Consent - About to start on channel 4

[zenie]

I thought bruising would be classed as forensic evidence?

No, I mean DNA Fornesics, skin scrapings, semen etc...

She left it too long to be able to get these from the examination...

 

[Grandma Death]

One other piece of evidence the jury seemed to completely ignore, and her lawyer really should have pressured the jerk about: why he hadn't used a condom. That in itself should have given it away that this was forced and she had no time to react.

....also the bruising. He claimed it was rough sex and they were 'wrestling' yet he didnt seem clear on that and stumbled quite a bit. The prosecution did touch on it the fact he said she was very 'slight' and I wouldve questioned how he can be claiming they were 'wrestling' and playing rough when clearly he was much bigger and she smaller-a fact he acknowledged.

 

[JoePolitix]

Something needs to be done. Even if you estimate that 1% of rape cases brought to trial are fabricated by the woman, and that is more than likely a gross overestimate, you still leave 99% that are not fabricated, and conviction rate is 5%. So that's 95% of men getting away with something that 99% of them have done. I can't quite work out the maths, but it doesn't need to be spelled out that it's a clear failure of justice.

The law needs to catch up with the times.

You're quite right there. To be fair to the government (and I'm not ususally!) there have been some progressive reforms to the law on rape in recent years but there has been alot of resistance particularly among judges (i.e middle aged upper class white men). Todays front page made depressing reading:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1996585,00.html

And the sad truth of the matter is that tweeking the law can only do so much, its social attitudes that need to change:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4453820.stm

Someone should start a thread on this issue in politics. It would be good to have more female contributors on that board.

 

[LilMissHissyFit]

The jurors disgusted me. That woman repeating over and over that if it were her, she would have bit him, that the victim hadn't done enough to fight him off. She clearly has never been in any sort of situation anywhere near resembling rape, nor did any of them have any sort of sympathy for what shock she must have been through in the following days.

It's always the same thing, victim on trial.

Alas, she didn't go to the police straight away, and that really was her fault. If she had, things would have been very different. As awful as it is, it really is the only way if you have any hope of getting a conviction. If she had gone the signs of force would have been much more pronounced, she probably would have had cuts in her mouth from him holding her down she didn't know to look for.

MY mother told me this after watching it. Mrfit wouldnt let me watch it

Im kind of glad, a new TV would have been expensive
He was right

 

[mrs quoad]

The way this thread's developed has made me realise I'm kinda bigotted against men / rape defendants...

I never had any doubts that he'd raped her when I watched the prog - I assumed it was a given. Admittedly I wasn't in front of the TV all the time and went to bed half-way through the trial, but I caught most of it from the start from the way the stories unfolded I - personally - hadn't even considered that he hadn't raped her. I presumed it was just a look at the way juries worked in (a) case(s) where rape HAD happened.

I guess I thought it was coming from that standpoint because convictions are so rare - I expected it to be coming from more of an openly politically biased stance.

That's my stuff, oops

 

[Ms Ordinary]

It was a bit weird though, because the rape was fictional - it was a drama, with actors, so there was no 'absolute truth', it was just the way then director chose it.

It just came down to wondering whether the director had chosen to make a film about the difficulty of getting a rape conviction, or one about men being falsely accused of rape...

The jurors were real people though, & I agree about the woman who was saying (paraphrased) 'it can't have been rape or she would have fought him off' very .

 

[zenie]

I might get slated for this, but I think it may have made much more interesting viewing if he hadn't actually raped her?

 

[baldrick]

why do you think that, though?

 

[JoePolitix]

Trial by Daily Mail

The jurors were real people though, & I agree about the woman who was saying (paraphrased) 'it can't have been rape or she would have fought him off' very .

Some of those jurors didnt have the intelligence to vote on big brother let alone decide on whether to deprive someone of their liberty or not. Very disturbing.

 

[catrina]

I thought he had done it all the way up until the last scene.

Then, in the flashback, just before he made the comment about knowing he was going to f*ck her from the moment he met her, up until that very moment I was convinced it would turn out that she made it up, and was shocked at my prejudice, because up until then, it did seem that she was going along with it. And then bam, in less than 30 seconds he had pinned her down and raped her.

That's why it's such bullsh*t to blame her for not defending herself. It was instantaneous.

I was thinking about this yesterday, it's like blaming someone for dying in a plane accident because they didn't adopt the brace position. Shock changes the way you interact with the world, and not all people are capable of functioning in that mental state.

 

[zenie]

why do you think that, though?

because it was predictable that he would rape her and get away with it.

 

[JoePolitix]

because it was predictable that he would rape her and get away with it.

But that's exactly the point. The shocking truth is that in Britain people do rape women and get away with it all the time. Only around 5% of reported rapes result in a conviction.

 

[Madusa]

Gosh, re-reading this thread again has brought back all the ill feelings i had after i had watched the programme.

 

[Grandma Death]

Rough sex.....the common defense of rapists?

Link

Gregory Jones, 39, head of personnel at South Wales Police, said at the end of 30 minutes of "rough sex", the woman asked him: "Is that it?"

Swansea Crown Court has heard the woman had bruising in 24 places on her body.


Under cross-examination from Dyfed Thomas, prosecuting, Mr Jones agreed that the term "rough sex" could be used to describe what they did together.

He said that several falls during the last time they had sex could explain the bruising.