Apparently, Rape is not Rape

[SaintB]

If your that drunk, and put yourself in that situation, maybe you need to make better decisions. Also, who's to say he wasn't drunk? Why should the resposibility fall soley on a man to moderate a stupid situation?

If she had fucked him while he was unconscious, she'd be just as much a rapist.* It has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with one person NOT CONSENTING.





*and we can keep debating precisely how much that is, but it's not relevant to this particular response.

Do you think a man and a women would be weighed equally in court on a rape charge?

Hows is that relevant?

[Poliwanacraca]

If your that drunk, and put yourself in that situation, maybe you need to make better decisions. Also, who's to say he wasn't drunk? Why should the resposibility fall soley on a man to moderate a stupid situation?

If she had fucked him while he was unconscious, she'd be just as much a rapist.* It has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with one person NOT CONSENTING.





*and we can keep debating precisely how much that is, but it's not relevant to this particular response.

Do you think a man and a women would be weighed equally in court on a rape charge?

Probably not, because our society is crap in many ways, not the least of which being that we suck at handling rape cases in general. That has nothing to do with the simple fact that he's not being charged because he was male, he's being charged because she was unconscious.

[Dinaverg]

[qote="Meshuggahisle"]If your that drunk, and put yourself in that situation, maybe you need to make better decisions. Also, who's to say he wasn't drunk? Why should the resposibility fall soley on a man to moderate a stupid situation?[/qote]



If she had fucked him while he was unconscious, she'd be just as much a rapist.* It has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with one person NOT CONSENTING.





*and we can keep debating precisely how much that is, but it's not relevant to this particular response.

Do you think a man and a women would be weighed equally in court on a rape charge?

Why wouldn't they be?

Probably due to some sort of bias, conscious or otherwise, in the judge and/or jury

[NERVUN]

It used to be easy, every poster with less than 1000 posts was an idiot. Now...

I have less than 1,000 posts

Oh wait nvm...


Nervun has less 1,000 posts!

I address you to this line in my sig: Add 10,145 to post count from Jolt

[Tahar Joblis]

I dunno -- can you consent to a sex act after it's been performed? If not, he still should have gotten jail time, either way.

Damned if I know. All my sex partners have been awake (Er, kinda. There's fun ways of waking up your wife after all. ). I agree that if the law is written that way, then that is the law, but I'm not to sure I would call it rape if she consented after the fact as well.

This idea of "consent after the fact" bothers me greatly. "Declined to press charges" I can understand; the laws allow victims to forgive their assailants in all but a handful of crimes, but "consent after the fact" introduces even more grayness into the area of consent than I discussed above (in this case, the gray area that the judge calls into question is the difference between considering initially given consent with no active objections, and considering consent a continually granted conscious property).

A post facto determination of consent would mean that the two acts, exactly the same at the time of commission, could be considered both rape and consensual sex.

[United Dependencies]

Probably due to some sort of bias, conscious or otherwise, in the judge and/or jury

Oh of course. Forgot about that.

[Saint Clair Island]

You know, whenever I see the last post in a thread is a name I don't recognize, I just KNOW stupid is about to follow.

Never fails

It used to be easy, every poster with less than 1000 posts was an idiot. Now...

Well, some of those with over 1000 posts are also idiots -- even on here where there aren't many posters past 1000 in the first place. I won't name names, of course.

Still, certain posters can be almost guaranteed to bring the stupid to a thread, and one comes to recognize them -- again, not naming any names.

Dinaverg, you just have to increase your post count. It's the only way. <.<

[L3 Communications]

How stupid can you be to not know when a woman's passed out? What a frackin' idiot...

Some women...they just don't put out much.

[Dinaverg]

I dunno -- can you consent to a sex act after it's been performed? If not, he still should have gotten jail time, either way.

Damned if I know. All my sex partners have been awake (Er, kinda. There's fun ways of waking up your wife after all. ). I agree that if the law is written that way, then that is the law, but I'm not to sure I would call it rape if she consented after the fact as well.

This idea of "consent after the fact" bothers me greatly. "Declined to press charges" I can understand; the laws allow victims to forgive their assailants in all but a handful of crimes, but "consent after the fact" introduces even more grayness into the area of consent than I discussed above (in this case, the gray area that the judge calls into question is the difference between considering initially given consent with no active objections, and considering consent a continually granted conscious property).

A post facto determination of consent would mean that the two acts, exactly the same at the time of commission, could be considered both rape and consensual sex.

Can't lots of things become different things later on?

[Saint Clair Island]

If she had fucked him while he was unconscious, she'd be just as much a rapist.* It has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with one person NOT CONSENTING.





*and we can keep debating precisely how much that is, but it's not relevant to this particular response.

Do you think a man and a women would be weighed equally in court on a rape charge?

Probably not, because our society is crap in many ways, not the least of which being that we suck at handling rape cases in general. That has nothing to do with the simple fact that he's not being charged because he was male, he's being charged because she was unconscious.

Well, but only men can commit rape, right? Right?

[Galloism]

How stupid can you be to not know when a woman's passed out? What a frackin' idiot...

Some women...they just don't put out much.

