Nineteen rape convictions in the U.K. last year out of 14,449 allegations?

[Oeditpus Rex]

Can this be true? :shrug:

I'm skeptical that U.K. feminists — even of the most radical stripe — are driven by a desire to jail innocent men. But there is a question over whether this proposal might have that unintended result. Of course, without seeing the finalized proposal, it's hard to know exactly how far the legalese will be taken. The fact that there were 14,449 rape allegations in the U.K. last year and only 19 convictions should sound a shocking alarm bell. But there's plenty of room for a response that doesn't jeopardize men's rights as well.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/

[billyskank]

1. I knew the conviction rate was very poor

but 19 in 14,500? :wtf:

[Haole Girl]

2. Wow, that is scary

Don't they use DNA and physical evidence in the courtroom? How could that be? I hope they omitted a digit or something.

[ThomCat]

4. Unfortunately, DNA only proves that the guy was there

but doesn't prove it was rape. For that, it still comes down to her word versus his, and who the legal system believes. If everyone accuses her of lying, challenges her, harrasses her, and presumes that she's trying to ruin some innocent man's life then he's going to go free.

[idgiehkt]

3. I don't like this:

"Solicitor General Mike O'Brien argues that the current law needs to be amended to allow prosecutors to successfully convict rapists who purposefully get women drunk before attacking them. "The issue becomes particularly difficult when there is alcohol involved," O'Brien said. "What we have to do is to find ways of ensuring that when a rape occurs, the rapist is convicted, but that we don't create miscarriages of justice." Understandably, that's exactly what critics are afraid will happen."

People are responsible for their own alcohol intake. I don't know if it's fair to charge a drunk man with raping a drunk woman because they had sex when they were drunk.

On the statistic it doesn't mean there were 14k trials, I wonder what the percentage is of rapists that were identified and caught. I know in the U.S. most women are raped by someone they know. This is kind of freaky. I wonder what the stats are in the U.S. on this. I remember Boy George once saying "In England, feminism is a joke, here at least it's an argument." I guess he wasn't joking.

[ThomCat]

5. I have to disagree.

I used to stand at the door at Fraternity parties. My buddy was a brother, and neither of us could drink. So we were always the only two sober people there. You see a lot when you're the sober guy standing at the door.

Yes, each person should ideally be responsible for his/her own alcohol intake, but there's a tipping point.

Once someone has that second drink it's very easy to coerce them into having a third, and a fourth, and then an eighth. Pretty soon that person is totally, absolutely incapacitated. Who's fault is that? I say it's squarely the fault of the guys who fed her the drinks.

[Xithras]

8. Fed? Are women sheep?

Sorry, but I don't blindly buy the argument that women drink because a men feed them alcohol. I went to many of those parties when I was in college and can tell you from experience that many women drink just as hard as men...and some a LOT harder.

Besides, the actions are STILL volountary. If a man has 8 beers and a woman has 8 beers, and they end up screwing each others brains out while dead drunk, I fail to see how he should be held any more culpable than she should.

[ThomCat]

13. You miss the point entirely

Yes, some women drink as hard as some men.

But you can't deny that women do not go out of their way to get men drunk. Men do go out of their way to get women drunk. And after someone has voluntarily had a few drinks it is very easy to get them to drink more.

Ignoring this is simply excusing the behavior based on the idea that everyone conciously chooses how drunk they are going to get. For guys your theory is true because nobody generally takes advantage of guys after they've had their first few drinks. But it is common for men to start taking advantage of women after they've had those first few drinks.

I don't ever claim that women are sheep, only that men take advantage of women given the opportunity. And alcohol is the opportunity.

[Iris]

20. Right. And what if the woman is drunk but the man isn't?

Then he's taking unfair advantage of her incapacitation.

[Nikia]

6. There are predatory men who do rape this way though

Not only are they making a given women into more of a potential victim by encourgaing her drink more but they are identifying a potential victim in seeing that she will continue to drink at his prodding especially if she resists and then he succeeds in persuading her to drink more. This especially works well on women her are relatively young and/or inexperienced with alcohol or predatory men.
He can be pretty sure that she is not going to fight back by the time that she is sufficiently drunk, especially if he successfully coerced her into drinking more than she intended. He might even get her to consent if he asks enough times.
I believe that this situation is considered rape in the U.S.
Regardless, many men regard this behavior as alright and an acceptable way to get into a woman's pants. It isn't alright.

[Xithras]

9. Ah, but that's a different situation.

Albeit one that's hard to prove. Any man deliberately plying a woman with any drug for the specific purpose of obtaining consent is guilty of rape. The problem is that these types of laws go far beyond that and penalize ANY guy who happens to sleep with a woman after she'd had a few too many. And if the guy happened to have a few too many himself? Tough noogies pal, you're going to prison anyway.

