Savile, Yewtree, and the true victims of child abuse.
The picture editors were busy yesterday. The winsome portrayals of Madeleine McCann, once the picture of choice if the word paedophilia was to be mentioned in the media, were passed over. The aging shots of Jimmy Savile dusted down again, a touch of yellow applied to the teeth; the one with the sinister leer selected, the fattest cigar, symbol of wealth and membership of an elite, brought to the fore, and extra space booked on the front page to allow a larger than usual graphic to be displayed.
Had something occurred which involved Savile? Not exactly. But a man who had once freelanced for the same employer as Savile had been charged with a sexual offence which had come to the fore of the mind of someone, now middle aged, given the ‘courage’ to come forward 30 years later in the wake of the allegations that the BBC might conceivably be financially responsible for all crimes of a sexual nature which occurred within spitting distance of their premises by anyone with a tenuous claim to employment by them.
A BBC correspondent said Smith was a chauffeur who drove for the BBC though it was not clear his alleged offences occurred while he was employed by the corporation.
Yeah! ‘Yewtree’ has notched up its first formal charges! Considering that Yewtree received more than 500 ‘allegations’ the attrition rate is liable to be horrendous. Will this be used to show how poorly served child abuse victims are by the criminal system, in the same way that Rape statistics are routinely massaged year in, year out? Even someone as aware as I am of how the media misuse facts and statistics, had allowed the furore regarding the unique place Rape occupies in the reporting of crime to pass unnoticed.
Unique? Yes, unique! The ‘conviction rate’ of all other crimes is reported on the basis of charges laid versus convictions in court. Thus we arrive at a figure of 57% of people charged with manslaughter ultimately convicted. Where rape is concerned, many people, if asked, would tell you that it has a low conviction rate. Indeed we are frequently quoted the figure of 6.5%, with the accompanying mantra that ‘victims are to believed’ and ‘more must be done to improve the conviction rate’ – leaving one with the impression that the majority, the vast majority, of ‘rapists’ go unconvicted by the courts. Year by year, money is poured into facilities to help the victims of rape, to organisations that provide support for rape. It is ‘never enough’ is the meme.
I was astounded to learn that if rape conviction statistics were recorded in the same way that every other crime conviction rate is recorded, you actually have more chance (58%) of being convicted of rape than of manslaughter!
Somewhere round about Jack Straw’s tenancy of the Home Secretary’s desk in 1998, a vital and barely noticed change was made, in that henceforth, rape convictions were to be compared, not with people charged, but with ‘allegations made’…and it is from that change that we arrive at the oft quoted figure of 6.5% conviction rate for rape. The sleight of hand is often achieved through misleading words, such as ‘only 6.5% of reported rapes are successfully prosecuted’ – see what they did there?
In an age of austerity, one that we are likely to inhabit for a long time, all the Charities, and the Government ‘arms-length’ agencies that specialise in supporting victims and the vulnerable, are scrabbling to secure sparse funding, to secure their jobs and incidentally, I suspect too, too, incidentally, for the benefit of their dependent clients. The media are under resourced and dependent on press releases from these bodies. It is an ill fated combination. One that too easily falls victim itself to a desire to promote fear and guilt in the public to fight the headline moral panics. Individuals will surface who are predisposed to promoting the panic that will fill a particular charities coffers, whether through donations or more usually by putting government ministers in a no-win situation whereby they can scarcely deny more funding for a particular cause.
Curiously, today sees Mick and Mairead Philpott given lengthy sentences for the manslaughter of six of the seventeen children they have between them – yet the child protection agencies and their celebrity ’placemen’ have been ominously quiet on the subject of this tragedy. Whereas at the merest hint that a fourteen year old might have offered and delivered a ‘blow-job’ to a celebrity they become almost hysterical with demands for ‘something to be done’, the idea that six children should have been heartlessly incinerated by their feckless Father has induced no comment. I find it hard to imagine a more profound case of child abuse.
Child abuse that could have been foreseen, if not to its gruesome extent, at least to the possibility that harm might befall one or more of the children. The circumstances were known. The man had a previous conviction for violence, stabbing a previous partner. He famously appeared on ITVs Jeremy Kyle show explaining the finer details of his ménage à trois to guffaws of laughter from the audience and the ITV staff. Light entertainment! Later, Anne Widdecombe in another ITV show brought publicity to his feckless lifestyle, which apparently brought rewards of:
£20.30 a week child benefit for the eldest of the 11 children in the house and £13.40 for the other ten, totalling £8,023.60 a year.
His wife and Ms Willis had cleaning jobs. According to the HM Revenue & Customs website, his wife, with six children, was entitled to up to £20,560 a year in tax credits, and Ms Willis to up to £17,870 a year, totalling £38,430.
His wives’ wages could have taken his “income” to about £60,000 a year. Housing benefit covered the estimated £150-a-week in rent — a further £7,800.
Working tax credits and child benefits were paid tax free, meaning that Philpott’s account could have been similar to that of a man earning about £100,000 a year, putting him in the top 2 per cent of earners.
It is hard to escape the suspicion that the ‘culture and practices’ at ITV, by treating Philpott’s unusual lifestyle as a subject of light hearted entertainment, had contributed to producing a man who thought he could do no wrong. Hell, he was one of the few individuals in this country to receive a personal visit from a member of parliament investigating his lifestyle. Did no one refer his children to the child protection agencies?
And no demands for children in similar households to come forward and be ‘believed’ if they tell of life in the home of a man who resorts to casual violence whenever he doesn’t get his way, who relieves the taxpayer of the equivalent to £100,000 a year whilst he is lauded for his dubious sexual habits on television? No handwringing from Esther Rantzen? No Dame Janet Smith to spend millions examining whether the ‘culture and practice’ at ITV had any part to play in the horrendous life and death of those children?
What has happened to his remaining eleven children? Does anybody know? Does anybody care?
It appears to be a sad fact of life that not all child abuse victims are equal. Some are more valuable than others.
- April 8, 2013 at 10:09
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Surely the Met could find a ‘child protection expert’ to run utree ! What
was that delicious speech from Kenneth Williams about ‘specialisms ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdDtwc9HA7s
- April 8, 2013 at 09:56
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Inspector Abba – Line – Jack the Ripper
- April 8, 2013 at 01:22
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Spindler has indeed jumped ship http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-chief-peter-spindler-quits-1816009
so what’s all that about? Over a million quid later and nothing seems to
stick. The great Teflon investigation!!!
- April 8, 2013 at 09:17
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Teflon Investigator more like. Hopefully he’ll start drawing a fat
pension soon.
-
April 8, 2013 at 09:46
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Imagine how it would have been had Chief Inspector Morse jumped ship
halfway through series 4 ……just who on earth could have taken ‘Endevour’s’
place keeping us so happily entertained all those wonderful moons ago
?
Here we go again Guys and Gals lets have another bit of fun ! Name
for me if you can some famous detectives real and fictional and their
famous adversaries. I’ll start the ball :
‘Nipper, Reed – The Krays !
