Is this rape?

[gryphon strike]

[quote name='Lany Cassandra' post='1734952' date='Mar 27 2009, 10.27']But he admitted HE was consenting.

I know that we can't solve the issue here, we just don't know enough of the facts, but it is very interesting some peoples views on it.[/quote]
See to me we just don't know nor will we ever really know just what happened. So with such an incomplete knowledge I would not call the guy a rapist, just as I would not call her a rapist in the same situation.
By the time it gets to court I doubt there will be enough truth left for anyone to make a concrete decision one way or the other.

To me this incident is a total waste of time for everyone involved especially the lawyer who claims to have been raped.

[turinturambar]

[quote name='Lany Cassandra' post='1734946' date='Mar 26 2009, 19.52']Then maybe you shouldn't drink.[/quote]

I don't drink much, and even when I do I have more control than most. Even the best of us lose a few inhibitions or let our guard down when we drink.

[Guest thebadlady]

Someone who stands up for a rapist doesn't even hit my noise meter when it comes to name calling.


[url="http://www.popcenter.org/problems/rape/2"]http://www.popcenter.org/problems/rape/2[/url]
[url="http://www.dianarussell.com/menrape.html"]http://www.dianarussell.com/menrape.html[/url]
[url="http://www.popcenter.org/problems/rape/2"]http://www.popcenter.org/problems/rape/2[/url]
[url="http://hereticalsex.blogspot.com/2006/12/its-rape-if-woman-is-drunk.html"]http://hereticalsex.blogspot.com/2006/12/i...n-is-drunk.html[/url]
[url="http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/melecki-men-need-to-take-stand-against-rape-1.1571517"]http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/mele...-rape-1.1571517[/url]
[url="http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/2009/03/13/woman-trapped-in-car-after-service-road?blog=80"]http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.ph...ce-road?blog=80[/url]


Key?

[b]"In studies in the early 1980s and 1990s, approximately one-third of college men reported they would rape a woman if they knew they would not get caught."[/b]

"Acquaintance rape is less random and more preventable than stranger rape.29 A woman's condition or behavior does not cause rape, but certain factors appear to increase a woman's vulnerability to it:

frequently drinking enough to get drunk;30
drinking to the point of being unable to resist forceful sexual advances;31
using drugs and/or drinking (both the victim and the assailant);32
having previously been the victim of sexual assault, before the start of the school year;33
being single;34
engaging in social activities with sexually predatory men;35
being at an isolated site;36
miscommunicating about sex;37 and
holding less conservative attitudes about sexual behavior.38 "

"Repeat Victimization
Numerous studies of campus rape have found that a small number of victims are repeat victims.39 [b]One of the largest studies to date found that 22.8 percent of college rape victims had been victimized before[/b].40 College women most at risk of rape are those who were previously victims of childhood or teen sexual assault.41 Prior victims are nearly twice as likely to be raped in college than those with no previous history of sexual assault.42 "Adolescent/ young adult victimization is the most robust risk factor for victimization in the college years, and victimization in one semester predicts victimization in the following semester."43 Some researchers believe that college men can sense out women who are less able to defend themselves, or target women whose behavior (e.g., binge drinking) weakens their credibility."

"Repeat Offending
It is unknown how many college rapists are repeat offenders. Most college acquaintance rapists go unpunished (in part because reporting is so low), so the number of serial offenses are difficult to determine. [b]However, one study found that 96 college men accounted for 187 rapes, 45 suggesting that further research may establish that serial rapists are a common component of the acquaintance rape problem. [/b][Editorial, that is about 50% so half of 25% which makes 1 in 12 to 1 in 13 males a rapist /end ed]Lack of reporting complicates the problem, since it may prevent colleges from identifying and ridding themselves of their most dangerous students."


and to keep you honest:
[url="http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/rapex-anti-rape-device-has-teeth-in-it"]http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/rapex-ant...has-teeth-in-it[/url]

[Zoë Sumra]

[quote name='Eponine' post='1734956' date='Mar 27 2009, 00.59']I don't know if she was raped or not, but as I know someone who is standing trial for an ALLEGED sexual offense, and suffering greatly at the hands of people who know nothing about the situation, it makes me angry when people buy into allegations wholesale, [b]because of course if a person is accused of a sex crime, they must be guilty[/b].[/quote]
And yet only a tiny percentage of sex crimes are taken to court, and of those, only a tiny percentage result in conviction.