I have no problem with imprisoning predators who use alcohol as a drug to deliberately incapacitate women, but laws to enable that sort of thing cannot be so draconian that they ensnare innocent guys who are just going to the bar and happen to get lucky. As William Blackstone once said, I would rather have ten guilty men walk free than to have one innocent man wrongly imprisoned.

[lukasahero]

14. "laws go far beyond that and penalize ANY guy" Not sure the stats support

that assertion. Where do you see that any laws are being used to penalize large numbers of men? I see numbers that suggest very few convictions.

[Xithras]

17. Hmm, it was Wisconsin or Michigan

Can't recall which, but one of those two states recently passed a law similar to this proposition. If a woman drinks too much, sleeps with a guy, and regrets it the next morning, he can automatically be charged with rape.

The numbers in the OP are for Britain. Conviction numbers in the U.S. are higher because many states here have already adopted laws like this (note in the OP that it's just a proposal there). My point is that it's unjust...it should take more than regret on the womans part to trigger a rape charge, and yet that's exactly the legal situation these laws create.

Do I want predators on the street? Hell no. I have three sisters, a mother, a wife, and a daughter out there, and I understand full well that there are people who would do almost anything to sleep with them. On the other hand, I don't believe that the cost of protecting innocent women should be the freedom of innocent men.

[ThomCat]

22. If you can provide a link that would be wonderful.

But until then, this is just fearmongering. No man is going to be charged unless a grand jury thinks there is sufficient evidence to try the case. And no man is going to be convicted unless there is enough evidence to believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he's guilty.

The fact that it's going to come down to He Said/She Said means it's easy to create reasonable doubt. Sexism in our legal system makes it even easier to create that reasonable doubt.

IF a law says that a woman can claim rape if she was drunk all that is going to mean is that more cases MIGHT go in front of a grand jury. The idea is that more guilty men might get in front of a judge. The system is already so biased in favor of the rapists that the goal is to get a few percent more of them. I doubt any significant number of innocent men are going to even end up in front of a judge.

[Iris]

19. "I would rather have ten guilty men walk free"

Until one of the 10 guilty men runs into your daughter?

[Xithras]

21. Irrelevant.

The worst crime a society can perpetrate is to unjustly imprison or kill a person who has committed no crime.

As I have already said, I have no problem with harshly punishing actual rapists, including those who deliberately ply women with drugs to gain their submission. The law in the OP may be intended to catch these sorts, but when the net is so wide that any drunken sex is considered rape, it is also very unjust.

[Iris]

23. well, in general, I'd agree with your statement, but when it sets

up half the human population as prey, I have to draw the line

Not to mention all the daddies, brothers, and husbands who might like to take justice into their own hands after finding out a know sexual predator picked one of their own.

[idgiehkt]

24. I know

I have had this experience, where I was purposely 'gotten drunk' and taken advantage of, in my teens. I blacked out and woke up next to the guy. Every time I was just about finished with my beer that night he opened another one and handed it to me. I thought he was just being polite. Really, I was that stupid, that's what I thought. But I don't think a rape charge would have been accurate, even still. This is a huge gray area.

[bettyellen]

25. well if you were dead passed out you'd call it rape, right?

but anything less than that you are willing to take the responsibilty off the guy, even though he was the actor in this situation.
gosh, how passed out exactly do you have to be?

[Xithras]

7. A couple of US states have laws similar to this proposal

Incredibly stupid IMO. If a woman gets roaring drunk and consents to sleep with some moron, that's her own damned fault for getting that drunk. I personally don't understand how they pass muster with the equal protection clause in the Constitution.

The laws are based on the assumpon that a drunken woman cannot give consent. Why not? Because she is under the influence of a drug that is impairing her reasoning abilities. And the fact that she put herself into that condition willingly? Irrelevant. At the same time, MEN are expected to be responsible for THEIR sexual activities, even when they are in the same condition of inebriation. These laws basically absolve women of all responsibility for drunken sexual activities, while placing the threat of a conviction over the heads of men who participate in the exact same activities.

The fact that there were only 19 convictions out of 14,449 rape accusations in the UK is a very real problem, but the solution is NOT to slap the rapist label on every drunk guy who picks up a woman in a bar.

[Nikia]

10. Maybe, men shouldn't be encouraged to pick up drunk women

There are lots of different situations. Some are completely alright and some are completely rape.
The problem is that many men do see the practice of encouraging women to get drunk in order to have sex with her, because he strongly suspects that she would not have sex with him otherwise. Then he is the "stud" and she is the "whore" and other men agree rather than telling him that he did something wrong.

[Xithras]

11. So I ask...why do the women play along?

Seriously. The law expects men and women to limit their drinking if they're driving, and to take legal responsibility for their actions if they become inebriated and kill someone in a car accident. The law expects men to limit their drinking around women, and take legal responsiblity for their actions if they become inebriated and sleep with someone that doesn't like them. So why, exactly, shouldn't the same social and legal expectations be extended to women?