-
- April 8, 2013 at 10:57
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@ Spindler has indeed jumped ship …. so what’s all that about? @
Same
Link……….. Det Chief Supt Hamish Campbell, who led the Jill Dando murder
inquiry, has temporarily been put in charge of Yewtree.
Why just boil an egg when you can whip up an omelette?
“THE British police hunt for Madeleine McCann has cost at least
£3.8million. Scotland Yard has been investigating Madeleine’s 2007
disappearance in Portugal since May 2011. And figures obtained by the Daily
Star Sunday show the probe is costing around £6,228 a day. The vast majority
is being spent on wages, with 38 staff currently working on the inquiry,
which is called Operation Grange. As we have previously revealed,
Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell, who led the Jill Dando
murder inquiry, is overseeing the probe.”
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/306549/Scotland-Yard-squad-hunting-Madeleine-McCann-costs-6-228-a-day/
- April 8, 2013 at 09:17
- April 7, 2013 at 22:10
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I see Spindler’s jumped ship !
- April 6, 2013 at 23:32
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carol42,
Re: “A few people have asked that question but it doesn’t seem to apply to
men!”
So you can take advantage of drunk men to you heart’s content, lol
I always wonder though, if you can’t remember what happened how do you know
who was actually the instigator….?
And it isn’t always apparent to another person just how drunk the other
person is, even if they are, if they can still walk etc….
- April 6, 2013 at 23:54
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Totally agree with you but common sense seems to have disappeared in
these politically correct days. Sometimes I am glad I am getting old, worry
about what it will be like for my grandchildren though, maybe things will
have turned full circle by the time they grow up.
-
April 8, 2013 at 08:45
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Re: “maybe things will have turned full circle by the time they grow
up”
I wonder what full circle would be?
I certainly hope it turns half circle, lol
-
- April 6, 2013 at 23:54
- April 6, 2013 at 21:43
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Talking about reaction, I had almost forgotten this. Many years ago I was
attacked by a stranger on my way home, I had been visiting a friend, nothing
to drink and it was not very late, about 11. Until that night I would have
sworn that I would submit to a rape attempt rather than risk my life, it might
be horrible but not the end of the world, this was about 1970. At the initial
assault from behind I just froze as he dragged me to some waste ground. Then I
snapped out of the shock, realised we were near houses with lights on so I
deliberately let myself go limp and he took his hand off my mouth to try to
touch me and I screamed the place down which brought several people out and he
ran off. I had a bite to my face but that was all, it is strange but you
really don’t know how you will react until faced with the situation, at the
time I think I would have died before I let that man touch me. It turned out
there was a series of similar attacks in the area. I was afraid to come home
alone for quite a while and did eventually receive some criminal injuries
compensation but I was alright after a while and certainly not traumatised for
life.
- April 6, 2013 at 22:32
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carol42,
Did they catch the guy in the end?
- April 6, 2013 at 23:15
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Yes they did, turned out to be a young married man with two children
who actually lived nearby. He lived in a flat above a close friend of mine
and the police think he had seen me at her house and recognised and
followed me although I was not at her house that night, most of the other
attacks were on younger girls.
-
April 6, 2013 at 23:25
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carol42,
Shocking….
-
- April 6, 2013 at 23:15
- April 6, 2013 at 22:32
- April 6, 2013 at 19:08
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Anyone got £450 to waste …….learning how not to be a journalist …..Check
out the speakers
http://www.tcij.org/summer-school
- April 6, 2013 at 12:11
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@Lucozade –
Did you see this – great docu about the age of the train
aired just a few months before the storm ! The full doc is on youtube as well
but this bit focuses on Jimmy’s role in the 80′s ! Enjoy !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoW3bXa9RZI
- April 6, 2013 at 12:06
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@Lucozade – Good Morning !
Perhaps it was an icke tike – Got themselves
a advance saver return ticket offa East/West coast – had themselves a day out
– took their drawings of strange symbols with them. The age of the train !
…….Big Smiley
- April 6, 2013 at 12:45
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Rabbitaway,
Probably….
- April 6, 2013 at 12:45
- April 5, 2013 at 19:36
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This is going to appear in the wrong place as its to do with the discussion
farther up the page about the numbers/percentages of false rape allegations.
I’d just like to comment that I’ve come across two just today – they were
incidental to the work I was doing, and just happened to be there on the
files. Both were cases of women/girls regretting a fling that they’d
thoroughly enjoyed at the time.
Now as to ‘real’ rape — we had a family
friend who was a young student from Germany. She was accosted and raped by
four black guys one night in London, made pregnant and had to have an
abortion, and was fairly badly battered and bruised all round.
A friend of
mine does voluntary counselling work for rape victims. She says most are of
the ‘regretted fling’ or ex partner variety. She’s had one that she considers
‘more or less’ rape, but that the victim tends to put herself in harm’s
way.
- April 7, 2013 at 10:48
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The was a false rape accusation made in Cambridge last year, where the
couple had a consensual one-night stand the weekend before, but when she
bumped into him in a pub a week later, he couldn’t remember her name. So the
sex the week before transmutated into “rape”.
There seem to be very few studies on false rape accusations, but one by
the US air force (Dr. Charles McDowell) found that 27% of the over one
thousand accusations in his study were admitted false by the accuser.
-
April 7, 2013 at 18:20
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Corevalue,
I think this is about the study your talking about:
http://www.theforensicexaminer.com/archive/spring09/15/
The figures and reasoning given don’t surprise me in the slightest….
This dishonest clap trap from the Guardian is made worse by having the
title “the TRUTH about women ‘crying rape’ “:
http://m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/mar/31/truth-about-women-crying-rape
“The idea of women ‘crying rape’ exists everywhere from EM Forster to
Hollyoaks. But why?”
Em, perhaps inspired by real live events, knowledge and experiences?
They’d have a wealth to pick from….
“In real life, false allegations of rape are incredibly rare”
No there not love, stop lying.
This ones a real cracker (though probably not “incredibly rare”, i’m
afraid….):
And this one is just heartbreaking:
….
-
- April 7, 2013 at 10:48
- April 5, 2013 at 17:46
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Cumbs – I just watched it again – She is older than me – I was only looking
at the comments and thinking of the other vid with Sue H and other neice – the
one that didn’t sit on Jim’s knee …..!
- April 5, 2013 at 17:05
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Maybe I got a bit carried away there – not most but at least 2 or three are
questioning the girls motives – usually it’s hard to find any !
- April 5, 2013 at 17:10
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Rabbitaway,
True, I think You Tube tube brings out all the cheeky so and so’s
whatever stance they take, lol.
- April 5, 2013 at 17:31
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@rabbitaway
Girl? I would guess she’s some years older than you are…..
(but
I have no idea other than your enthusiasm…
)
I recall finding her ‘testimony’ quite revealing of what I think is a
trope of many of the allegations. You’ll notice she sort of grins inanely a
lot of the time (that seems to have sparked some of the negative waves
against her) but the time she looks most upset is when she says something
about how much she regrets not saying anything at the time, because she
could have “saved” so many others their pain.