Entirely without reference to your friend or to any other particular individual, it's almost as if the media were deliberately misrepresenting statistics about the prevalence of actual sexual assault versus false accusations of sexual assault, to the extent that there are huuuuuuge numbers of people willing to jump on the false-accusation bandwagon the second they hear about a sex crime case, particularly one that doesn't fit the (exceptionally rare) paradigm of masked-man-jumping-out-of-bushes.

Like Lany said, it's really... [i]interesting [/i]to see people's views here.

[Eponine]

[quote name='Lany Cassandra' post='1734958' date='Mar 26 2009, 21.02']I agree with that. I have said we don't know enough to know one way or the other. I was just trying to stop all the "he should sue her" comments.

As I said before this. She isn't lying, but neither was he.[/quote]

Oops, sorry, I missed where you said that before. I misread your statement about "he undressed her" to be a blanket condemnation of him.

***
Is there a reason why the name of the accused is released in a situation like this? It seems contrary to the spirit of innocent until proven guilty, especially as it's been mentioned before, even if a defendant is lying and evidence comes up to prove a person completely innocent, the charge itself can cause damage.

[Angalin]

Keep it polite and non-personal, please.

[Meili]

[quote name='thebadlady' post='1734910' date='Mar 26 2009, 19.35']Look at Meili. I seriously gagged when I read that vile stupidity.[/quote]
And what stupidity was that? That people are coherent often while hammered and the next day don't remember what they did? Or the part where someone does something they don't remember but regret doing it? Or the part where people often wake up next to someone thinking 'jesus, how drunk was I?'. I'm kinda confused where the vile stupidity making you gag is coming from.... I mean, I just basically described a Sex and the City episode.


[quote name='thebadlady' post='1734910' date='Mar 26 2009, 19.35']You get someone that drunk and its no goddammed different than drugging them.[/quote]
See, I wouldn't say that's vile at all. It's just stupidity. Has anything been said or implied that he 'got her drunk' for the purpose of having sex with her? When did this go from a he said/she said to the man diabolically hatching a plan to rape her?

[Arbor Gold]

[quote name='Raidne' post='1734939' date='Mar 26 2009, 17.49']A lot of things in this case are, as of yet, unclear. One thing that's [i]not[/i] unclear is that this woman believes that she was raped. So it should go to trial and it'll get sorted out.[/quote]
There was a post earlier but it seems to have been overlooked...the guy was [url="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/7966395.stm"]found not guilty.[/url]

[turinturambar]

[quote name='thebadlady' post='1734947' date='Mar 26 2009, 19.53']Dick sucking does not equal consent.[/quote] Wow....overexaggerate much? My point is, if they both continue on with sex acts, then how is one more responsible than the other? I'd say that 90% of the time I've gotten my dick sucked it's led to sex, same thing when I go down on a woman, it's usually led to sex. Foreplay is usually an indicator that sex may be coming, thus when the sex does come how can you say any person is any more a rapist than the other?

[quote]yeah. I love threads like these because.....


I love doing the math. 1 out of 4 (or one out of seven, depends on the study) woman is sexually assaulted in the world. Assume that not every one of those women are raped by the same man. I doubt 25% of men are rapists, so with repeat offenders, lets say 5-10% of men are rapists. Threads like these really help you figure out where a certain man falls in the rapist/not rapist line.[/quote]

BTW, rape is a terrible thing. My wife was raped several years before we met. She never reported it and I wish every day that she had. The worse thing is she knows who it was and I've seen pictures of the guy. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish I could tear that guy from limb to limb for the things he did to her. The things he did to her....It hurts me every day to think of what she went through, I can only imagine the turmoil she still goes through to this day. I don't know what kind of person is capable of doing such things, I don't know how people become that way, but I hate him and I hate anybody that does such a thing.

