was raped after attending a party on campus. She didn't drink, she just ate some fruit salad. The ******* had soaked some of the fruit in vodka.



That is a valid concern, female-male rape (while unusual) isn't as rare as people think and it isn't taken seriously. It IS rape if you drink too much and a woman takes advantage.

But even less likely to be reported, much less prosecuted. The DA would find it nigh impossible to convince a jury that the man was raped in Dead's scenario.

[Nabterayl]

Less likely to me it, and far less likely to remember :)

Adds up to too high a risk for me. And you know, sometimes the answer to yes is no!


But what if the shoes on the other foot, I go out, get quite pissed and a woman asks me to go back to have sex with her. I say yes and in the morning feel like I have been taken advantage of and decide I have indeed been raped. What are the police actually going to do about that then ? Besides laugh their faces off and send meon my way ? Obviously non of this is going to happen in my world ;) but when the sex is reversed it comes across a bit absurd.
Yeah, what EG said. You may or may not be right that the police won't take you seriously, but the solution to that problem is not for the law to say you were not raped. In all fairness, you HAVE been raped, the law should recognize that, and the police should too.

[Necron2.0]

I agree that, as a man, the idea that I could have consensual sex with someone and the next morning I could be accused of raping her is pretty terrifying. But, dudes, it doesn't really happen all that often. There have been a handful of high-profile cases, but really? It's not at all common. In most cases where the accused made that his defense, it was either obviously false, and proved so by other evidence, or the dude got off. We have a legal system that favors the accused - quite justly - and that doesn't actually change when its a rape case.

I would like to point out that there are many more venues in which someone can be judged than just the legal one. I've known of people losing their jobs, being kicked out of schools, losing their standing in society, losing their house, losing their families, etc., etc., etc. based solely on the strength of an accusation, with no legal charges ever filed. In the case I mentioned, the boy was dismissed from Harvard because this girl had sex with him and then cried rape. Eventually he had to leave the state, because the girl's hairy-leg crew kept harassing him. Six years ago the Duke Lacrosse team was suspended from play and their coach was forced to resign because of the false claim of rape by a psychotic woman who was so clearly and obviously lying. Meanwhile the Dean's first response was to come out with a public apology, even before the police had reported any findings whatsoever, effectively stating that, "Yes, the boys at Duke are rapists." And then, there's the case of Tawana Brawley - which is so heinous on so many levels, I just won't go into it.

As I've said, I feel that real rapists (violent rapists) should be gibbeted alive. Haven't made up my mind on what special slice of Hell false rape accusers should enjoy.

P.S. The woman who cried rape against the Duke Lacrosse team? She's being tried for murder now. Apparently she stabbed her boyfriend to death.

[Nabterayl]

Necron, what do you mean by "violent?" A man who drugs a woman for the purpose of reducing her ability to resist and has sex with her is not violent by the usual meaning of the term, but surely that man is a real rapist in your eyes?

It sounds like your policy opinions on this topic have been heavily influenced by your friend's case, for which I can hardly blame you - I think it is both true that rape is under reported and overly tolerated and that an mere accusation of rape can be unfairly, almost irrecoverably, damning. But is your problem with the law here, or society's relation to the concept of rape?

You've advocated a law that is blind to motives and sees only behavior. Virtually all American rape laws fit that description. To generalize, in America it is rape to have sex with a person who is of unsound mind or, being of sound mind, has not manifested consent. There are generally sensible caveats for cases of sex between spouses. Is that not a sensible, enlightened definition of rape? Surely you would not advocate a return to the days when a rape victim had to prove resistance?

[ElectricPaladin]

Nec - can I call you Nec? - allow me to introduce you to a concept called the "availability heuristic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic)." It will totally blow your mind. The link, by the way, is to the wikipedia article, in case you are curious or I get something wrong.

Here's the deal: your brain is stupid. Not just your brain - all human brains. The thing is, it may not feel like it, but thinking actually costs calories. Your brain doesn't realize that we live in a world of super-abundant calories, so it constantly cuts corners, finding places where it can "fudge it" and still give you more or less reliable results. Social scientists call these unfortunate calorie-saving methods "heuristics," and the "availability" one is one of the weirdest.

Basically, the availability heuristic means that your brain assumes that the frequency with which you see something happen is roughly equivalent to the frequency with which it happens. And this, were humans not morons, would make sense. The trouble is that our brains are also really bad at distinguishing language from reality, which means that every time you hear about something or see it represented - ie. in the news on TV - your brain logs it as an occurrence. And since humans just love to babble about unlikely sh*t whenever it happens...

The availability heuristic is why people are more afraid to fly than they are to drive. It's why people are more afraid of sharks than bees. And, it's why we are convinced that things like false rape accusations happen all the time.

So, yes, things like the Duke University case are travesties of justice. However, they are extremely rare. We just think they happen a lot because we hear about them a lot, and our brains are stupid.

On to the thorny issue of rape...

I think that there are two problems:

Firstly, our law and our culture haven't caught up with some of the realities. For example: a lot of people use getting a little lubricated (ie. tipsy) as a way to work up the nerve to have sex. Is this a great idea? Probably not, but it's also common. We either need to develop laws about rape and consent that work with this cultural reality, or we need to develop a different cultural reality. Until we do one or the other, we're going to have a Frankensein's Monster of rules and excuses and accusations and apologies and sometimes even unnecessary court cases.