That type of “I wasn’t affected much, but I wish I’d spoken out and saved
others” seems to be a recurring refrain, and I think is what Bebe Roberts
meant when she was said to have commented that she told lies in “good
faith”………
-
April 5, 2013 at 17:42
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@Aye – the old ‘it doesn’t matter about me, I just hope this helps
someone else’ bollocks routine ! Whilst I hate to admit it I am older than
her I just haven’t learned how to act me age YET !
-
April 6, 2013 at 06:38
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Moor Larkin,
Re: “she told lies in “good faith”………”
And lets not forget the well meaning acts of vandalism, lol
I noticed on your page someone saying that journalists paid people to
go and vandalise Jimmy Savile’s holiday house, I can actually believe
that, because there was stuff written on that house that the average Joe
wouldn’t really be aware of. Did it not say “justice for Hollie Greig” on
it?
I may have vaguely heard of this girl, but mainly on the internet, I
can’t imagine the everyone being that aware of her and what I found more
strange was the eye in the pyramid symbol, whatever that means, i’m
guessing your average person from the public is unaware of it and this is
not the typical graffiti we are used to seeing in ours streets is it?
It does suggest to me someone with a motive did it….
-
April 6, 2013 at 11:35
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@Lucozade –
Whipping up enough hatred to go smear dead man’s hoose
in the middle of nowhere didn’t take much doing. I seem to recall
stories of grave desecration as well – oh dear ! Remember the article in
some rag inc photo’s of the ‘monster’s lair’ (taken through the then non
boarded up windows), showing ‘sinister’ images of bunk beds ! JS allowed
the local rescue services use of this house but no one cared about this
angle !
I said I’d have a day off from this today – oh dear !
-
April 6, 2013 at 11:57
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Rabbitaway,
Yes what sort of perv has pink bedding on his bunk beds!?
Couldn’t possibly have been for when guests come to stay or others
are using the house, oh no….
But why the eye in the pyramid and the “justice for Hollie Greig”?
– that suggests to me that it wasn’t just some randoms that decided to
do this after reading the papers and watching the news/television….
-
-
-
- April 5, 2013 at 17:10
- April 5, 2013 at 17:02
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Well shaft me – hold up everyone – I have found a youtube video wherein
MOST of the comments are pro Jimmy – I put it on Moor’s blog but just in case
…..!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSqFD4FJwJs
- April 5, 2013 at 17:06
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Rabbitaway,
The comments are dead immature though, lol
-
April 5, 2013 at 17:09
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I don’t know, read on – some are actually talking about alibi’s and
proof – but I take your point Lucozade !
-
- April 5, 2013 at 17:06
- April 5, 2013 at 14:31
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Anna Raccoon,
What’s the ITV equivalent of ‘Points of View’?
You should send this to them
-
April 5, 2013 at 13:30
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I should not like to come to realise, as a child or an adult, that I was
conceived to obtain benefits. I would prefere to understand that I had
intrinsic value and that I would be loved, cherished, properly fed and washed
and not have to sleep in my school uniform! I would want my mum to be there
for us and not be out following a strange hobby of watching others have sex. I
would like the money from the taxpayer to be spent on me and my sibs. Not on
cigarettes and booze, drugs etc. Lefty politicians are still in denial that
childbearing for benefits is not common.That ‘brides of the state’ are
rare.They flourish in large numbers. It is about time this subculture was
tackled, now that it has under pinned this dreadful criminal act against
children whose parents care only for the taxpayers money they put into their
pockets.
- April 5, 2013 at 12:00
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Apologies – shouldn’t really have called Guido a fat git – just couldn’t
help it. It’s that primeval, spiteful stuff simmering just below the surface
in us all just waiting to be unleashed given the chance. A couple of months of
propoganda by mass media normally does the trick !
- April 5, 2013 at 12:02
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Sinner. Know thyself.
-
April 5, 2013 at 12:09
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I do Moor – felt a bit guilty about playing the devil’s …..yesterday in
your blog – there’s enough of them out there. Back to the slog I must re
read all your stuff and see if we can come up with a stratergy for making
sense of A,B,C etc etc. We can see why the polis just drew a graph with no
real factual information. The easy way out as usual ! Big smiley face
-
- April 5, 2013 at 12:02
- April 5, 2013 at 11:52
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Oh, just had another mental here ! Someone could start a hate campaign
against the feckless poor …….Oh but wait ..they already have ….I admire this
guy (Owen Jones that is not the other fat git )…..feel free to hate by all
means !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TBXZV7pGAQ
- April 5, 2013 at 11:22
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Dead, ex policemen who allegedly raped 39 people some in their hospital
beds paralysed from the eyebrows down !
- April 5, 2013 at 11:25
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How many of them are there?
-
April 5, 2013 at 11:32
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Who knows – we could always ask a child protection expert if he could
do some investigating – a couple of weeks would do. We could then make a
tv program outing said ex dead cop advising other potential ‘victims’ to
come forward !
- April 5, 2013 at 11:39
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Wasn’t it back in the Seventies that they started calling policemen
PIGS ?
A decade of debauched decadence and Hate Crime, it should be
erased from the history books.
- April
5, 2013 at 11:46
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Like everywhere else the good cops will hopefully be in the
majority – but, give anyone a wee bit of power and BANG – Remember the
foremen when we still had factories ? little f’ing Hitlers who would
have done the Stasi proud !
- April 5, 2013 at 11:50
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All the cops I meet are good.
God bless ‘em all and protect them
from harm. <3
- April
- April 5, 2013 at 11:39
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- April 5, 2013 at 11:25
- April 5, 2013 at 11:05
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I see that ‘they’ have added goths to the list of people we are not allowed
to hate ! There will be a team somewhere headed up by a grossly overpaid
cretin thinking this shit up. Who shall we not hate next ? I will start the
ball rolling – dead disc jockey’s !
- April 5, 2013 at 08:13
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I await the intervention of the NI Children’s Commissioner, or the various
children’s charities in Belfast, over the outrage of kids being paraded in
paramiltary gear to walk in IRA Easter Parades in the city. A tad too
controversial for the quangocrats to take notice. Their cushy jobs ain’t
taking them into that territory!
- April 4, 2013 at 21:10
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The definition of ‘rape’now is very different from the past as it now seems
to cover any unwelcome sexual action at the time, or even later is called
rape. I know about the way the figures for conviction are distorted, anyone
can make an allegation but having evidence is something else. By today’s
standards I am sure I was ‘raped’ in my youth since I certainly had morning
after regrets, mostly after too much to drink! but, as we did then, put it
down to experience and would have been laughed out of court if we tried. I
know there are some serial ‘date rapists’ and it is hard to prove bit I
imagine these are the exceptions. I have doubts about naming anyone in rape
cases unless changes are brought as the stigma will never go away, either name
both or none.
-
April 5, 2013 at 02:08
-
It seems to me that there ought to be gradations of rape. For example
rapes where a weapon was used (even if only as a threat) or where the woman
was injured or kidnapped or raped by more than one man, ought to be in a
different legal classification from rapes in which it is the question of
consent that is the main bone of contention, especially in cases where the
parties are known to each other or have had some kind of prior social
relationship or have been drinking or using drugs together.
