(no subject)

[hellison]

Is there something up with lj, or is it just me? Everything has gone wonky.

Anyway. 'nother interview today, same as last one only for a grade up (in civil service terms) so it was tougher and a lot more on policy and management. Bleh. Hopefully managed not to disgrace self, and I think achieved the main purpose of going which was to hammer home to our useless director (who was on the panel) the relevance of what I actually do now, since my current manager helpfully informed a while back that he doesn't have a clue and didn't think it was anything relevant (barely restrained myself at the time from pointing out Very Strongly and Loudly that surely it was HER JOB to make him aware... but meh).

Anyway tis done now, thank god and the Central Library Book sale is on so YAY.


In news of less yay and more Complete Fucking Outrage -

Rapist jailed for 8 years

Surely this is a good thing? Well no, it's fucking not.
He and a friend caught a young girl with a group of male friends, robbed them and forced them to watch while he raped her twice, then phoned her mother to tell her how much he "enjoyed raping your girl".
He initially denied it but switched his plea to guilty at the last minute (given he was found still with her phone when arrested, not to mention DNA and the eye witnesses...).

Eight years. For rape, theft, false imprisonment...
Except it's NOT. We still have 50% remittence. So it's FOUR years.
Time on remand counts as double and gets taken off. So he could be out of jail before she's out of her teens.

If that's all he gets with that amount of proof - evidence described by the judge as "overwhelming "- AND admitting he did it, is it any wonder so many rapes and attacks go unreported?
The 'friend' who helped, held off *her* friends & robbed them and watched?
Out on probation.

What's the fucking *point*?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_unhurt_/]

yeah. sad and brutal truth: your number one responsibility here is to yourself. it's pretty clear going to the police is most likely to cause you more pain and lead to sweet f-all in terms of justice, given that you can have WITNESSES to rape and it's still not enough to secure a reasonable sentence. so, what can you do, except deal with it your own way? at least you know what to call what happened and that the man in question is a fucking rapist.

this comment from a thread on feministe nails the wtf-ery of commmon reactions to rape cases for me:

If I go to the police and claim to have been mugged, and they arrest someone and it goes to trial, it’s never assumed that I’m a liar. The person being charged is assumed innocent until proven guilty, and there may be the assumption that I made a mistaken [sic] when I picked that particular person out of the lineup, but if the trial makes it to court, people aren’t going to automatically assume that I’m a stupid liar who wasn’t really mugged. But when rape trials go to court, for some reason things are different. Suddenly nobody even believes that a crime was commited. It’s not a matter of worrying about whether you’ve got the right defendent- it’s “was a crime even really perpetrated?”

[repton-infinity.livejournal.com]

Suppose the law were changed so that the judge/jury is not allowed to doubt that a rape occurred. The trial forumula now becomes:
1. Person says they were raped on a particular occasion.
2. Police find person suspect of having sex with first person on that occasion.
2.a. Police prove suspect had sex with first person on that occasion. Guilty.
2.b. Police fail to prove suspect had sex with first person on that occasion. Not guilty.

What would the consequences of this be to society?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_unhurt_/]

you are missing the point: in many criminal cases the question is not "did the crime take place", the question is "is there sufficient evidence to convict THIS PERSON of the crime that is accepted to have taken place". if someone is found not guilty of murder, it doens't mean there was no murder. anyway, your proposed changes are a straw man. nothing in the above quote suggests the defendant should not be considered innocent till proven guilty. it suggests that rape not be the only crime in which there is a supposition the victim might be lying that is hugely disproportionate to the actual likelihood this is the case.

and drop the "person". most rapes - outside the fucked up power dynamic of prison rape, involve a man raping a woman (or sometimes a child). this "a person" stuff obscures that fairly important characteristic of rape. if you feel that's unfair to men, well, tough. i find it pretty tough that society basically says anyone who wants can shove his cock into my body without my consent and there's every chance he will get away with it because, hey! those women, they lie about rape. i know it's true, i saw a tabloid headline about it last week!

you know why false rape accusations make the headlines? because they're vanishingly fucking RARE. that and they feed nicely into the useful stereotype of women being flighty, evil-minded bitches who lie about rape to get innocent men into trouble for spurning them/because they had sex and regret it.

[repton-infinity.livejournal.com]

you are missing the point

Am I? I took your point to be that in rape cases, the defendent might say, in their defence, "She consented". In which case, the trial comes down the question of who is lying: the defendent or the suspect — and if the suspect is lying, a crime did not take place. This is different from most (all?) other crimes.

So, I proposed a law change to always assume the victim is telling the truth.

An immediate consequence of this is that, in order to convict someone of rape, all you have to do is prove that they had sex with the victim at the time the rape occurred. I then asked you what other possible consequences could be.

and drop the "person". most rapes - outside the fucked up power dynamic of prison rape, involve a man raping a woman

According to http://www.rainn.org/statistics/index.html men make up 10% of rape victims. ^O^

But that's beside the point. I originally wrote that with "woman" and "man", but I changed it because if you're writing a law, you shouldn't write it with the assumption that only women can be raped and only men can be rapists.

[repton-infinity.livejournal.com]

who is lying: the defendent or the suspect — and if the suspect is lying, a crime did not take place.

Obviously I messed this up — the defendent or the victim.

You might take this to be some kind of Freudian slip, or revelation of masculine bias that renders all I have written tainted — but please ignore that and focus on what I intended to say.