I've posed this question in the past when this topic has come up, and nobody has ever really answered it. On more than one occasion when I was younger, I drank too much at parties and ended up sleeping with women that I either didn't like or normally wouldn't have given the time of day to. In every case, the women were just as drunk as I was.

Was I raped? Should I have called the police and had them send to prison? I obviously wasn't in a mental condition capable of making rational decisions regarding sex, and those women had sex with me anyway.

And since they were also drunk, does that mean I raped them? Should be have been able to send EACH OTHER to prison for rape?

This is the insanity of these types of laws. It's one thing to prosecute predators who deliberately pressure women into drinking too much and rape them. It's another thing entirely to claim that every drunk woman who gets laid has been raped (as many who support these laws seem to suggest). Any law that imprisons the second group while targeting the first is unjust and needs to be overturned.

[skygazer]

16. This implies that women go around throwing out accusations of rape

for no real reason. Which is a charming and false stereotype. Sure, there are cases in which women falsely accuse men of rape - not nearly so many as a lot of people seem to think.

An accusation of rape results in a humiliating and embarassing series of actions for a woman. The rape exam itself is a traumatic and often depersonalizing experience. You get to talk - repeatedly - about very intimate details of your sex life with people you've never met before who write it all down and ask probing questions about it all. Eventually, if it goes that far, you get to testify about it all in front of a large room full of people, including the person who raped you. It's not fun, it's not something people do on a whim just to get even with that guy down at the bar that night.

"The law expects men to limit their drinking around women, and take legal responsiblity for their actions if they become inebriated and sleep with someone that doesn't like them.." Well, yeah. Generally, "sleeping with someone who doesn't like them" translates to "sleeping with someone who doesn't want to sleep with them." Last time I checked, that defined rape.

I'd be interested to see the text of these supposed laws that "claim that every drunk woman who gets laid has been raped."

[Xithras]

18. Ah, but the charges may not be entirely false.

Jack and Sue don't like each other. Sue is happily married with two kids. Jack and Sue go to the company party and have waaay too much to drink. The alcohol lowers both of their inhibitions, and by the end of the evening Jack and Sue are in the copier room going at it like rabbits.

Sue wakes up the next morning and is HORRIFIED to realize that she slept with Jack. Is Jack guilty of rape?

IMO, it's only rape if he deliberately plied her with alcohol to gain consent. If she got too drunk and consented without his involvement, then it's an unfortunate choice on her part, but it's not rape. She may feel genuinely traumatized for it, she may feel real disgust at what happened, but if she willingly consumed that alcohol, willingly lowered her inhibitions, and then willingly engaged in sex with the guy, it's not rape. Even if she hates herself for it the next day. My beef is that many of these newer laws don't draw that line, and simply label every half-sober sexual encounter as a potential rape.

As for the laws, I'll cite Wisconsin. Having sexual contact with a person incapable of consent because they are under the influence of an intoxicant is defined as second- degree sexual assault. The offense is a Class C felony punishable by a fine up to $100,000 and a prison sentence of up to 25 years. And what is "incapable of consent"? Basically it's whatever the prosecutor wants it to be. If the woman feels guilty or upset about the sex the following day, the prosecutor can use THAT as evidence to prove she was unable to give consent. Her reasoning abilities were impaired, therefore any sex is rape. It's irrelevant whether she wanted it at the time, or whether the man had any role in getting her drunk. Just about every state has similar laws, and alcohol is now classified as a date rape drug in all 50 states.

[mark414]

12. i got that label slapped on me because of those exact circumstances

i was at a party and i saw a girl i had known semi-well in high school (this was a couple years after high school). throughout the night we both got progressively more drunk, would wander around the party but kept running into each other. by the end of the night we were both in bad shape in a good way, and she came back to my house for exactly what you would expect. there was never a no, never any hesitation on her part, and as my roommate who was in another part of the house could attest she was quite into it.

about a week later i got a nasty phone call from one of her friends, but i was clueless as to why this girl was so mad at me. i tried calling her, never got any response, nothing.

turns out a couple of her boyfriend's friends had seen her leave with me, told her boyfriend, he confronted her on it and to get herself out of trouble made up a rape story.

i had this guy and his friends out to kill me until one of her good friends (and a friend of mine who believed me) finally guilted her into telling the truth...

not fun, and to some people my name is still mud.

[Radical Activist]

15. And some women

do get drunk so they can do things they wouldn't do while sober and in the morning they can make themselves feel better about a one night stand by saying, "hey I was really drunk." They are trying to absolve themselves of responsibility for their actions. Still, that doesn't excuse a man taking advantage of a woman whose judgment is impaired.

[bettyellen]

26. no actually it's not uncommon that men fuck women who have passed out

and the reverse situation just doesn't occur. equal?
biology makes it a bit more complicated in this utopian situation where we too can rape and pillage with the same ease as men.