Historically questions of pregnancy and transmission of venereal diseases
have been an important factor in rape law, and again I would have thought
that these should still be regarded as aggravating factors in assessing
penalties and compensation to the victim.
If one goes back to the Victorian erotic (if you can call it that)
classic “My Secret Life” by “Walter” that deals with hundreds of seductions,
one sees that almost all of his sexual encounters other than those with
prostitutes, would have been illegal today, and scores would have been
classed as rapes, because his main seduction technique was to display his
manhood while grabbing the lady parts of the desired lover and struggling
until she became sufficiently aroused to acquiesce to sex.
I don’t have any idea, and I don’t think anyone else does either, of
whether Walter’s modus operandi was a standard operating procedure at the
time, but there is little doubt that as a reproductive species we have
progressed a long way in a short time, and when the intervention of reliable
contraception and then the birth control pill came along, bringing
respectable middle class women into the arena of recreational sex, the issue
of rape women’s right to determine who they have sex with came much more to
the forefront.
- April 5, 2013 at 09:38
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@ It seems to me that there ought to be gradations of rape @
Kenneth Clarke faced a chorus of “Resign! Resign!” a couple or three
years ago when he was being interviewed, and uttered a phrase along the
lines of, “the more serious cases of rape” …….. The media and their
functionaries went ballistic at the notion that such a thing was even
conceived of, in the mind of a man. All rape is equal, just as all men
are……
-
April 5, 2013 at 10:31
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I am coming to the conclusion that the word ‘Rape’ should be dropped
completely. Rape is uniquely associated with sex and this leads the the
truly offensive ‘she was wearing a short skirt and a bit pissed so what
did she expect’ attitude from women in juries as much as men. It is a
violent assault – period. At that point you can get into a reasoned
discussion about aggravated assault and so on. I understand WHY lots of
women get worked up about defining rape differently because for many many
years it was the fault of a women if something happened to her and that
attitude is more commonly prevalent in the world as a whole still. Lets be
blunt, stranger rape is not the only rape to happen; it’s just the easiest
one to prosecute and for juries to convict. Man holds knife to womans
throat – slam dunk conviction and no messy grey areas to deal with. Women
can be raped by ex-boyfriends, by ex-husbands, men they thought were
friends, men they were happy to kiss but not go any further with, violent
boyfriends. Lets take the word ‘rape’ away and substitute the word
‘assaulted’ or ‘seriously assaulted’……. now how does that scan? There are
so many myths around Rape it is now damaged beyond hope of recovery; not
least the prenicious fiction that there are gazillions of false rape
allegations every year. There aren’t – that’s why they make the front
pages.
- April 5, 2013 at 10:49
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If you mean that rape like assault requires an element of physical
force/violence – then I can see little I would take issue with. If a
woman is bruised and has evidence of violence then the cases are always
open and shut, I would have thought. But that is about rape that
happened yesterday. The law is currently faced with rapes that happened
several years ago and so there is no evidence whatsoever other than what
they say happened.
I cannot really see any difference between your idea and what we
currently have, in this respect, which is He said/She said (usually)
arguments.
-
April 5, 2013 at 11:25
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‘If a woman is bruised and has evidence of violence then the cases
are always open and shut, I would have thought.’
I’m not sure it’s necessarily always that simple. As I get older, I
find that things are only really simple when your opinion is right and
everybody else’s is wrong (the basic tenet of Disney’s School of
Social Justice, Headmaster, one Grumpy). However, the older I get, the
more sure I also become that my personal gut reactions, foibles or
initial opinions are seldom a good basis on which to judge anything
without a wee bit more thought. Here, for instance, I doubt if Mr
Mosely, his ladyfriends and others with similar tastes would agree
with your statement as being one that contained an absolute truth.
- April 5, 2013 at 11:28
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I recall that there were media-mumblings about prosecuting
sado-masochist couples for ABH, a year or three back.
-
April 5, 2013 at 12:58
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The problem with the word is that it gets mixed up with sex when
people are looking at what’s happened. This leads to the trap that if
a woman doesn’t walk away with bruises, cuts, scratches – in other
words, if she is not obviously hurt, then it was consensual sex. Any
instinct for self-preservation – like say just lying still and hoping
it will end soon and the rapist will leave them unhurt and/or alive
then becomes a stick with which to beat the victim with: well she
didn’t have any marks did she? why didn’t she struggle, I would have
struggled etc. Another of those myths. It also ignores the pattern of
behviour that people sexually assualted do sometimes report it some
time after the event – rape is drenched in social judgement.
If
someone holds a knife up and says to me give me your wallet, I will
give them it. I walk away with no marks. Did I consent to being
robbed? Well, dur, no. I don’t know if I will be more nervous going
out or not – touch wood, never happened to me, but I could see that it
might make me more afraid. I would certainly be angry and
upset.
The sooner people lose the idea that rape is anything to do
with sex the better – it is a violent attack made more vicious in that
the attacker is deliberately choosing to use social stigma and
sensitivity over anything to do with ‘down there’ to drive home their
physical superiority. Frankly if I ever find myself in the position
where I am being violently assaulted by a man using his penis as a
weapon, the odds are I will lie still and hope its all over soon. Why
would I choose to add a battering around my face, perhaps some cracked
ribs, to the violent attack on my vagina – I am choosing to be
deliberately clinical in my choice of words here.
It is NOT the
situation that all men are rapist (ludicrous), or that all women will
be attacked in their lives – and I don’t want to sound like I think
that is the case. Generally women are less likely to be attacked by
strangers than men. we live in a safer society (statistically
speeaking). Because sexual assualt is given a special status it is not
viewed coldy as what it is: a violent assault, the impulse for which
lies in one person believing they can do anything they damn well
please to another person.
Oh – I know it’s a complete blimmin pipe dream but I do wish the
damn word had never been invented sometimes. Or maybe I just wish
people didn’t still, underneath it all, still hold to myths that
wouldn’t be out of place in the 1800′s.
- April 5, 2013 at 13:21
-
@ m.barnes
If you report it the day after, or even within a day or two, I
don’t think you will need to be in a plaster cast to be taken
seriously.
However, if you say that your partner got a bit aggressive the
other night and now you feel a bit abused, I’m not sure if you might
be occupying the police/legal time better devoted to the poor wretch
left in an alley after an assault by men she cannot even identify
becasue they whacked across the back of the head first.
It is a truism that we can truly only feel our own pain however and
I more than once wondered what I would do, if raped by a man (or two)
who are stronger than myself (I’m about the same size and build as
Jimmy Savile). It is also odd that the media/movies promotes some
motion of male prison rape as some form of *rough* justice, even
though I imagine it never happens in reality.
- April 5, 2013 at 13:24
-
The sooner people lose the idea that rape is anything to do with
sex the better – it is a violent attack made more vicious in that the
attacker is deliberately choosing to use social stigma and sensitivity
over anything to do with ‘down there’ to drive home their physical
superiority.
If that is the case, then there is no reason to have a separate
category of sexual offences, and rapes should just be treated as
battery for legal purposes.
