(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

[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.