However, I want to stress that this logistical abomination is far, far superior to "drunk girl is fair game." That's even worse. I'd rather a few guys get dragged before a grand jury here and there and end up not being indicted because the judge realizes "he was drunk, she was drunk, everyone was drunk and nobody meant any harm - next case!" than people who maliciously prey on drunk girls get off free. Remember, rape accusations are rare, false accusations are rarer, and rape convictions are rarest. We're not going to see a lot of innocent guys go to jail because they drunkenly hit on an equally drunken girl and had drunken sex that she regretted in the morning. Remember the availability heuristic - this doesn't really happen that often.

Secondly - and this is by far more more controversial and I fully expect that people will disagree, I only hope they understand my good intentions here - I think that what we call "rape" is a lot of smaller ideas glued together. There's "violent rape" - sexual contact that is achieved through violence or the threat of violence - which is totally unambiguous. There's coercive rape, which is a lot messier. Is it coercive rape if she tells him that she'll tell everyone at school that he's gay if he doesn't have sex with her? I mean, he doesn't have to, but if this story takes place in the right community and she has the right kind of social power, the consequences if he doesn't... I dunno. Like I said, it's messy. If raping someone is "abrogating their agency and insulting their dignity by using them for sex against their will," what about situations in which the person could still, technically, chose not to have sex, but some differential in power made that choice unduly costly?

Then there's the concept of violation. I maintain that it's possible for Person A to feel violated even if Person B did nothing actually wrong. As Nabterayl mentioned, although the state prosecutes rape cases, you haven't got much of a case if the victim refuses to make an accusation or follow through with cooperation. Therefore, you've got a rape case if Person A feels violated enough to blow the whistle, but does that by itself mean that Person B did something wrong?

Of course not. And that's why we have a system of law, legal standards, investigation, and a criminal justice system that significantly favors the defendant. Because we're still figuring this out, and probably will be for a long time.

[Necron2.0]

Necron, what do you mean by "violent?" A man who drugs a woman for the purpose of reducing her ability to resist and has sex with her is not violent by the usual meaning of the term.

We could go around in circles on terms. I think everyone gets what I mean. However, to be clear, in this case I'm referring to the sub-definition "to caused by force." Implicit to that is the notion of non-consent. Now, poisoning is a crime. It could be considered a violent act - it is a violation of a person's body. Rendering someone unconscious so that you could have unsolicited sex with them is still forcing yourself upon them - in this case the force happens to be chemical and not kinetic.

I will admit there are grey areas when it comes to rape versus consensual sex. I would not consider statutory rape in the same category of violent rape, assuming that the underage partner was, in fact, willing. Obviously there are many, many caveats to that, which I don't want to enumerate. I would not consider it rape if someone simply talked a generally unwilling partner into sex, assuming there were no threats of harm (physical or otherwise) involved. I would not consider it rape if a partner change their mind in the middle of the act, and the other partner chose not to stop. I would consider it rape, however, if the declining partner tried to extricate themselves from the union, and the other partner restrained the decliner (i.e. used force) in order to maintain the union.

And then you get into the more interesting flavors of sex that involve safety words, whips, ropes, restraints, ball gags, collars, the Boy Scout Handbook and a number of other things that ol' Necron wouldn't know anything about (wink, wink) - all of which involve force, and so are violent, but which do not count as rape due to consent.


By the way - distinguishing whether or not getting a woman drunk and then banging her is rape based on a marriage certificate? Backward and gross. Does Ohio still consider women to be chattel?

[Necron2.0]

Wow EP, that was probably one of the best stealth ad hominem attacks (coupled with an argumentum ad ignorantiam) that I think I've ever seen - completely discounting the factual evidence by side stepping it with a non sequitur neurological study. Truly masterful, actually. Golf claps all around. :D

[eldargal]

I would not consider it rape if someone simply talked a generally unwilling partner into sex, assuming there were no threats of harm (physical or otherwise) involved.

Being bullied or coerced into sex is still rape, the threat doesn't have to be physical. A lot of younger victims are coerced into a minor sexual act first then basically blackmailed into going further with the threat of them getting into trouble if the perpetrator informs their parents. Just one example.

[Wildeybeast]

If that's your moral philosophy, then that's your moral philosophy and good for you for being consistent. However, it isn't the law's philosophy. A drunk person is generally incompetent at law, so it makes sense for rape law to be consistent with that. If you're intoxicated, for instance, you cannot make me your heir apparemt no matter how much you want to at the time. Neither can you sell me any of your property, or bind yourself by contract, etc. you can't get married, either. Given all that, it makes sense that you cannot legally consent to sex.

But the law is inconsistent in this regard. Drunk people are still held criminally liable for their actions (at least in English law) as you are viewed as knowing that your judgement may be lowered when you got yourself drunk. If you know you may well agree to have sex with someone whilst drunk when you wouldn't whilst sober, don't get drunk. Before people start shouting that I'm suggesting drunk women are responsible for being raped, I'm not. I'm saying that drunk women are capable of giving consent. By drunk, I'm meaning people who are in a state where alcohol may affect their judgement, not barley conscious (see EG's explanation below). A woman who has been drinking needs to be capable of giving consent otherwise we will end up in a ridiculous situation where half the sexual intercourse in the country is classed as rape, regardless of what the woman may think about it.


