Ken Clarke

Stoner –

The word is “sentence”. Now, write that out a hundred times until you get it right.

French campsites in common

Eh? 😕

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hmmm. that was easy. Doesnt have the same kind of penance that doing it with four biros once did, alternating the colours of each letter…

I don’t think for one second that he was defending rapists or inferring that some rapes weren’t traumatic

so you think he was saying that a 15 year old girl who had had sex with her 16 year old boyfriend would have had a traumatic experience?

sorry grum. mistaken online identity. oops

It’s “penance”. FFS, get a grip man! 😉

15 year old girl who had had sex with her 16 year old boyfriend

is that a rape? serious Qu, I dont know whether it would come under rape law or not now.

Im lost without my chrome spellcheck. 🙁

Try and take the silly party politics out of the equation (go on, pretend you can for a second).

As ‘someone in charge’, what KC said is eminently sensible. There is a difference between some poor lass being jumped in the park at 2am, a horny schoolboy ‘doing’ his willing girlfriend and a pissed up bloke not understanding ‘no’ from the lass he picked up in ‘La Scala’ after the last dance.

Legally they may even all be defined as ‘rape’ (not entirely sure of that…) but from execution and impact perspectives, they are different.

That was his message.

is that a rape? serious Qu, I dont know whether it would come under rape law or not now.

Statutory rape I think, if under the age of consent. but he referred to it in those terms.

I think he made lot’s of ill-judged statements, he’s pretty far out of touch. Later on SKY he said

classic rape, where someone jumps out from behind a bush

I dont care who said it [clarke, blair , ghandi ]but this type of sentiment

Legally they may even all be defined as ‘rape’ (not entirely sure of that…) but from execution and impact perspectives, they are different.

bollox and quite offensive. As if rape victims dont have to suffer enough now some of them have lesser rapes than others oh FFS have athink about what rape actually is and think about it will you. Will the people affected get any comfort from the difference or wil they all be as affected by the crime
Given the awful convictions rates of rapist, the trauma on the person, the stigma attached we should be advocating the simple line that NO MEANS NO whatever the precursor and motives to said event may be.

Legally they may even all be defined as ‘rape’ (not entirely sure of that…) but from execution and impact perspectives, they are different.

Makes sense to me in comparing a willing under age girl to the typical victim.

Makes sense to me in comparing a willing under age girl to the typical victim

What if she was 7? Too young to be willing? Would that be rape?

And do tell me what they typical victim is

although boblo, I think you’ll find there’s plenty on the “wimmin” side of argument who’d argue very noisily that there is NO distinction between them in terms of victim trauma (including domestic rape in that one)

If we ignore the 15yr old girl/17yr old boy diversion for a second, all the other cases are based on there being no explicit or implicit consent. As a society there’s probably a case for looking at whether the absolute crime is sex without consent and that can not be further aggravated nor mitigated.

classic rape

Oh dear, I guess it makes me an evil **** that I laughed at that phrase? Did he really say that?

CharlieMungus – Member
Makes sense to me in comparing a willing under age girl to the typical victim
What if she was 7? Too young to be willing? Would that be rape?
And do tell me what they typical victim is

🙄

Do you pc types miss any opportunity to pint the finger? This must be how TJ feels 😉

OK let’s say 15 year old girl vs. victim who says “no”.

.

No, you miss the point, 7 is clearly too young and would constitute rape, yet you appear to think 15 is ok? I was wondering what you considered to be the threshold age and if it differed from the legal code in the UK.

I’m not pointing a finger, and i use a Mac. I’m only asking you some questions.

Genuine question here:

For it to be ‘rape’ in the legal sense, does the victim have to show that they denied consent or just that consent wasn’t given?

I think this has been debated before, both here, in the media, legally etc, so I am guessing that it’s already clarified.

GT I always thought it was lack of consent was the important one – hence sleep drunk sex crime.

CharlieMungus – Member
No, you miss the point, 7 is clearly too young and would constitute rape, yet you appear to think 15 is ok? I was wondering what you considered to be the threshold age and if it differed from the legal code in the UK.

Ah OK, sorry, Up here in God’s own Country (twinned with NI) we have statutory rape for girls undeer 16 (well you know what I mean).

So a consenting girl of 15 is way different IMO to a 7-year old, sas teh former would be closer to having ht ecapacity to consent.

Intersting, consent to medical procedures is attained graudally up to the age of 16, rather than only on the 16th birthday. Seems logical that a similar principle could be applied to rape.

Consent is the key, I can’t remember what the deal is if the woman is asleep or silent – law different in England, where until the 80s a subjective belief that a woman did consent was a full defence o:

Junky, you’re getting yourself all excited for no reason.

There is a difference between the circumstances of someone being jumped from behind in a dark place by a masked man and being forced at knifepoint to perform ‘despicable acts’ and a victim too pissed to express her ‘no’ effectively to her long term partner.

Though these may both constitute rape from a legal perspective, in the first example, the aggravated nature of the offence and the impact on the victim will be quite different from the latter.