[The Kreb]

Wow. Not rape. I'm baffled by any contrary argument. If you get so drunk that you and your friend jump into a lake together, you can't wake up the next day and claim he pushed you in.

[Guest thebadlady]

[quote name='turinturambar' post='1734961' date='Mar 26 2009, 20.02']Tell that to my buddy who spent time in jail because of a false rape accusation. And I should know, I was in the other room I saw her drag him into the other room and heard pretty much everything that went on. There's a reason I'm so adamant against this. She yelled rape because her boyfriend found out later. She later admitted he didn't rape her and he was let off the hook, but he was lucky. This is why rape cases are so difficult. On the one hand, most legitimate rape incidents are never reported, on the other hand, many are falsely accused of rape. It's such an easy accusation to bring forth and one of the few things that can be convicted simply on testimony alone. I also know another guy who spent several months in jail because a girl gave him a BJ at a party and never called her before. There was even a txt on his phone that said "If you don't date me I'll tell people you raped me". Despite that it was still on its way to trial before he accepted a plea bargain for assault.[/quote]

the wiki
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics[/url]

"Statistics on rape are common in western countries and are becoming more common throughout the world. They are, however, highly politicized, often sex biased, and have been accused of being unreliable because they are so diverse and are used by different groups for different reasons. This is partly because of inconsistent definitions of rape in both legislative and academic studies. However, it is also because of over reporting, under reporting and false reporting of the crime. In the United States rape is defined differently by separate states. In many legislatures in the world some non-consensual sexual acts are not defined as rape at all. They may be considered legal, or as an illegal form of sexual assault. In some jurisdictions, male-female rape is the only form of rape considered rape while in others male-male, female-male or female-female rape may also be included as a legal form of rape.[1] Rape of children is rarely reported in official reports. Nor is the rape of children by their mothers and fathers or other relations represented in official publications. Rape, alone among other major crimes, suffers from severe definitional contradictions that create controversial statistical disparities.

These factors lead to accusations that all rape statistics are unreliable. For example, male-female rape in particular is a highly politicized issue, leading to the polemical use of questionable statistics.[2] According to USA Today reporter Kevin Johnson "no other major category of crime - not murder, assault or robbery - has generated a more serious challenge of the credibility of national crime statistics" than has rape.[3]

A United Nations statistical report compiled from government sources showed that more than 250,000 cases of male-female rape or attempted rape were recorded by police annually. The reported data covered 65 countries.[4]

Male on male, female on male, and female on female rape statistics are rarely shown in official reports."

Its like shooting carp with dynamite.

"Authors A.W. Burgess and R.R. Hazelwood observe that "little is published which addresses the issue and concept of false allegation." The classification of "false reporting" makes no distinction between women who wilfully misreport and women who mistakenly identify innocent men.[9] Figures on false reporting used by journalists have ranged from 2% to 50% depending on their sources:

"... one explanation for such a wide range in the statistics might simply be that they come from different studies of different populations... But there's also a strong political tilt to the debate. A low number would undercut a belief about rape as being as old as the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife: that some women, out of shame or vengeance ... claim that their consensual encounters or rebuffed advances were rapes. If the number is high, on the other hand, advocates for women who have been raped worry it may also taint the credibility of the genuine victims of sexual assault."[10]"



Who agrees that poor men are falsely accused? Faux 'news'
[url="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194032,00.html"]http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194032,00.html[/url]



As a rape victim (yes, passed out dead drunk, so I pass your consent test) whose case was not brought to trial due to booze involved, I don't give a fucking shit about false accusations. With the conviction numbers as low as they are, I'd give it a billion to one case where a dude goes to jail for that particular rape he was convicted of. Prolly did it before and no one bothered.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