But it isn't, one occurs when judgement is severely impaired, one does not. Consent solicited from someone whose judgement is impaired (which is not something that just legally applies to women) is not consent. If you have sex with a drunk woman (as opposed to mildly inebriated) you are taking advantage of that and if the woman is inebriated enough it can be classified as drug facilitated rape. Usually she has to be unconscious or nearly unconscious for it to count, contrary to popular opinion it isn't just being inebriated.

That is a valid concern, female-male rape (while unusual) isn't as rare as people think and it isn't taken seriously. It IS rape if you drink too much and a woman takes advantage.

Female male rape is non-existent in this country, at least legally speaking. A woman cannot rape a man under English law. Sexual assault, yes, but it is not rape and is treated as a 'lesser' crime.

[Nabterayl]

@Wildey: you're right that being drunk doesn't absolve you from criminal or tort liability, or liability under a previously existing contract. You've got your consequences wrong, though: I can still rape someone while drunk (bring drunk is not a defense). I cannot consent to sex, or to anything else.

This brings me to the question I still have of Necron: what should the elements of rape be? To convict someone of rape, what must the state prove? Let's leave aside the caveats and focus on the prima facie case, like we were first year law students.

My answer, which happens to map pretty well onto the American answer generally, is that to be convicted of rape the state must prove that the accused:

Engaged in sexual conduct with the victim
To which the victim did not consent.
There is plenty of potential room for argument about 1, but I'd like to request we exclude from this discussion quibbling about that (is "sexual conduct" too broad, too narrow, etc.).

Two features of this definition I'd like to call attention to. First, it's gender neutral. The notion that a woman cannot rape a man is abhorrent to me, and I think inconsistent with the real reason we define rape as its own crime. Second, its focus is on the victim's consent, which I think is the real reason we define rape as its own crime.

I'm not exactly sure what Necron would substitute for 2, and I mean that completely seriously. It sounds, Necron, like you would substitute something like "imposed upon the victim by force or the threat of force," but I truly don't understand what you would mean by force. Apparently you would not define the consensual use of force in the act itself as criminal sexual force, which I see the sense of, but you would also exclude non-physical abuse - you seem to propose that physically beating a person until they assent to have sex with one is rape, but simply yelling at them until they assent is not.

I don't understand why that would be, and I mean that literally, without meaning to imply judgment. Do you feel that the uninvited force must be EDIT: non-mental? Must it be force directed at the victim ("Have sex with me or I will blow out your child's brains in front of you" would normally be considered an emotional threat to the rape victim, for instance, although it is a physical threat against the child)?

Perhaps another way of helping me understand would be to ask why you feel justice is not served if the state must only prove that the victim did not consent. Why is that inadequate? How does your proposed definition of violence differ from the current definition of lack of consent? Or is it simply that you feel the general legal principle that an intoxicated person cannot consent to anything (sexual or otherwise) is wrong?

As to your question about marital rape, Ohio's fundamental notion is that rape is about consent. The idea is that people in general do not consent to sex with each other by default, but cohabitating spouses do. If a spouse has to use force or the threat of force, or if the two spouses are not living together, Ohio does not make a presumption of consent. I understand that there are plenty of reasons why people get married other than for sex, and that most of a marriage is things other than sex, but this still seems like a good set of presumptions to me. It does not strike me as barbaric that Ohio would presume I consent to have sex with my wife, nor does that make me feel like her chattel.

[ElectricPaladin]

Wow EP, that was probably one of the best stealth ad hominem attacks (coupled with an argumentum ad ignorantiam) that I think I've ever seen - completely discounting the factual evidence by side stepping it with a non sequitur neurological study. Truly masterful, actually. Golf claps all around. :D

I really didn't intend that as an attack. Most people don't know anything about this.

Heuristics are real. They influence the way people think. They influence everyone. If you know about them, they effect you less. I'm not singling you out, but there are only so many times I can type "this happens less than you think" without finally getting sick of it and trying to explain why you think the way you think.

In other words - to be more confrontational, because when I try to be conversational it comes off as an attack :( - you don't have "factual evidence." You have these two cases. Two cases, in a country of three hundred and thirteen million people, in which there are an estimated two hundred and seven thousand rapes a year. You've got two examples. Two. Two hundred thousand. Two. Two hundred thousand.

Even if you only know about half the times this has happened, or a quarter of the time this has happened. Hell, if you knew about a tenth of the times this has happened - it's happened a total of twenty times! - we're still talking about something that's vanishingly rare.

So, you see, the availability heuristic is actually giving you a lot of credit. It's explaining why you have such an emotional attachment to a counterfactual position.

In any case, I really wasn't trying to attack you and I'm sorry if I've offended.

[Wildeybeast]

@Wildey: you're right that being drunk doesn't absolve you from criminal or tort liability, or liability under a previously existing contract. You've got your consequences wrong, though: I can still rape someone while drunk (bring drunk is not a defense). I cannot consent to sex, or to anything else.

Under English law you cannot 'consent' to a legally binding agreement whilst intoxicated (though you can ratify it when sober) but that is as far as it goes. Since sex is not a legally binding agreement, intoxicated people are capable of consenting to sex or any other activity for that matter (providing they would not be otherwise excluded from consenting to it). All that matters for rape law is whether they a) did actually consent and/or b) the accused believed they had consented. It may be different over there, but that is how it works here.