Same thing I told Greed'n'Death:

You're doing it wrong.

[NERVUN]

I kinda wonderthat if consent was given to start the act wouldn't it be implied consent to finish the act unless she said stop ??

Well, we don't know exactly what sex act we're talking here. I mean, did he just start feeling her up and she was ok with that, but wouldn't have been with full sex? So what he was doing when she passed out and what he finished doing might be two seperate things and she wasn't capable of consenting to the second one at that time.

well, the judge refers to a singular act, and the article uses the verb 'continue'

True, but then again as I said, the article is poorly written so it's hard to say one way or another.

[Dinaverg]

[qute="Dinaverg"]It used to be easy, every poster with less than 1000 posts was an idiot. Now... [/qute]
I have less than 1,000 posts

Oh wait nvm...


Nervun has less 1,000 posts!

I address you to this line in my sig: Add 10,145 to post count from Jolt

to post count from Jolt, or to post count from Jolt?

[Greed and Death]

How stupid can you be to not know when a woman's passed out? What a frackin' idiot...

Some women...they just don't put out much.

Same thing I told Greed'n'Death:

You're doing it wrong.

sometimes you got to teach a woman to enjoy sex.
also soemtimes you got to tell them to relax and not be so tensed up.

[Phenia]

That's...actually not true at all. If for some reason I am arrested for killing President Barack Obama, and I plead guilty to such, the judge can't just go "well, he plead guilty...so....life in prison for murder" when President Barack Obama is still quite obviously very much alive.

Pleading guilty doesn't mean a judge has to accept it, there still must be sufficient evidence to substantiate the confession.

Well, obviously in the case of a still-alive alleged murder victim, but we seem to have a rape victim here, a crime of rape, and a guy who pleaded guilty to said crime, and I don't think there is any other suspects. Now again I don't know much about law but it seems fairly straight-forward to me. If OJ had pleaded guilty, and Judge Ito had still let him walk, wouldn't that be... well... wrong?

[Dinaverg]

That's...actually not true at all. If for some reason I am arrested for killing President Barack Obama, and I plead guilty to such, the judge can't just go "well, he plead guilty...so....life in prison for murder" when President Barack Obama is still quite obviously very much alive.

Pleading guilty doesn't mean a judge has to accept it, there still must be sufficient evidence to substantiate the confession.

Well, obviously in the case of a still-alive alleged murder victim, but we seem to have a rape victim here, a crime of rape, and a guy who pleaded guilty to said crime, and I don't think there is any other suspects. Now again I don't know much about law but it seems fairly straight-forward to me. If OJ had pleaded guilty, and Judge Ito had still let him walk, wouldn't that be... well... wrong?

seem to have a rape victim is probably the key term here. In a 'maybe, possibly' kinda way.

[Greed and Death]

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25823169-952,00.html

A judge refused to impose a jail sentence on a man who pled guilty to rape after continuing to perform a sex act AFTER the victim passed out. Apparently, it's unfair to mark him as a rapist.

I'm sorry, but if someone is PASSED OUT, how do you continue and not be a rapist?

It seems to me that's beyond the point if he actually plead guilty to rape. Not knowing much of the law, it still strikes me that the judge had an obligation to throw the book at him regardless.

That's...actually not true at all. If for some reason I am arrested for killing President Barack Obama, and I plead guilty to such, the judge can't just go "well, he plead guilty...so....life in prison for murder" when President Barack Obama is still quite obviously very much alive.

Pleading guilty doesn't mean a judge has to accept it, there still must be sufficient evidence to substantiate the confession.

Not a lawyer but what I would do as judge/prosecutor/investigator. Is get you to sign that don't want a defense attorney waiver. Change your plea to guilty of attempted murder or conspiracy to commit murder. Then get you to mention as many names as possible of people in politics i don't like and use your confession to start investigations on them. Then leak they are being investigated for a plot on Obama's life.

[NERVUN]

I dunno -- can you consent to a sex act after it's been performed? If not, he still should have gotten jail time, either way.

Damned if I know. All my sex partners have been awake (Er, kinda. There's fun ways of waking up your wife after all. ). I agree that if the law is written that way, then that is the law, but I'm not to sure I would call it rape if she consented after the fact as well.

This idea of "consent after the fact" bothers me greatly. "Declined to press charges" I can understand; the laws allow victims to forgive their assailants in all but a handful of crimes, but "consent after the fact" introduces even more grayness into the area of consent than I discussed above (in this case, the gray area that the judge calls into question is the difference between considering initially given consent with no active objections, and considering consent a continually granted conscious property).

A post facto determination of consent would mean that the two acts, exactly the same at the time of commission, could be considered both rape and consensual sex.

I'm not exactly too sure on that though, because what we are dealing with is a particular time when someone is incapable of giving concent due to various reasons and being asked if they are ok with it after the fact. Going back to my book example, if Pol takes a book that I hadn't concented to before and then asks me afterwards if that was ok, I can granting her concent to have done so. Since I wasn't at home, she couldn't have gotten concent from me at that point in time. This is not the same as me saying, "Yes, you can have the book" and then afterwards say, "No! You can't! THIEF!"