- April 5, 2013 at 15:45
-
The sooner people lose the idea that rape is anything to do with
sex the better – it is a violent attack made more vicious in that the
attacker is deliberately choosing to use social stigma and sensitivity
over anything to do with ‘down there’ to drive home their physical
superiority.
I can understand why rape victims might think this way, after all
from their point of view rape has nothing to do with sex, and is just
an humiliating indignity, however I worked for two years in a sex
offenders institution and was in contact with convicted rapists,
paedophiles and other sex offenders for 12 hours per day. I can assure
you that many of them did seem to be extremely sex obsessed, and this
manifested itself in a high level of surreptitious sexual activity
between inmates, smuggling of pornography, visiting the medical
department with specious complaints to gawk at female nurses,
occasional seductions of female staff and therapists by sexual
predators, and so on.
So I am not so sure it has nothing to do with the sex drive.
-
April 6, 2013 at 07:36
-
m.barnes
Re: “This leads to the trap that if a woman doesn’t walk away with
bruises, cuts, scratches – in other words, if she is not obviously
hurt, then it was consensual sex. Any instinct for self-preservation
–like say just lying still and hoping it will end soon and the rapist
will leave them unhurt and/or alive then becomes a stick with which to
beat the victim with: well she didn’t have any marks did she? why
didn’t she struggle, I would have struggled”
I don’t think anyone would deny that someone that was too scared to
fight the attacker off or demand they leave them alone because of fear
of violence or being physically hurt has been raped. And i’m sure it
is a very harrowing and unpleasant experience, but not as harrowing or
as damaging or life threatening as having your head kicked in and
stamped on repeatedly, your bones broken, or having a blade put into
your flesh.
-
April 6, 2013 at 10:09
-
m.barnes
Re: “Or maybe I just wish people didn’t still, underneath it all,
still hold to myths that wouldn’t be out of place in the 1800′s”
Lets just blindly swallow all the brand new 21st century myths and
propaganda put about by those with allterior agendas instead then?
It’s far easier and a lot less hassle to sit and talk a load of
ballony about your ex, who you hate and is causing problems for you
than it is to actually force someone to have sex. Therefore it stands
to reason that people telling lies about rape is going to be at least
as common as those who actually have been.
Or did you think the world was full of such moral individuals that
would never lie about any wrong having been done to them, how ever
they think they might stand to gain by swinging opinion in their
favour, while simultaneously being full of beasts who go around
forcing people to have sex?
If you except the beasts it seems logical to except the liars too,
for which there is ample evidence of, and i’m not talking about in the
papers.
Re: “If I ever find myself in the position where I am being
violently assaulted by a man using his penis as a weapon”
I’m not saying that rape isn’t horrible – but i’d hardly say a
penis is the best weapon for a violent assault, fists, feet and blades
usually do much more damage, from what I can gather….
-
- April 5, 2013 at 13:20
-
I am coming to the conclusion that the word ‘Rape’ should be
dropped completely.
That has been done in many states in the US, for example in Florida
there are only various degrees of “sexual battery”, however they still
suffer the same stigma of being classified as sex offences.
It might be best to adopt about 5 categories of sexual battery, going
from fairly minor to really serious, and only register people as sex
offenders for more serious offences at the first conviction or for
repeated minor offences.
-
April 6, 2013 at 06:12
-
m.barnes,
Re: “There are so many myths around Rape it is now damaged beyond
hope of recovery”
I think one if those myths are how frequently it happens.
Put it this way – the number of women I have known to lie about
having been raped, not that most of these complaints have been reported
by the police, out weighs by much those who I know who actually have
been.
Most of the time people who make false rape allegations will not be
prosecuted (if allegations are made to the police) why would it even
make the papers?
I know women that lie about things like this all the time, i’d say it
usually probably doesn’t go as far as reporting it to the police, but
i’ve been lied to myself over stuff like this.
Where are you getting this information from?
- April 5, 2013 at 10:49
- April 7, 2013 at 08:33
-
“It seems to me that there ought to be gradations of rape.”
There are. They are just in the sentencing guidelines rather than in the statute.
So, official aggravating factors:
Offender ejaculated or caused victim to ejaculate
Background of
intimidation or coercion
Use of drugs, alcohol or other substance to
facilitate the offence
Threats to prevent victim reporting the
incident
Abduction or detention
Offender aware that he is suffering
from a sexually transmitted infection
Pregnancy or infection
results
All that’s missing from your wish list is multiple rapists.
The one mitigating factor:
Victim engaged in consensual sexual activity with the offender on the
same occasion and immediately before the offence
- April 5, 2013 at 09:38
- April 5, 2013 at 15:51
-
carol42,
Re: “By today’s standards I am sure I was ‘raped’ in my youth since I
certainly had morning after regrets, mostly after too much to drink! but, as
we did then, put it down to experience and would have been laughed out of
court if we tried”
Do you remember what happened during these incidents or is you memory a
complete blank?
- April 6, 2013 at 00:31
-
Usually remembered though there were times I would have preferred not
to! was just seen as all part of growing up at the time.
-
April 6, 2013 at 05:40
-
carol42.,
Oh I suppose it’s worse if you remembered.
Anytime i’ve ever woken up and not been able to remember a bloody
thing i’ve always been like “aaaghh!”, what have I done!? Because I
can’t remember – under those circumstances it would be impossible to
accuse anyone of anything…..
-
April 6, 2013 at 21:13
-
Doesn’t seem to stop people now though does it? since being too
drunk to remember means it is not possible to have consented.
-
April 6, 2013 at 22:35
-
carol42,
Yeah but what if the other person was ‘too drunk to have consented
too?” lol
-
April 6, 2013 at 23:18
-
A few people have asked that question but it doesn’t seem to
apply to men!
-
- April 7, 2013 at 08:39
-
“Yeah but what if the other person was ‘too drunk to have consented
too?””
Assuming a heterosexual incident, not only is the person with the
penis is presumed to be at fault, but the consensual, mutual
consumption of alcohol counts as an official aggravating factor.
-
April 7, 2013 at 16:24
-
Surreptitious Evil,
Even if, for all the woman knows, it was her who shamelessly threw
herself at the guy? I’ve seen it happen….
-
-
- April 6, 2013 at 00:31
-
- April 4, 2013 at 19:10
-
ISTBC but don’t “Rape” allegations seriously discriminate against the male
of the species?
The men get named, the females remain anonymous.
- April 4, 2013 at 21:52
-
This is so corroborative witnesses can come forward. I daresay that under
equality legislation it is the “victim” who retains anonymity and the
“accused” who is named. There are not so many male gay rape cases it seems,
and almost none that involve females raping males or females. I daresay the
statistics exist someplace however to demonstrate that this is not sexist
law, but practical jurisprudence.
-
April 4, 2013 at 23:19
-
“This is so corroborative witnesses can come forward.”
But who would know about a serial false-alleging female if only
she has anonymity preserved? They’re not unknown.
- April 5, 2013 at 02:22
-
In earlier times this kind of woman would have lived out her life in
a mental hospital, but with the dismantling of the old asylums, such
women are now expected to live in the “community”, sometimes with
unfortunate results. The legal system is poorly equipped to manage
people who do not understand the consequences of their actions. Prison
is probably the best place for her.