[Earl Harbinger]

Being bullied or coerced into sex is still rape, the threat doesn't have to be physical. A lot of younger victims are coerced into a minor sexual act first then basically blackmailed into going further with the threat of them getting into trouble if the perpetrator informs their parents. Just one example.

Did you just equate convincing your wife/girlfriend to have sex with you with child molestation? I don't want to misinterpret what you posted so please clarify.

If pressuring for sex consists of asking/begging until the woman relents and says yes then that's not rape. If the woman is sober/in full possession of her mental faculties and willfully says yes then it's consentual. I think the average woman is smart enough to realize that she doesn't have to say yes. Lines like Puh-lease baby it's my birthday or C'mon it's not my fault you're so beautiful that I can't stop wanting you so bad, are not coercive and they don't give the man mind controlling powers.

In the example of a minor convinced/pressured to perform a sex act that's most definitely rape because it's statutory rape. If the girl reported the man to the police it would be prosecuted and have a higher likelihood of getting a conviction than 3% because it's statutory. I don't think you'd be able to find anyone, outside of the depraved sickos in NAMBLA, that thought that molesting minors doesn't constitute rape. You'd probably find plenty of people supporting the idea that it merits summary execution.

There's still plenty of room for gray areas like if two 15 year olds are dating, the girl willingly has sex with the boy, her parents find out get angry so she says it's rape but we could go back and forth with carefully structured hypotheticals forever.

The kind of scenario of convincing a minor to have sex is the kind of thing that makes behavior like sexting so dangerous. Girl likes boy, girl sexts boy a revealing pic, boy threatens to share it with the entire school unless she performs a sex act on him, things get worse from there. The hook up culture/party culture, sexualization of children is a problem and it goes beyond things like the fact that we gave the Kardashians a tv show. Social media has created a host of problems/minefields for people of all ages to navigate. Trying to avoid falling victim to that kind of predation could be construed as burdensome but it's a dangerous world out there and it behooves people to be careful.

[Nabterayl]

Fascinating. In America, I believe it's generally the case that sex with someone not your spouse whose judgment is seriously impaired (which is what I've been meaning by the shorthand "drunk") is rape, although of course nobody's going to prosecute you for it unless your erstwhile partner actually complains.

It's somewhat amazing to me that under English law a person who is so drunk that they cannot sell me a stick of gum is considered competent to consent to sex. I know that about five years ago the government was trying to change that. I take it the effort did not succeed?

EDIT: If I can clarify something that is obvious to me but might not be obvious to everyone else ...

When I (or any lawyer) thinks about the elements of a crime, I am speaking primarily of what the state must prove. Proof is the key concept there. There is no way to make a criminal code that is proof against fraud - whenever you have sex, you run the risk that your partner will fraudulently claim rape. Indeed, that is a risk that you run simply by continuing to live. However, even if the standard is simply that the victim did not consent, the state still has to prove that. The law is not structured such that the accused must prove that the victim consented. Rather, the state must prove that the victim didn't. Of course, this is as it should be. We require the state to prove that a bad act occurred; we do not require the accused to prove that it didn't. It's a cornerstone of our civilization.

Of course, it is true that an accusation of rape can be very damning. I had a friend who had a false rape charge leveled against him; I wouldn't be surprised if most of us had. That is obviously a bad thing. In order for it to be a reason to change the definition of rape, though, we first need to establish that the definition of rape is a cause of the false accusation.

And is it? I rather doubt it. Let's take a hypothetical woman who thinks she has something to be gained by alleging that she can prove that a man had sex with her without her consent. Let's say that the facts of the case are that the man did have sex with her but that she did consent. I think that's the most commonly dreaded false accusation case (certainly more dreaded, I think, than being accused of rape by someone that one didn't have sex with). This person's game plan is evidently one of the following:

Hope that the damage done in the court of public opinion is sufficient to outweigh the fact that her supposed attacker will be found innocent in a public trial, or
Hope that she can, by falsifying evidence, get her actually innocent attacker accused of rape.
In either of these cases, what does it matter whether the elements to be proven are lack of consent, non-consent, that the attacker used or threatened force, or (that most odious of historical artifacts) that the "victim" resisted? Either way, she's lying about things for which there is no readily discernible evidence at the time of accusation.

A lot of things about rape suck. Among those is the horrible fact that an actual rape victim has a hell of a time proving the elements of rape, and the equally horrible fact that an actually innocent accused has a hell of a time proving that his or her accuser is lying. Regardless of frequency, both of those things, when they happen, are horrible. But I submit that their horribleness is due not to the legal definition of rape but due to the fact that rape, by its nature, is the sort of crime for which there is very rarely good evidence one way or the other. Any time that is the situation, there is horrible opportunity for false accusations and horrible difficulty in convicting actual malefactors.

[Earl Harbinger]

I disagree. Freely given consent is freely given consent whether you are drunk or not. Your judgement may be impaired and you may regret it the next morning, but having sex with a drunk woman who says 'eff me six ways from sunday' is not rape. If she doesn't clearly express it, then there is a case to answer, but not if she has clearly given consent and not at any stage withdrawn it.