[quote name='Eponine' post='1734969' date='Mar 26 2009, 21.09']Oops, sorry, I missed where you said that before. I misread your statement about "he undressed her" to be a blanket condemnation of him.[/quote]

that's ok. while I admit to a lack of full facts, I still fall on her side of the issue, so my comments have run both middle ground and accusatory. (I had to double check to make sure I didn't post one comment I had written)

[quote]Is there a reason why the name of the accused is released in a situation like this? It seems contrary to the spirit of innocent until proven guilty, especially as it's been mentioned before, even if a defendant is lying and evidence comes up to prove a person completely innocent, the charge itself can cause damage.[/quote]

I wouldn't object to both parties names not being released.

[Shryke]

[quote name='Eponine' post='1734969' date='Mar 26 2009, 20.09']Is there a reason why the name of the accused is released in a situation like this? It seems contrary to the spirit of innocent until proven guilty, especially as it's been mentioned before, even if a defendant is lying and evidence comes up to prove a person completely innocent, the charge itself can cause damage.[/quote]

I was about to say this. Worrying about the man's reputation after a false accusation is just as important as worrying about the women's. Why not just keep both names secret, seems the most sensible thing to me.

[GoN]

[quote]Entirely without reference to your friend or to any other particular individual, it's almost as if the media were deliberately misrepresenting statistics about the prevalence of actual sexual assault versus false accusations of sexual assault, to the extent that there are huuuuuuge numbers of people willing to jump on the false-accusation bandwagon the second they hear about a sex crime case, particularly one that doesn't fit the (exceptionally rare) paradigm of masked-man-jumping-out-of-bushes.[/quote]

Interesting point, Eloisa. I found it to be maybe a bit telling which rape centered new stories get any play on the board. In the last couple of weeks there have been at least two huge stories- one involving police blunders that let a serial rapist evade capture for a fucking long time, and of course the cab driver who has raped god knows how many women over a period of time in London. I guess those topics aren't as exciting as the age old debate of he said/she said.

Rape is a horrible crime. That is vastly under-reported in women and men and, at least in the UK, the conviction rate is a fucking joke. I cannot imagine how horrible it would be as a man to have your life unredeemably altered by a false accusation, but I think we can all agree that there are probably untold numbers of men who are never charged, much less convicted of rape, undoubtly vastly outnumbering the cases of men who have been falsely accused.

[Eponine]

[quote name='Eloisa' post='1734966' date='Mar 26 2009, 21.08']And yet only a tiny percentage of sex crimes are taken to court, and of those, only a tiny percentage result in conviction.

Entirely without reference to your friend or to any other particular individual, it's almost as if the media were deliberately misrepresenting statistics about the prevalence of actual sexual assault versus false accusations of sexual assault, to the extent that there are huuuuuuge numbers of people willing to jump on the false-accusation bandwagon the second they hear about a sex crime case, particularly one that doesn't fit the (exceptionally rare) paradigm of masked-man-jumping-out-of-bushes.

Like Lany said, it's really... [i]interesting [/i]to see people's views here.[/quote]

I don't disagree. However, I don't think that pointing out that there's no way for us to know the truth of this one specific case and probably not enough evidence to convict beyond all reasonable doubt is the same thing as jumping on the false-accusation bandwagon.

Definitely knowing someone going through a false (in my belief and with collaborating evidence) accusation has changed some of my views though. When I used to see "alleged _____" and some guy's picture in the news, I just assumed that the guy was guilty because of statistics and because someone must have felt they had reasonable cause to accuse him. Now I will not say that about an INDIVIDUAL who is accused. I still believe that the statistics are reason to take other kinds of action and make it easier for raped women to come forward, but I won't presume someone guilty.

