December Deadlines

[thessalian]

So dodgyhoodoo tells me that the books we ordered for Dragonmeet are already in Borehamwood. They will be arriving at the house today. This means dodgyhoodoo is going to scamper off home early to collect them. And that we have books already.

...We have books already! Agh! It's just over a week before Dragonmeet, you realise. One week to go and then I'm going to be running games and selling things and ... AGH! I shall go totally bugfuck. I may have to wait until after all the running and things to properly descend into bugfuckery, but it will happen. Just you wait and see.

Too many deadlines, too little time. So far what I have is:

Days until end of NaNoWriMo: 5
Days until Dragonmeet: 7
Days until my mother's birthday: 24
Days until Christmas: 30

There needs to be a plan. So far what I've got is "Finish NaNo, spend the remaining time working on Dragonmeet stuff, do Dragonmeet, have nervous breakdown, shop". It'll have to do. But at least I got niftiness for people. dodgyhoodo apparently envies my organisational skills. Which is odd, because I feel about as well organised as London public transport.

Speaking of, I was smart and checked the TfL website before I left the house. It said, "Minor delays on the Northern Line due to a signal failure at Finchley Central". Again. So, remembering the fact that yesterday they were taking "Minor delays" to mean "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!", I took the Piccadilly Line instead. Got to work on time, too, even taking into account the stop I made in Sainsburys' for instant coffee and a cinnamon danish. So it's not all bad.

What is bad is that, following up from my post yesterday about rape statistics and whether or not women who were considered to be dressing provocatively or flirting and then raped were in part responsible for what had happened to them, kixie makes mention of a recent Times article in which they talk about a recent rape case that made the papers. Apparently, women who are raped while drunk are losing the right to press charges -- something about how "drunken consent is still consent". One of the people commenting on kixie's comment asked if that applied to people whose drinks have been spiked, bringing up 'roofies' as an example. While rohypnol is a problem, I'd also bring up the possibility of simply spiking a woman's drink with more alcohol; things like vodka don't taste like much and it's fairly easy to keep ordering doubles for the lady instead of singles. In short, there are some serious holes in this argument.

I'm not sure I agree with the way this has been done, either. In this case, the suspected rapist was working as a security guard and had been charged with seeing the woman home safely because she'd had way too much to drink. It's fair to say that if the woman in the case was that drunk, she probably didn't initiate anything, though that was never called into question. No one ever really questioned her allegation that she was unconscious at the time, either, which is odd given that it's kind of hard to give consent when you're not aware of your surroundings. They just said, "Drunken consent is still consent", not taking it into account that the suspected rapist might have started to molest her and continued straight on to sex because she didn't say no. It may not have occurred that she didn't say no because she was too intoxicated to protest, which is a different thing than "consenting". It just strikes me as wrong, if easier for the courts to deal with, that a rapist is let free just because his victim made a mistake. Getting carried away can happen to anyone, and it seems wrong that a door has now been opened for men to take advantage.

The worst part about this, though? The judge ordered the jury to vote 'not guilty' even if they disagreed. Direct quote. And no one argued with him. What's the point of a trial by jury if the jury's being told what to do? It just strikes me as a fallacy of justice to have a judge say, "This is what I think; vote the way I think". Gah.

Comments

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

The implication raised is that a single and uncertain accusation of a crime should not be enough to convict. I don't care what the crime is.

And it's not the judge who stopped the case - it was the prosecution barrister. Once the prosecution has abandoned the case, the judge has little choice left.

At the end of her evidence, Huw Rees, the prosecution barrister, said he was abandoning the case “in light of the evidence revealed in cross-examination”.

“The question of consent is an essential part of the case. Drunken consent is still consent.

“She said she could not remember giving consent and that is fatal for the prosecution’s case.”

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I wondered who would be the first to post about that.

I just want to know why that case ever made it so far as court. Under British law, the presumption of innocence applies - which means you need more than one word against another to prosecute. (Which is one reason rape cases are so hard to prosecute).

In the case in question, we didn't even have that - we have an accuser who says she doesn't even know if sex took place, let alone whether she consented. She was clearly just about able to walk because otherwise one person couldn't have seen her home. She was therefore capable of undertaking some actions but has no memory of what. Hardly the unconsicous victim you make her out to be.

It's fair to say that if the woman in the case was that drunk, she probably didn't initiate anything

You've never met amorous drunks? I'm very surprised.

Rohypnol is another matter (and is, I believe, testable for by a number of mechanisms). The question with rohypnol isn't (as it is for rape) "did she consent?", but "who slipped it to her" - an issue that doesn't usually boil down to one person's word against another. Spiking drinks is another matter I'll admit.

The worst part about this, though? The judge ordered the jury to vote 'not guilty' even if they disagreed.

And the prosecution barrister abandoned the case - something they don't do lightly. At that point, no verdict other than "not guilty" should have been possible. The judge was just worried about loose cannons on the bench making a stupid decision running against the law. It is the job of a jury to work out what should happen under the law - and the law in this case is quite clear. The case should never have got to court.

It just strikes me as wrong, if easier for the courts to deal with, that a rapist is let free just because his victim made a mistake.

I couldn't disagree more. Innocent until proven guilty is a fundamental principle of Common Law for a very good reason. It strikes me as wrong to have convictions from the unadorned word of a single person in any circumstance, let alone one when she wasn't sure what she said.

[thessalian.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily disagree with you; I just think it's a shame that a benchmark for this kind of thing is being set in this way. The idea of taking a case to court on the grounds of "her word against his" isn't workable, but how much choice do women have? Now, as well as the problems with lack of evidence in terms of a rape case, a woman is going to have to prove that she wasn't drunk at the time of the assault just so they can stop that being an issue. That's going to result in women who call the police after a sexual assault of this kind being breathalysed or something; way to make a woman who's been raped feel like she's in the wrong.

Then there's this situation: Woman goes out, has a few drinks, gets a bit drunk. A male colleague offers to drive her home and she agrees. They go to her house, he starts making advances, she makes it clear she's not interested and he rapes her. She goes to the police and reports this. They test her for alcohol, keeping in mind that she has likely had time to sober up by the time they've arrived, and the test comes up positive anyway. So they question the man in the equation and he tells them, "Oh, she must be misremembering; she did have rather a lot to drink that night. She was well up for it, though". Witnesses report that yes, the two of them were being friendly during the outing and she did have rather a lot to drink. Because of this mess, this hypothetical woman is never going to have her case come to trial, as it will be thrown out for a lack of evidence.

I can't say that they came to the wrong decision in light of the total lack of evidence anywhere in that trial. But that's for that trial, not any of the others. Setting legal precedent in cases of this type is generally a bad idea. I know how hard it is to prove rape, because it is always going to be someone's word against someone else's. Even in the case of date rape drugs, it will generally be awhile before the woman discovers what's been done to her and things like Rohypnol break down in the blood stream quite quickly. It just seems sad to me that so many rapists get away with it because of a total lack of ability to conclusively prove rape so much of the time.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

It just seems sad to me that so many rapists get away with it because of a total lack of ability to conclusively prove rape so much of the time.

Agreed. The problem here is finding a better alternative.

[aberrantangels]

In this case, the suspected rapist was working as a security guard and had been charged with seeing the woman home safely because she'd had way too much to drink.

ginmar had to point that out to not one but two anonymous trolls, neither've whom has yet deigned to acknowledge the point. *sigh* If I can't have a new species, I'd at least like a completely new gender to be.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

Indeed. The judge made the right decision, but the former security guard should never be put in a position of responsibility again.

[aberrantangels]

Oh, and yay book-having! ^_^