I played (ovoid) football all through my 4 years of college so I always had to report several weeks before classes began (every athlete in a fall sport did). Every year right before move in day the team attended a date rape/sexual assault seminar (attendance was mandatory). It lasted a few hours and covered things like what constituted consent. I remember my freshman year I noticed the stark difference between me attending a lecture on how to not be Roofie McRapist that lasted an entire evening and the extent of warning that the rest of the guys living on my hall in the freshman dorm received was the same single sided 8.5"x11" flyer posted by the resident advisor on the wall of the hallway and inside the men's bathroom. (Yes EG has a valid point about colleges being inconsistent with their effort to combat sexual assault on campus).

The way consent was explained to us each fall was that there's a difference between drinking and being drunk. A drunk girl most likely won't be able to consent to sex because if her BAC is high enough to be obviously drunk it's doubtful you can engage her in a cogent conversation. Without getting a VCR Verbal Commitment Response we were told to never proceed with any physical interaction from heavy petting to intercourse. If the there's any doubt that she understood the request for sex or any ambiguity in her answer then leave her alone, proceeding with any physical contact leaves you vulnerable for charges of sexual assault.

We always went through the same basic scenarios:

Q:Would you like to have sex with me?
A: Yershhh gerben hmmpph
That doesn't count as a yes, if it's not clear enough to be unequivical you're a rapist.

Q: Do you want to have sex with me?
A: *Nonverbal head movement/possibly a nod*
That doesn't count as a yes, it wasn't a VCR and is far too ambiguous, leave her alone or you're a rapist.

Q: Do you want to have sex with me?
A: Some buttermilk pancakes would be awesome right now.
That's not a yes, she clearly didn't understand the question, hands off or you're a rapist.

Q: Would you like to have sex with me?
A: Sure let's go back to my room and do it all night long.
You may proceed.

I distinctly remember one year the guy from the health center that always presented the seminar every year used the example response of "Yes I want you in me now" which is remarkably clear and unequivocal but nobody ever actually got that exact response from a girl all year.

[Necron2.0]

I would not consider it rape if someone simply talked a generally unwilling partner into sex, assuming there were no threats of harm (physical or otherwise) involved.
Being bullied or coerced into sex is still rape, the threat doesn't have to be physical. A lot of younger victims are coerced into a minor sexual act first then basically blackmailed into going further with the threat of them getting into trouble if the perpetrator informs their parents. Just one example.

Right. I said "assuming there were no threats of harm (physical or otherwise)." What I was referring to above as something I would not consider to be rape is something akin to the "negotiations" over sex that most married and/or long time lovers would be quite familiar with. Sometimes at the end of a long day, you just don't have the energy, or you just might not be into it at the time. Maybe you've really been thinking all day about getting that army painted. And then, the love of your life stands in the door of your man-cave/sanctum sanctorum in the fishnets, the studded leather and holding a can of whipped cream. At that point, if you're smart, you'll just put the paint brush down, screw up your courage, have a double espresso, man up and saddle up, because trust me, if you don't, at some time in the future, when your moment of need comes, she will remember.

Now, obviously the example you cited, EG, would be rape, because the threat of active aggression (in this case mental/social as opposed to physical) is being used to overcome the resistance of a truly unwilling partner.

[Nabterayl]

Right. I said "assuming there were no threats of harm (physical or otherwise)." What I was referring to above as something I would not consider to be rape is something akin to the "negotiations" over sex that most married and/or long time lovers would be quite familiar with. Sometimes at the end of a long day, you just don't have the energy, or you just might not be into it at the time. Maybe you've really been thinking all day about getting that army painted. And then, the love of your life stands in the door of your man-cave/sanctum sanctorum in the fishnets, the studded leather and holding a can of whipped cream. At that point, if you're smart, you'll just put the paint brush down, screw up your courage, have a double espresso, man up and saddle up, because trust me, if you don't, at some time in the future, when your moment of need comes, she will remember.

Now, obviously the example you cited, EG, would be rape, because the threat of active aggression (in this case mental/social as opposed to physical) is being used to overcome the resistance of a truly unwilling partner.


So ... it sounds like your definition of threats, violence, force, and so forth, are fairly expansive, Necron. You don't seem to favor nonconsent (i.e., it isn't rape unless the victim expressed a definite "no," verbal or otherwise), and a fortiori you don't seem to require resistance. Yet you seem disturbed at the notion of a definition of a rape law that requires lack of consent (i.e., it's rape unless the victim expressed a definite "yes," verbal or otherwise), and I am having trouble seeing why. Given the seeming breadth of your personal definition, you seem to be describing as your personally preferred definition American rape law as it already is.

Or is the defect only in the American treatment of competence - the notion that a sufficiently intoxicated person is basically legally incompetent? Would a law like England's, which defines sexual conduct as rape in the absence of a definite yes,* but accepts a "yes" even by someone who is completely hammered, resolve your objections?

* Caveat caveat exception etc.

[eldargal]

Sorry Necron, missed the 'otherwise'.