[Saint Clair Island]

I have less than 1,000 posts

Oh wait nvm...


Nervun has less 1,000 posts!

I address you to this line in my sig: Add 10,145 to post count from Jolt

I've considered doing that but (a) I have no idea how many posts I actually had and (b) they were under different accounts so they probably don't count towards SCI's total.

[NERVUN]

I address you to this line in my sig: Add 10,145 to post count from Jolt

to post count from Jolt, or to post count from Jolt?

Yes.

[Tahar Joblis]

Can't lots of things become different things later on?

One can convince oneself of that. This is why the classic "he said, she said" defense is where the accused claims that the accuser had, in fact, consented, and has simply changed stories between the act and the accusation.

It can be a very powerful defense on the standard of reasonable doubt; for example, we had a non-student ex-boyfriend of a student in the dorms get acquitted of rape charges for a long series of sex acts the two performed in the dorm showers from about 2 am until 6 am one night. She said he forced her to do them with her; he said that she had expressed consent at the time; the jury decided there was a measure of reasonable doubt and moved to acquit.

I think post facto consent is a very dangerous idea to introduce into the mix. It leaves entirely too much in the air, and in any event, the option of not pressing charges is one ingrained within the system.

[Dinaverg]

Can't lots of things become different things later on?

One can convince oneself of that. This is why the classic "he said, she said" defense is where the accused claims that the accuser had, in fact, consented, and has simply changed stories between the act and the accusation.

It can be a very powerful defense on the standard of reasonable doubt; for example, we had a non-student ex-boyfriend of a student in the dorms get acquitted of rape charges for a long series of sex acts the two performed in the dorm showers from about 2 am until 6 am one night. She said he forced her to do them with her; he said that she had expressed consent at the time; the jury decided there was a measure of reasonable doubt and moved to acquit.

that...does sound like how the judicial system works, yes.

I think post facto consent is a very dangerous idea to introduce into the mix. It leaves entirely too much in the air, and in any event, the option of not pressing charges is one ingrained within the system.

[Saint Clair Island]

I think post facto consent is a very dangerous idea to introduce into the mix. It leaves entirely too much in the air, and in any event, the option of not pressing charges is one ingrained within the system.

I agree. If you consent afterwards, don't press charges -- the fact that charges were pressed indicates that no consent was given afterwards, so he should have been convicted. If you withdraw consent afterwards, it doesn't figure into the jury's final decision -- but this is somewhat harder to prove since any defendant can just claim "she said yes at the time" even if it's not necessarily true.

[Greed and Death]

I think post facto consent is a very dangerous idea to introduce into the mix. It leaves entirely too much in the air, and in any event, the option of not pressing charges is one ingrained within the system.

I agree. If you consent afterwards, don't press charges -- the fact that charges were pressed indicates that no consent was given afterwards, so he should have been convicted. If you withdraw consent afterwards, it doesn't figure into the jury's final decision -- but this is somewhat harder to prove since any defendant can just claim "she said yes at the time" even if it's not necessarily true.

would go something like this.
Guy rapes girl why she is drunk.
Girl goes to police.
Guy's friends threaten to harm girls family unless she declares post facto consent.


Not a good thing. Stuff like abuse and rape need to be investigated/prosecuted fully regardless if the victim backs out or not.

[Tahar Joblis]

I'm not exactly too sure on that though, because what we are dealing with is a particular time when someone is incapable of giving concent due to various reasons and being asked if they are ok with it after the fact. Going back to my book example, if Pol takes a book that I hadn't concented to before and then asks me afterwards if that was ok, I can granting her concent to have done so. Since I wasn't at home, she couldn't have gotten concent from me at that point in time. This is not the same as me saying, "Yes, you can have the book" and then afterwards say, "No! You can't! THIEF!"

I feel like you're mixing "consent" with "forgiveness."

In all the gray areas we're likely to go in, there's some measure of "implied consent," whether legally or socially. Pol has reasons to believe you would not mind if she borrowed a book.

If Pol broke into your house in the middle of the night while you were on vacation and made off with the book without any reason to believe you'd let her borrow it, we'd say she stole it, whether she kept it or you, when asked, said "Naw, really, it's OK, you can have it until XXXX."

When I visit my parents, I assume I can make use of any food in the kitchen to prepare something, because they're OK with it, unless they specifically tell me not to use some particular food. Same sort of thing.

With regard to rape, there is still a certain measure of implied consent floating around in case law with regard to spouses; it is assumed in many jurisdictions that unless a spouse actively withdraws consent, their husband/wife has implicit permission to initiate sexual activity with them; it is only quite recently (16 years) that North Carolina allowed spouses to withdraw consent, and the stronger form of implied marital consent remains on the lawbooks in other countries.

Now, don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with asking after the fact if something was OK for you to do, and if the answer is affirmative (and not under duress), you might be able use that in your defense in a criminal case. But the fact is, I could ask for forgiveness after having run a complete stranger over with her own car, beaten her senseless with a vacuum cleaner, and then sodomized her with a dirty mop - and she could decline to press charges after she made it out of the hospital, but that wouldn't change the fact that what I did was several varieties of assault.