[Guest thebadlady]

Like I said to some other clueless person...of course I was raped. This sort of deep abiding hatred of men and sexual assault doesn't just flower on its own.


About the names being released...this shouldn't be different than anything else and it SHOULD be that no one's name is released until after a trial. For anything. Esp since we have already seen how easily it is to figure out who the victim was by looking at the defendent and the circumstances.

[Zoë Sumra]

[quote name='Eponine' post='1734969' date='Mar 27 2009, 01.09']Is there a reason why the name of the accused is released in a situation like this? It seems contrary to the spirit of innocent until proven guilty, especially as it's been mentioned before, even if a defendant is lying and evidence comes up to prove a person completely innocent, the charge itself can cause damage.[/quote]
I don't know, but I'd guess, that the innocent-until-proven-guilty principle makes the assumption that an accused individual would [i]not[/i] face social stigma unless found guilty. Theory's a wonderful thing.

In the UK a minor accused of a crime, and any adult involved in a crime in such a way that might identify minors involved in the situation (e.g. parent accused of killing a child when their child 2 is still alive), gains complete anonymity before conviction and in some cases after it. If a minor is convicted of an offence the judge can make the decision to publish the person's name, and often will when it's serious. A rape victim has the right to similar anonymity, but can choose to waive it; the anonymity here is due, surprise surprise, to the social stigma attached to being a rape victim, which often manifests itself in other members of society assuming she (90% of rape victims are women) was "asking for it", was wearing tight clothes, was drunk, was out late at night, etc., etc.

There have been proposals to extend anonymity to teachers investigated over assaults on pupils, due to the rate of actual to alleged assaults really genuinely being weighted vastly on the side of the false allegations in this case.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

[quote name='turinturambar' post='1734974' date='Mar 26 2009, 21.15'].

BTW, rape is a terrible thing. My wife was raped several years before we met. She never reported it and I wish every day that she had. The worse thing is she knows who it was and I've seen pictures of the guy. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish I could tear that guy from limb to limb for the things he did to her. The things he did to her....It hurts me every day to think of what she went through, I can only imagine the turmoil she still goes through to this day. I don't know what kind of person is capable of doing such things, I don't know how people become that way, but I hate him and I hate anybody that does such a thing. The fact you could even compare me (or anyone else) to such a person.....that's crossing the line. You should be ashamed. Throwing around such assumptions about anybody is a terrible thing to do.[/quote]

Perhaps people react very strongly because of their personal experiences. Calling them a piece of shit for getting upset over people defending rape is whay over the line.

Maybe your wife should read the things you wrote. They are completely insensitive to anyone who has ever been sexually asulted. You are the one who should be ashamed.

[Black Dow]

[quote name='Raidne' post='1734939' date='Mar 26 2009, 20.49']From what I read, it's alleged that she "performed a sex act" on him. It doesn't appear that she agrees with that, and it doesn't appear that that information appears in his initial statement.

It'll go before the jury. If they find that she did, in fact, perform some kind of sex act on him, that it would be probative, but not by any means determinative, as to her intent.

A lot of things in this case are, as of yet, unclear. One thing that's [i]not[/i] unclear is that this woman believes that she was raped. So it should go to trial and it'll get sorted out.[/quote]

I'm not so sure that a case like this [i]should[/i] go to trial. A bare allegation isn't sufficient; there has to be probable cause for there to be an indictment, and I don't think that even that threshhold was met here.

BTW- it did get sorted out. Not guilty, and the Judge essentially said that the alleged victim's interpretation of the law was flat-out wrong.

[TheLoneliestMonk]

well, imho, if she was actively trying to have sex, encouraging, rather than discouraging or doing nothing, then i don't think this guy was doing anything that wrong. even if she forgot and even if she only wanted to have sex because she was very drunk, the fact is that she did consent. at the same time, i almost wish he was found guilty, if only because of the frightening number of women i have heard confess that they have been raped but mever sought the athorities because they thought they would be dismissed since when it happened they were drunk.