Rape Trial Coverage Fiasco

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Originally Posted by ElectricPaladin

So, I kind of have a problem with this.

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

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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.

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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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Originally Posted by Necron2.0

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Necron2.0

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Necron2.0

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.

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Originally Posted by ElectricPaladin

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by ElectricPaladin

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.

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

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

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Originally Posted by Nabterayl

Cliff's Notes - according to Ohio law:

1. I have compel a woman to have sex with me by force. Rape, even if the woman is my spouse.
2. I have sex with a woman after threatening to use force. Rape, even if the woman is my spouse.
3. I have sex with a woman after deliberately getting her drunk. Rape only if the woman is not my spouse.
4. I have sex with a woman who happens to be drunk. Rape only if the woman is not my spouse.
5. 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.

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

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Originally Posted by Nabterayl

• 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.

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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 [url=http://suzzan-blac.deviantart.com/]this woman's[/url] 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?

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Originally Posted by Earl Harbinger

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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by Earl Harbinger

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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.