-
April 5, 2013 at 15:44
-
Joe Public,
Re: ” But who would know about a serial false-alleging female if only
she has anonymity preserved? They’re not unknown”
No they are most certainly not unknown. The police should be able to
find that out themselves though should they not, without having to make
her name known to all and sundry?
- April 5, 2013 at 02:22
- April 7, 2013 at 08:29
-
Under E&W law, it is technically impossible for a female to commit
“rape” – i.e. a s1 offence under SOA2003. You must be in possession of a
penis.
-
- April 4, 2013 at 21:52
- April 4, 2013 at 18:15
-
I am not totally convinced that the statistics on rape are as mis-leading
as you believe though I certainly agree the comparison is incorrect.
If you look at accusations of serious crimes such as manslaughter I think
it likely that a fairly high proportion will go to court. The implication of
the figures you quote are 11.2% of rape complaints make it to court. Now while
rape is a very difficult offence in terms of evidence and there are no doubt a
number of false or vexatious complaints that does seem quite low.
- April 4, 2013 at 17:59
-
A long proven, VAST 92% of Serious Child Abuses are NON-sex Serious Child
Abuses, the millions of victims of which, the Mass Deception-not-Child
Protection, all-Anglo, Age & Sex Obsessed Fascist Marketeers – don’t
give-a-flying-Fuck ! ”
Tho not expressed quite so well, The U.S. Committe To Prevent Child
Abuse/1998, UNICEF/2007, York Uni/2009, Tina & Doug/2009 have been saying
and blogging this for many years.
And now La Raccoon is the 1st BIG FISH blogger to finally catch up:
” Curiously, today sees Mick and Mairead Philpott given lengthy sentences
for the manslaughter of six of the seventeen children they have between them –
yet the child protection agencies and their celebrity ’placemen’ have been
ominously quiet on the subject of this tragedy. Whereas at the merest hint
that a fourteen year old might have offered and delivered a ‘blow-job’ to a
celebrity they become almost hysterical with demands for ‘something to be
done’, the idea that six children should have been heartlessly incinerated by
their feckless Father has induced no comment. I find it hard to imagine a more
profound case of child abuse. “
- April 5, 2013 at 11:38
-
I believe official figures in the UK are that 17% of child abuse figures
are for sexual matters.
The vast majority of abuse : neglect, physical, mental are basically
ignored by the MSM and the Philpotts must surely be amongst the remaining
83% and as Ms Raccoon points out, they were being feted by the media whilst
their mental abuse of their children continued unabated.
I’m sure there is evidence that a one off, perhaps twice sexual abuse by
a relative would be far less harmful than years of mental torture by your
parents. That however does not fit in with the repeated mantra by self
appointed ‘experts’ and police that “your life has been ruined” for all time
with no hope of recovery.
- April 5, 2013 at 11:38
- April 4, 2013 at 16:45
-
Somewhere round about Jack Straw’s tenancy of the Home Secretary’s desk in
1998, a vital and barely noticed change was made, in that henceforth, rape
convictions were to be compared, not with people charged, but with
‘allegations made’…and it is from that change that we arrive at the oft quoted
figure of 6.5% conviction rate for rape. The sleight of hand is often achieved
through misleading words, such as ‘only 6.5% of reported rapes are
successfully prosecuted’ – see what they did there?
So what you are saying is that a left wing govt brought about a means to
continue funding ‘waste of space’ organisations and depts that do f**k all for
the vulnerable but keeps them in jobs ? I can go for that !
- April 4, 2013 at 17:04
-
I think you might possibly narrow it down further.
It’s not able to be proved on any tangible basis, but you have to
consider the potential role of feminist entryists in both political and
civil service ranks. Look at the scope for, and the extent to which, the
former could get bought off, for their broader support, with a range of
legislation covering their hobbyhorses.
The latter are in the perfect place to just persist with a constant
dripfeed into policy development, with suitably packaged ‘evidence’, to
promote some piece of ‘guidance’ or better still legislation, criminal if at
all possible, which will, of course, send the right signals and do everyone
good.
Or, in an alternative view, just ‘do in’ those behaviour or lifestyles
they don’t approve of.
It can take 3,4, 5 years or even longer, but if they hang in, it will
grind its way past our largely supine representatives, probably even more
quickly when packaged in a manner, or as something, which they cannot be
seen to disagree with or vote against, for fear of a drubbing by the, I can
barely bring myself to even whisper it, the Mail.
- April 5, 2013 at 11:31
-
for the record: Germaine Greer despairs that the ‘feminist’ movement
has been hi-jacked by feminazis.
- April 5, 2013 at 11:31
- April 4, 2013 at 17:04
- April 4, 2013 at 16:43
-
Has there ever been a “Police Operation” as desperate and transparent as
Yewtree before?
-
April 4, 2013 at 16:34
-
The mediafest on the Philpotts story hasn’t even started yet. There will be
large spreads several pages in length in the Sunday papers and special reports
on all the main TV channels. They should just shut that man away and forget
him.
- April 4, 2013 at 15:25
-
Conceivably even more tenuous than even what you said.
“a BBC press office spokesman said she was unable to confirm whether he had
been employed by the organisation, as the Corporation’s records do not go back
as far as 1984.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303370/Jimmy-Savile-police-charge-driver-David-Smith-5-alleged-sex-offences-underage-boys.html#ixzz2PVLHCQVd
and according to this report, he originally fell into the “Others”
strand.
The force led the national investigation, Operation Yewtree, and separated
its inquiries into those involving Savile, those involving Savile and others,
and those involving others. Smith was investigated under the “others”
strand.
http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/10330767.Lewisham_chauffeur_charged_in_Jimmy_Savile_sex_investigation/
-
April 4, 2013 at 15:22
-
“It appears to be a sad fact of life that not all child abuse victims are
equal. Some are more valuable than others.”
Obviously not the dead ones. They will be trotting out, “Lessons will be
learned” again, in a minute. Sadly, they rarely are.
That man was a
disaster waiting to happen. I’m just surprised he didn’t kill someone
sooner.
- April 5, 2013 at 10:14
-
I think the man was a disaster waiting to happen in hindsight. There are
lots of Philpotts in the world – men who are brutally violent to the women
in their lives, who keep their children in line with the threat of violence
if not the actuality of it and they are not all on benefits or in poor
areas. Lots of these men don’t go on to kill their families. Devoted fathers
in the throes of divorce or bankruptcy also take their children off for day
trips that end in murder/suicide.,
I am not sure anyone could have imagined the sheer narcissistic stupidity
of the man, nor the connivance of his wife. This really was a freak incident
in terms of the deaths of those poor children. There’ll be some fingers
pointed at child services but there is no evidence the children were in
danger and while Philcott was only interested in his needs and wants it is
not the case he intended to kill his children. Do we want the government
taking children away because of something as nebulous and subjective as
‘emotional harm’? One parent’s emotional harm is another parent’s setting
paraments of good behaviour.