I'm not sure if this helps re: alcohol and consent but the definition of alcohol facilitated sexual assault adopted in the UK is this:


all forms of non-consensual penetrative sexual activity whether it involves the forcible or covert administration of an incapacitating or disinhibiting substance by an assailant, for the purposes of serious sexual assault: as well as sexual activity by an assailant with a victim who is profoundly intoxicated by his or her own actions to the point of near or actual unconsciousness

[Psychosplodge]

Questionably safe for work, but relevant. (http://25.media.tumblr.com/8285d90e30a32aeb8b930cfcbaedbd22/tumblr_mk2xylTqAg1qew20wo1_500.jpg)

[eldargal]

That's a very good picture.:)

[Psychosplodge]

It was in the tumblr feed this morning, looked appropriate
it was bracketed by this (http://24.media.tumblr.com/2494f7f26ef5a67828b5b752f4f20911/tumblr_mjz29cGkpv1roi9tjo1_500.png) and this (http://24.media.tumblr.com/411c286fffd100d4199516f251f7dffd/tumblr_mjipk97ITm1qk1wgyo1_500.jpg) so kinda stood out...

[Psychosplodge]

I think this (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-judge-prompts-outrage-after-saying-if-she-didnt-want-sex-her-body-should-have-just-shut-down-in-rape-case-and-reducing-sentence-of-attacker-by-ten-years-8414674.html?fb_action_ids=10151312196366370&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map={%2210151312196366370%22%3A14682 9082131703}&action_type_map={%2210151312196366370%22%3A%22news .reads%22}&action_ref_map=[]) "judge" should be encouraged to retire to his study with a scotch and a pistol.

[Nabterayl]

... why? Because he found that the accused had committed the acts of which they were accused? Or because it's been nine days and we still don't know what the sentence will be?

[Psychosplodge]

no the one in the link, with his shameful world view.

hmm i copied the wrong link doh >_<

fixed but the links older than I realised.

[Nabterayl]

... oh my. Yes. I'll get the pistol if you get the scotch.

[Wildeybeast]

Why would you waste good scotch on him?

[Denzark]

Wildey - after the Sexual Offences Act 2006 a woman can now rape a man in UK (or another woman). As I paraphrased earlier, penetration of any part of the body with anything, with a sexual purpose.

And the intoxication piece is relevant - there is a point beyond which someone is too drunk to give consent. A lot of the difficulty of rape prosecution is dwon to the 1-1, lack of witness evidence. He says 'she was stone cold sober and consented'. She says she wasn't. If the alleged rapist did not take into account their sobriety, they could have been reckless as to whether consent was given or even if given, was suitably informed.

[Nabterayl]

Wildey - after the Sexual Offences Act 2006 a woman can now rape a man in UK (or another woman). As I paraphrased earlier, penetration of any part of the body with anything, with a sexual purpose.

And the intoxication piece is relevant - there is a point beyond which someone is too drunk to give consent. A lot of the difficulty of rape prosecution is dwon to the 1-1, lack of witness evidence. He says 'she was stone cold sober and consented'. She says she wasn't. If the alleged rapist did not take into account their sobriety, they could have been reckless as to whether consent was given or even if given, was suitably informed.
So how does intoxication work in England? Is it a defense to say that, although the purported victim may have been too inebriated to give informed consent, the accused did not and could not reasonably have known that?

I get the notion of a sufficient level of intoxication removing a person's ability to give informed consent to sex. And I get why you might want to make that a question of strict liability. On the other hand, I'm not entirely comfortable with there being no room at all for a non-reckless mistake of fact. In California (whose rape law is deficient in other ways, I think, but generally pretty good) various altered mental states (unconsciousness, sufficient inebriation, etc.) don't count against the accused unless the accused knew or should have known that the purported victim was not in a state fit to consent, and ... I see the argument on both sides, but in general, I think I prefer that to Ohio's strict liability regime.

[Deadlift]

Why would you waste good scotch on him?

10 minutes and a pair of pliers ;)

Job done.

[Denzark]

So how does intoxication work in England? Is it a defense to say that, although the purported victim may have been too inebriated to give informed consent, the accused did not and could not reasonably have known that?

I get the notion of a sufficient level of intoxication removing a person's ability to give informed consent to sex. And I get why you might want to make that a question of strict liability. On the other hand, I'm not entirely comfortable with there being no room at all for a non-reckless mistake of fact. In California (whose rape law is deficient in other ways, I think, but generally pretty good) various altered mental states (unconsciousness, sufficient inebriation, etc.) don't count against the accused unless the accused knew or should have known that the purported victim was not in a state fit to consent, and ... I see the argument on both sides, but in general, I think I prefer that to Ohio's strict liability regime.

Nabby I understnad there could possibly be a non-reckless mistake - say the victim was a champion shot drinker, with a high tolerance of alcohol, whose external responses give you no sign of their level of consumption between 0-750ml of vodka. You could probably argue in that sort of case that you were mistaken not reckless. In return the prosecution is likely to state if you know the victim well enough to know that they can get intoxicated without external signs, then you should have known you can't tell whether or not they are capable of consent...the onus returns to the alleged suspect.

[Psychosplodge]

Why would you waste good scotch on him?

Tradition?

[Kirsten]

10 minutes and a pair of pliers ;)

Job done.

add richard littlejohn to the list while you are there

[scadugenga]

10 minutes and a pair of pliers ;)

Job done.

Walk him around the tree I say!