Perhaps the way to look at it is they both attract the same base sentence (both being rape) and the aggravated nature of the former example attracts an additional penalty.

Rape is indeed rape but some circumstance put the victim through more trauma than others as with any crime.

<edit> And sorry, confusion could occur as ‘no’ doesn’t always mean ‘no’. It sometime means ‘not yet but I don’t want to appear easy so carry on a bit with your very convincing fiddling about and I could change my mind’…. Mixed messages and all that…

Well that would make sense and it’s how it should be.

But it does suggest there is going to be a difference in the victim’s experience of rape. If they are semi-conscious and cannot give consent because of this, then it is still clearly ‘rape’ but that’s a different level of trauma to a rape committed using extreme violence, where the victim’s life is threatened or they believe it to be threatened, or where there is more than one perpetrator.

Or maybe not?

It seems like there are actually two questions here:

Does it matter how the crime was committed versus what is the degree to which the victim experienced trauma.

In other crimes, for example assault, I believe that what the person who was assualted believed is key to the nature of the conviction and certainly the degree to which their use of force to protect themselves can be justified. Ergo, it doesn’t matter how much force they used, it only matters what they can demonstrate they feared was going to happen to them in order to justify that use of force.

I cite the example to illustrate the fact that it is what the individual ‘experienced’ that sometimes changes the nature of a crime.

Stoner/GT – I think technically, its “lack of reasonable belief in consent”

ZE I think you are right – to an objective person though.

z11 – sounds like thats probably where half the problems come from then eh?

Everyone is getting excited because rape is very emotive crime. From a legal perspective, it’s just another serious crime with degrees of aggravation and impact on the victim.

Seems the Milliband wannabees/Daily Mailers have taken over the forum.

Everyone is getting excited because rape is very emotive crime

That and the fact that it’s often used in gender politics to pursue a political agenda.

Cynic-al / Stoner

Yeah – so, for example, touching up your wife in her sleep, would likely be treated very differently from touching up a girl who you had just met in a pub and was in your bed, which in turn would be very different from climbing in through a window of a stranger and doing it.

Anyone who cannot see the differences in severity of those crimes, both in sentence and impact, is either being disingenuous or downright silly!

ZE – Amen to that.

Wow, thread closed in a rash of unanimity, consensus and well explored arguments!

That almost never happens!

Right now about these religious types……

Famous case I referred to above. squaddie tells mate “you should havea go with my wife, she’ll pretend to fight you off, but really she’ll be loving it, just carry on”.

Mate got off! (pun not intended).

z11 is right the consent issue is that the complainant did not consent and the defendant did not reasonably believe that she did consent. So the defendant has to subjectively believe that she did consent and that belief has to be objectively reasonable, for him to be acquitted. Note the standard of proof though the defendant simply has to raise the issue and the crown have to disprove it so the jury are sure.

cynic-al your famous case is the old law where a genuine but unreasonable belief in consent was a defence the drafters of the new law hoped that that scenario would now result in a conviction.

Good to see common sense prevail (those who disagree try separating out the various factors as advised above if that makes you feel better). All crimes are crimes but each have their own mitigating or extenuating circumstances etc. I know as a bloke I’d rather be forced to have sex with my partner than a complete stranger ALTHOUGH clearly both would be rape. The two would certainly have a different impact on me.
Fwiw I’m more concerned about the REAL purpose behind the proposal being to avoid overcrowding/save money as opposed to saving victims distress etc. Build more prisons, longer sentences and less of this 2/3rds off for ‘good’ behaviour tosh – you serve your sentence and get longer if you misbehave – simple. Not enough protecting the victims/future victims and too much ‘as long as it’s NIMBY’.

Anyone who cannot see the differences in severity of those crimes, both in sentence and impact, is either being disingenuous or downright silly!

Oh dear lord now I find myself agreeing with Zulu-Eleven on something. Worrying 😐

As an ex-lawyer he

should know the **** meaning of his words and use the correct ones to not cause offence the stupid ****.

anagallis – agree he was maybe clumsy with his words but the intent seemed pretty clear and reasonable in the contaxt to me. It’s a poor do when the true meaning of what’s said is a distant second to trying to find something to extract and moan about or to enable someone to shout for a resignation blah blah. Tired old politics. More straight talking and common sense listening (is there such a thing?) would be way better!

true, but do you think this very experienced politician doesnt know the meaning of his words or choose them carefully to gain support with his voters?

I know as a bloke I’d rather be forced to have sex with my partner than a complete stranger ALTHOUGH clearly both would be rape. The two would certainly have a different impact on me.

I don’t know about that – if I was in a situation where my partner raped me I’d find it more traumatic, because it’d mean that I didn’t really know the person that I thought I loved and trusted. I’d have that to deal with on top of the rape.

I think Clarke’s betrayed a pretty old school mindset that unless a woman has been threatened with violence and fought back, it’s not ‘proper’ rape.

I’m sure he does but don’t think this is such an occasion. It’s a tricky subject at the best of times – as some comments on here show!