I took the opportunity to read the whole of Justice Mrs Thirwalls
sentencing comments yesterday and it was an excellent summary of the facts;
clear eyed and relentless. Certainly a wonderful example of just how good
some of our judges are. I learned more reading that than reading newspapers
– their focus on the thrillingly tawdry sex (broadsheets and tabloids)
struck me as wildly inappropriate and distastful given that 6 bodies are in
the ground now that shouldn’t be.
I don’t want to know about the other children in the sense that I don’t
think they should feature in the media. I don’t think the Jeremy Kyle show
is responsible for Philcott’s delusions of invincibility, nor Ann
Widdicombe. Philcott always imagined himself a very big fish – maybe he was
but he was a big fish in a puddle of dog urine.
On the rape figures – I don’t believe Anna is comparing apples with
apples. It is a disingenuous point to suggest rape convictions can be
accurately reported in the same way as manslaughter. It’s pretty damned hard
to hide manslaughter. Bodies are not easy to dispose of so reporting a % of
successful prosecutions versus charges is fairly accurate, barring missing
persons who are not officially considered dead. With Rape it is very common
for women to not report it – or even near misses. Goodness knows how many
men have been raped and not reported it given how difficult it is for men to
report domestic abuse. If the official measurements say there is a 58%
conviction rate versus charges laid, then everyone thinks its all hunky
dory. In fact, that would be like assuming that because no/ few children
report sexual abuse, then no sexual abuse is happening. Er? Somehow figures
need to capture the issues around vulnerable people – children, women and
men (for whom reporting rape must be especially difficult) – not reporting a
crime. If no crime is reported, then it cannot be stopped and it may be
assumed to be okay and then increase, some criminals may escalate from rape
to murder and suddenly we wake up to a story of a women getting gang-raped
on a bus…… okay a bit of a stretch but it’s not good enough to just shrug
our shoulders when we know attacks are not reported (crikey, I know 3 women
who havn’t reported rapes/ near rapes and one who did and there was no
conviction and I am distinctly average).
-
April 5, 2013 at 15:08
-
m.barnes,
Re: “If the official measurements say there is a 58% conviction rate
versus charges laid, then everyone thinks its all hunky dory. In fact,
that would be like assuming that because no/ few children report sexual
abuse, then no sexual abuse is happening”
I also know people who have been the victims of stabbings and their
attacker’s were not convicted as there was considered insufficient
evidence.
The fact complaints are made of rape and many of those accused do not
end up being charged let alone convicted, although there are many
instances, not just with rape but with other crimes too like assaults and
stabbings, where the accused did infact comit the crime but there was
insufficient evidence shown to prove it, will often be just as much a
result, if not more, of many of those accused having in fact NOT committed
the crime they were accused of, as it will be those who have committed the
crime not being charged or convicted due to lack of evidence.
I’d hazard a guess that rape and sexual abuse probably have a high rate
of false accustions being made than say stabbings or manslaughter too, i’d
put money on it, which also will add to the problem of apparently low
rates of those accused vs those convicted i’m afraid….
- April 5, 2013 at 15:39
-
You raise an interesting question with the mention of stabbings. It
is sometimes argued that “rape is rape” regardless of the circumstances,
and this usually supports the argument that a rapist should be sent to
prison for a long time regardless of whether the offence was “stranger”
rape at gunpoint or “date” rape when those involved had been drinking
together.
However, although you might argue that “a stabbing is a stabbing”, if
you were asked to say whether rape was better or worse than a stabbing,
you would be forced to to ask for further details of both the rape and
the stabbing, particularly since a stabbing could be anything from a
minor flesh wound when perhaps the intent was only to frighten, up to a
life threatening injury to vital organs, or even death.
-
April 5, 2013 at 16:26
-
Jonathan Mason,
There could be accidental stabbing where by perhaps say I was
holding a knife and I accidentally tripped and fell and pushed the
knife into whoever was standing beside me as I fell, self defense,
where by it was them or you and they’d have killed you if you hadn’t
stabbed them, or just sheer cold blood but the levels of injury could
vary.
The guy i’m speaking of was stabbed in the face repeatedly, but the
attacker took no care to insure he didn’t get his eye or the jugular,
he, just didn’t care what injuries he caused, he tried stabbing
another guy in the chest and stomach too, didn’t care that if the
knife went in it could of killed him – luckily it was a cheap knife,
that was not up to the job, the guy that was stabbed in the face came
of worse (needed stiches, left with a scar), but i’m sure if the guy
who had attacked him could have done more damage he would have – but
he got ‘not proven’ – the jury weren’t convinced enough of his guilt –
and in this case the jury weren’t allowed to know of any previous
convictions as they reckoned that would mean he wouldn’t get a fair
trial. I reckon if he’d been convicted of stabbing someone in the face
before that might have been important. He’s probably done it again
since then….
Where rape is concerned you’d think some distinction would be made
between some on who forces someone who is fully clothed and has made
it clear they are categorically uninterested and someone who perhaps
just mis read the signs when that person is already in bed with them,
with no clothes on and has perhaps already slept with them and is
maybe doing other things to make that person believe that sex may be
on the cards….?
- April 5, 2013 at 17:03
-
I knew a woman some years ago whose son was set upon outside a
night-club and beaten/stamped on so badly he was in a coma for several
days. I remember her telling me that whilst he was physically mending,
he was no longer the same person to her somehow – all his confidence
had gone. I recall trying to sympathise at the time and saying
something along the lines that such a brutal and merciless taking away
of all his power must be akin to what happens to a woman who has been
raped. That would have been back in the mid-Eighties so it was clear
enough to me at the time that rape was a crime of violence and
disempowerment, in it’s possible effects.
I doubt I would have made such a comparison if he’d just had a
broken nose and lost a tooth.
-
April 5, 2013 at 19:44
-
Moor Larkin,
Re: “I doubt I would have made such a comparison if he’d just had a
broken nose and lost a tooth”
Personally I quite possibly would have done, there will be
different degress of rape as there are different degrees of assault,
breaking someone’s nose is inflicting a quite serious, and in some
cases, permanent injury on them, and it could also be a huge knock to
their self esteem.
You won’t agree with me, but I don’t believe that rape victims own
the monopoly on ‘trauma’ or ‘victimhood’, and there will be varying
degrees, the worst no doubt being accompanied by serious physical
assault/injury. Just my opinion though….
- April 5, 2013 at 21:56
-
@ Lucozade
** You won’t agree with me, but I don’t believe that rape victims
own the monopoly on ‘trauma’ or ‘victimhood’, and there will be
varying degrees, the worst no doubt being accompanied by serious
physical assault/injury. **
Any man who got involved in a fight (perhaps with a friend!) and
ended up with a broken nose would be pretty miffed but consider he’d
been beat in a fair or unfair fight and heck, it’ll mend. A man who
gets assaulted and beaten unconscious by people he probably never even
had the chance to recognise, and would never know again, will be
fearful of shadows for a long time, because what happened to him made
no sense and can never make sense so long as he lives, unless by some
chance they are all caught by objective evidence.
A woman who is ‘date-raped’ has some clue why and how it happened
and it might be bloody horrible but it’ll mend….. You probably get the
drift of the rest of it….