[Mr Mystery]

add richard littlejohn to the list while you are there

Yup. Sick of that little Weasel spouting bile, and then claiming freedom of the press. Transgendered person teaching 8 year old kids? Will they even notice? And if they do, and it affects them, that's a major issue in their upbringing.

Drag him out, hang draw and quarter.

[Wildeybeast]

Wildey - after the Sexual Offences Act 2006 a woman can now rape a man in UK (or another woman). As I paraphrased earlier, penetration of any part of the body with anything, with a sexual purpose.

And the intoxication piece is relevant - there is a point beyond which someone is too drunk to give consent. A lot of the difficulty of rape prosecution is dwon to the 1-1, lack of witness evidence. He says 'she was stone cold sober and consented'. She says she wasn't. If the alleged rapist did not take into account their sobriety, they could have been reckless as to whether consent was given or even if given, was suitably informed.

As far as I can tell there isn't one in 2006. There is one in 2003, is that what you meant? Please could you provide a link to the 2006 one if it exists. 2003 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/1) clearly defines rape as:

(1)A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a)he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,
(b)B does not consent to the penetration, and
(c)A does not reasonably believe that B consents.
(2)Whether a belief is reasonable is to be determined having regard to all the circumstances, including any steps A has taken to ascertain whether B consents.
(3)Sections 75 and 76 apply to an offence under this section.
(4)A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for life.

The use of the words 'he' and 'penis' seems pretty clear cut.

As to intoxication, I'm not arguing someone who is drunk is always capable of consenting, merely that someone is capable of consenting when under the influence of alcohol. As you say, the issue comes when deciding whether they were drunk enough for either of them to understand whether consent had been given or what they were consenting to.

[Wildeybeast]

Sorry for the double post, but further clarification can be found here (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpgaen_20030042_en.pdf). Only a man can rape a woman. I'm pretty sure you are thinking of assault by penetration Denzark, which can be with any part of the body and can be committed by women. I was however incorrect in saying it is a lesser offence - it still carries a life sentence. I'd be surprised it sentences were, on average, as harsh as they are for rape, but I have nothing to support that assertion.

[Earl Harbinger]

Interesting article today regarding "rape culture" in the US. Written by Cathy Young who works for RealClearPolitics and Reason magazine, two sites that I (being a Libertarian) frequent. I've excerpted the conclusion for the tl:dr crowd but IMHO the full article is worth reading and contains links to various other articles and sources.

RealClearPolitics (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/03/28/is_america_a_rape_culture_117710.html#ixzz2OrivLCH e)

The women’s movement has made invaluable progress in lifting the stigma of rape and reforming sexist laws—ones that, as recently as the 1970s, required women to fight back to prove rape and instructed juries that an accuser’s unchaste morals could detract from her credibility. The fact that today, a rape case can be successfully prosecuted even when the victim was drunk and flirtatious, or engaged in consensual intimacies before the attack, is a victory for justice as well as women’s rights. Yet the fact remains that charges of sexual assault involving people who knows each other in a “he said/she said” situation are very difficult to prove in court—not because of “rape culture,” but because of the presumption of innocence. Gender equality requires equal concern for the rights of accused men.

Let us, by all means, confront ugly, sexist, victim-blaming attitudes when we see them. But this can be done without promoting sexist attitudes in feminist clothing: that a woman’s word automatically deserves more weight than a man’s; that all men bear responsibility for rape and “normal” men need to be taught not to rape; or that a woman who is inebriated but fully conscious is not responsible for her actions while an equally inebriated man is.

These ideological shibboleths will do little to help real victims of sexual violence, and may even hurt them by inviting an inevitable backlash.


Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/03/28/is_america_a_rape_culture_117710.html#ixzz2OrivLCH e

[Nabterayl]

Interesting article today regarding "rape culture" in the US. Written by Cathy Young who works for RealClearPolitics and Reason magazine, two sites that I (being a Libertarian) frequent. I've excerpted the conclusion for the tl:dr crowd but IMHO the full article is worth reading and contains links to various other articles and sources.
Most of the examples in that article are not examples of what I understand the term "rape culture" to mean, but the last three paragraphs that you quoted I think are quite true. I find that people tend to forget that although a woman's accusation can bring a man to court (in many cases, an accusation of fairly bare facts), the state must still prove that he is guilty. To me, it feels like that frequently confuses the less legally minded on both sides: on the one hand, why is the judicial system so damn methodical when it is obvious to anyone who reads the news that he is guilty; on the other hand, how is this poor man even on trial when it is obvious to anyone who reads the news that she is lying? Even as a lawyer who doesn't work in criminal law, I have to say that most of the reporting I see about rape cases is embarrassingly amateurish when it comes to its understanding of the justice system.

I will take some issue with the notion that all men do not bear responsibility for rape and "normal" men don't need to be taught not to rape. If by that, Young means that we should not suspect all men of imminent rape - that we should remember that men are not sharks or rabid animals but capable of rational thinking and understanding - then I certainly agree. But if she means that normal people already know what rape is, I disagree. I think that normal people understand the prototypical rape case - A attacks B on the street, A forces B to have sex through main force while B screams for help and attempts to fend off A using main force. But I think there are a lot of "normal" people who genuinely do not understand what social rape is, or view as "gray areas" things that at law are not gray at all. I think it is important to teach all our children what constitutes rape. Granted this is a lawyer speaking, but I don't think moral education is a complete substitute for basic familiarity with the law.