I don’t expect everyone to agree with me either, but I’ll be
buggered if I’m going to pretend I agree with what many seem to want
me to accept about the uniformity of what is now called ‘rape’. But
I’m old and they’re young, so I’ll be dead first and they will have
their way anyhow. And so the world will turn and soon be back where it
started no doubt.
-
April 5, 2013 at 23:05
-
Moor Larkin,
Re: “Any man who got involved in a fight (perhaps with a friend!)
and ended up with a broken nose would be pretty miffed but consider
he’d been beat in a fair or unfair fight and heck, it’ll mend. A man
who gets assaulted and beaten unconscious by people he probably never
even had the chance to recognise, and would never know again, will be
fearful of shadows for a long time, because what happened to him made
no sense and can never make sense so long as he lives, unless by some
chance they are all caught by objective evidence”
Well anytime i’ve been punched in the face or had my head kicked in
or stamped on it’s been pretty bloody terrifying and thats without
permanent injuries.
I think rape could only be compared to whatever it was those people
did to that boy to put him in a coma if it also put someone in a coma
or inflicted other serious injuries on them (and I know in a lot of
cases people have been seriously injured or put in a coma being
raped), but I don’t see how physical injuries can be downplayed, they
are really evidence that he must have been through a very harrowing
experience, really….
Obviously nobody is going to be just fine and dandy about being
raped or having something done to them that was against their will,
but there are different degrees, if it causes serious physical injury
it’s obviously a lot worse….
-
-
April 5, 2013 at 17:09
-
There are false allegations of assault – there are false allegations
of burglary, false insurance claims, false claims of car accidents….. It
is a myth that there is ‘a high rate’ of false rape allegations – and I
note that you don’t put a figure on ‘high rate’ but using that word
suggests there are a lot. There aren’t. It’s a convenient myth I’ll
grant you because it feeds into the idea of ‘she was asking for it then
changed her mind out of embarrasment and then made a false accusation.’
That’s not to say there are none – there are unhinged women out there
but the cases are rare and as a result ALWAYS make the headlines.
We’re back to the idea that only a stranger rape is really rape
because in all other cases in can be argued – and believed by juries and
the general public – that she said yes then got a bit weird about it.
And yet stranger rape, along with stranger abuse, and stranger murder is
the lowest type of rape there is. Most people know their murderers, most
children know the paedophile abusing them, most women know the person
who has attempted to or succeeded in raping them. And all the women I
know, know the difference between a shag we’d rather forget and rape.
BTW Do you know what making a rape claim entails in terms of physical
examination? I don’t, but I’m pretty damned sure it isn’t pleasant.
- April 5, 2013 at 17:55
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BTW Do you know what making a rape claim entails in terms of
physical examination? I don’t, but I’m pretty damned sure it isn’t
pleasant.
Not really different from any other kind of physical examination,
for example on admission to hospital (or prison). The person would be
examined from head to toe for bruises, scratches, or other recent
injuries, and might have swabs taken from the vagina, rectum, or mouth
for evidence of semen DNA, also scrapings from under fingernails might
yield DNA that would identify the assailant. Photographs may be taken
of any visible injuries. Pregnancy test would be done later, I
believe.
The person might start on a course of prophylactic antibiotics for
venereal diseases like syphilis, or get tested later to confirm or
exclude pathogens. If there is believed to be a risk of HIV exposure,
the person would probably have an immediate sample taken for HIV
testing, which would establish whether they already had the condition
or not as a baseline, and then follow up testing a few weeks later to
see if there were any changes in the status. If there was strong
evidence of possible HIV exposure, the person might start on HIV drugs
prophylactically right away. However, due to the nature of HIV drugs
which may have powerfully side effects, this would not be done
routinely in all cases of rape.
-
April 5, 2013 at 20:41
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m.barnes,
Re: “It is a myth that there is ‘a high rate’ of false rape
allegations – and I note that you don’t put a figure on ‘high rate’
but using that word suggests there are a lot. There aren’t”
How do you know there aren’t? As I told you I was only hazarding a
guess (that i’d be prepared to put money on), but I never formed that
idea from the things I have read in the papers, I formed it on the
basis of the type of people I have come into contact with.
I don’t want to get too personal here because what I am saying will
be published publicly but I know the type of people that are apt to
make claims of things like that happening to them when they haven’t,
i’ve seen it (and lies about other things too – which i’d love too go
into but would be very unwise to do so on here).
Yes there are false allegations of burglary, false insurance
claims, false allegtions of assault, false car accidents, but that
doesn’t make it any less likely that false allegations of rape are
quite common too, and I doubt there are as many false allegations of
serious assults e.g stabbings which by nature, usually leave serious
wounds, and man slaughter as there are rape.
Re: “BTW Do you know what making a rape claim entails in terms of
physical examination? I don’t, but I’m pretty damned sure it isn’t
pleasant”
I think it may be different in different cases or depending who is
dealing with it and the procedure may have changed slightly, by I was
with a girl who was claiming she had been raped about 9 years ago and,
though I didn’t pay too much attention (was trying not to look), they,
from what I recall, took a swab with a cotton bud from her vagina,
they probably did other things too but I can’t remember, I think I
might have seen them take a mouth swab too – nothing as drastic or
cringe worthy as a cervical smear at that time anyway. And i’m not
sure if I can vaguely remember them doing something with a brush on
her clothing, but i’m not sure.
Though I do know of a much much younger girl who claimed to have
been raped a few years previous and when she reported it to the police
I think they said she would have to have an ‘internal examination’ –
now the previous woman I told you about was claiming that the incident
had only just happened, hence they were checking for forensics – this
other girl I am talking about was referring to an incident she claimed
had happened a few years prior (so there would have been no forensics
by that point) – this ‘internal examination’ was to check whether her
hymen was still intact, which would have been pointless for the first
woman I spoke of because she had never claimed to have been a ‘virgin’
previously, but this younger girl was at an age where she probably
would have been if there had been no rape – but she never went through
with it, don’t blame her….
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April 5, 2013 at 21:33
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Jonathan Mason,
Re: “Not really different from any other kind of physical
examination, for example on admission to hospital (or prison). The
person would be examined from head to toe for bruises, scratches, or
other recent injuries, and might have swabs taken from the vagina,
rectum, or mouth for evidence of semen DNA, also scrapings from under
fingernails might yield DNA that would identify the assailant.
Photographs may be taken of any visible injuries. Pregnancy test would
be done later, I believe”
You bet me to it Jonathan, I think the “scrapings from under the
finger nails” might ring a bell from when I seen it done too….
m.barnes,
Re: (my comment) “I’d hazard a guess that rape and sexual abuse
probably have a high rate of false accustions being made than say
stabbings or manslaughter too”
I actually meant too say “higher”, rather than “high” – and I would
be pretty confident to hazard a guess that false accusations of rape
and sexual abuse are higher (to say the least) than false accusations
of stabbings and manslaughter, that’s probably just the nature of the
beast….
- April 5, 2013 at 17:55
- April 5, 2013 at 15:39
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- April 5, 2013 at 10:14
{ 124 comments }