I've had friends, as I'm sure many of us have, tell me that they weren't really raped because they were arguably kind of asking for it or could have done more to prevent it. I don't ever want to hear my daughter say that she wasn't really raped because she got drunk or high at a party and probably did some things she shouldn't have, or stayed over at a friend's house when his wife wasn't home, or could have run away but didn't because she was just too scared or embarrassed to leave the situation when she was already naked or didn't think anybody would help anyway, and all those things are something I think she'll need to be taught specifically. Similarly, I don't ever want to hear any child of mine (either accused or victim) say, "I didn't know it was rape." My personal sense is that "I didn't know it was rape" is said in complete honesty a lot more commonly than, say, "I didn't know it was theft" or "I didn't know it was murder." And that's fine - it's okay for some crimes to be more complicated than others. But in order to protect my children from that, yes, of course I need to teach them what rape actually is. And I do feel like rape is a complicated enough law that it needs to be taught specifically.

[Denzark]

Sorry for the double post, but further clarification can be found here (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpgaen_20030042_en.pdf). Only a man can rape a woman. I'm pretty sure you are thinking of assault by penetration Denzark, which can be with any part of the body and can be committed by women. I was however incorrect in saying it is a lesser offence - it still carries a life sentence. I'd be surprised it sentences were, on average, as harsh as they are for rape, but I have nothing to support that assertion.

Yes you are correct. My mistake, a bit muddled.

[eldargal]

I agree with that article bar this bit which is grossly simplistic:

he said/she said” situation are very difficult to prove in court—not because of “rape culture,” but because of the presumption of innocence. Gender equality requires equal concern for the rights of accused men.

Let us, by all means, confront ugly, sexist, victim-blaming attitudes when we see them. But this can be done without promoting sexist attitudes in feminist clothing: that a woman’s word automatically deserves more weight than a man’s; that all men bear responsibility for rape and “normal” men need to be taught not to rape; or that a woman who is inebriated but fully conscious is not responsible for her actions while an equally inebriated man is.
Presumption of innocence is certainly incredibly important, but the problem with 'rape culture' is that it comes in before that. Most women don't report rape because they don't feel they will be taken seriously and police are often belligerent and hostile or even just disbelieving. There is a difference between presumption of innocence and police not doing their job in collecting evidence impartially.

I've never seen anyone argue that a woman s word is more worthy than that of a man, and I read extensively on the subject. I see a lot of examples of womens word not being taken seriously, look at all the ridiculous over-estimations of false rape claims.

Men do not bear responsibility for other mens rapes, that is absurd. There is some responsibility when it comes to perpetuating a rape culture, though. Letting it pass when friends make rape jokes belittles the seriousness of the offense and helps propagate a culture that says rape isn't a big deal.

'Normal' men don't pick up right and wrong by osmosis, raising boys to understand that having sex with someone who is unwilling is wrong is no different than telling them taking something that isn't theirs is wrong. Given how many young boys/men think it is ok to force their girlfriend to have sex (http://www.uic.edu/depts/owa/sa_rape_support.html) they absolutely need to be told this.

Of course a woman who is inebriated has to be held responsible for actions but being raped is the action of the man, not her. Passing out at a party is not an invitation to be raped and she cannot be held responsible for that. Being taken advantage of is now a crime. However taking into consideration that a man believed he was engaging in consensual sex while inebriated is perfectly reasonable.

[eldargal]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eZxv5WCWivM

[Wildeybeast]

Is it just me or did the touching her hair at the end turn this into a really creepy vid and somewhat undermine the point of the whole thing?

[Psychosplodge]

Those wacky footballers are at it again (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22537941)...

[Kirsten]

at least there is no mention of their promising careers

[Necron2.0]

Is it just me or did the touching her hair at the end turn this into a really creepy vid and somewhat undermine the point of the whole thing?

Naw. I took it as he was getting her hair out of her face so she doesn't wake up with snot or saliva in her hair. What I thought was weird is he was putting a glass of (what I took to be) water next to her, when what she'd probably really be wanting is a vomit bucket.

++++

I'm interested to see what the results of the latest US military sexual misconduct scandal (http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/15/us/army-sexual-assault-investigation/index.html) will be. I was listenning to a story about it on the way into work, and to hear it this guy had already been convicted of something as heinous as raping 12-year-olds, but as I understand it the military hasn't so much as charged him with anything yet.

[Wildeybeast]

Those wacky footballers are allegedly at it again (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22537941)...

Fixed that for you. No charges yet, never mind a trial or conviction. Innocent until guilty and all that jazz.

[Psychosplodge]

I meant getting themselves arrested, no guilt was implied till the outcome of any trial :D

[Wildeybeast]

Fair enough

[Wildeybeast]

On that point (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22548065).

[Psychosplodge]

until they're charged why should the papers know? they aren't interested in justice, they're interested in stories, and sales.

[Wildeybeast]

I concur.

[daboarder]

Men do not bear responsibility for other mens rapes, that is absurd. There is some responsibility when it comes to perpetuating a rape culture, though. Letting it pass when friends make rape jokes belittles the seriousness of the offense and helps propagate a culture that says rape isn't a big deal.

Gotta disagree with this. Women don't get moved when accompanying a minor on an airline flight based solely upon principle.