When dinosaurs ruled the earth..

[vic-vega66.livejournal.com]

The UK government is made up of a coalition of Liberal Democrats and the Conservative party and are currently flailing badly. The economy is in the toilet, the jobless figures are the worst they've been for 10 years, students are rioting, the Police are threatening action against job and budget cuts, such luxuries as Gas, Electric and food are becoming increasingly expensive, having a car is something the rich do and if you smoke or drink, forget it.

Into this morass of incompetence, corruption and stupidity walks the venerable figure of Ken Clarke, Justice Minister in charge of the British legal system. He appeared on Radio 4's Woman's hour programme yesterday and whilst being interviewed declares his intention to shake up the laws on rape in the UK. Now don't get me wrong, something needs doing, currently only 6% of rape cases in the UK secure a conviction.

The victim has to endure a trial with her alledged attacker stood not so far away from her and be aggressively cross examined in the process. Most rape cases don't even reach this point, the victim just cannot face the ordeal. The one's that do often see their alledged attacker walk free and return to his home.

The venerable Justice Minister takes a delicate subject and basically makes a complete hash of putting his ideas across. For example: "Some rapes aren't as serious as others" "the occasion when a man jumps out from behind a bush and rapes a woman using a weapon such as a knife is much more serious than a date rape."

What the ever living feck is he on about? Has he been living in a cave for the last 20 years or more likely a country mansion with parlour maids and port after luncheon. Statistically rape is more likely to be perpetrated by someone the victim knows, rather than a knife wielding stranger. To say that 'date rape' is not a serious an offense makes me feel rather queasy and is frankly offensive. If a woman says no in any context, that means exactly that, no. Rape is physical violation and mentally can destroy a person and leave them damaged for years to come.

I appreciate that the idea is to streamline the system so that more convictions are secured and the process is easier for the victim, but really, hamfisted, old fashioned and foolish much?

So far Ken Clarke has refused to a) apologise b) clarify c) resign and fall on his sword and retire to his country mansion, port and parlour maids.

This is the guy who is in charge of the UK's Justice system.

Comments

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

"the occasion when a man jumps out from behind a bush and rapes a woman using a weapon such as a knife is much more serious than a date rape."

What the ever living feck is he on about?

Which one involves fear for life?

Some homicides are more serious than others as well. And those crimes kill the person every single time.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

How do you know that women in date rape situations are also not fearful for their life? Violence can enter any situation if she fights back.

Even if it's not a violent rape the devastating effects are the same. All rape is serious rape.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

For that matter, the concept of "hierarchies" of horror itself is rather disgusting if you think about it.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

It truly is. In rape the act itself is the horrifying one. That is something that is shared by all victims, regardless of what other details surrounded the crime.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

Black and white is so much easier.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

No one said there was non-serious rape, just that some ate more serious thAN OTHERS, JUST AS SOME HOMICIDES ARE WORSE THAN OTHERS.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

OK first of all, what's with the all caps? Was that really necessary?

Second, as I pointed out below there is no hierarchy in rape because the trauma comes from the act itself, the very definition of rape, forcible penetration without the victim's consent. Since every rape has this, every rape is on the same level. Everything else that goes into a rape is just extra fear, but a rape victim suffers the same trauma and devastation regardless of whether there was violence involved or not. To excuse date rapes as not as serious excuses the act itself.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

Definitely agreed with this. As I'm not a resident of the UK I'll stay largely out of this discussion, but I did want to put in my two cents here. All rape is serious. All rape hurts women and is bad. Saying that one case is more serious than another isn't to say that the other isn't serious at all. (It should be noted, though, like the OP said, that scary-man-with-a-knife rape isn't as common as other, and also very serious, forms of rape.)

*goes back to lurking for the time-being*

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

I hope you meant to reply to me, as your words seem to suggest.

And don't lurk, come out to play, we don't bite much.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

er, no, I was replying to the first commenter.

And I was lurking because I didn't have much to say, lol.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm amazed he has the brass neck to have not resigned. Surely he knew there are some things you just can't say about rape, and if you're going to open your mouth and have any sort of opinion on the subject, you run it past dozens of advisors first to make sure it isn't going to upset and offed anyone.

But as it is, he's managed to upset and offend just about everyone.

He'll not resign though, the Tories remain as they have ever been, secure in their arrogance.

(Not to single out the Tories, New Labour were just as arrogant.)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Surely he knew there are some things you just can't say about rape

Yeah, he totally should have known he was being non-PC and self-censored himself before anyone found out how he thought. Wouldn't want to upset or offend anyone after all.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, God forbid he take care not to offend rape victims, I mean really who cares about not upsetting them right? Keeping your mouth shut about this, especially as Justice Minister has nothing to do with being PC and everything to do with being a fucking decent human being.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

At least it's not just the USA where people are engaged in this kind of stupidity anymore. OTOH, given it's the UK.....

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

The only good news is that he's being evicerated by the press and everyone else.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

A point.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

While some of the things he said are off, you're also interpreting them in the worst possible light. For instance, "not as serious as X" != "not at all serious." To compare, cancer is not as serious as a gunshot to the face, but this does not mean that cancer is not serious.

[mrsrandomcheese.livejournal.com]

But why is there even a need to compare different rape scenarios? Can he not just say...'all rape is awful' and leave it at that?

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure of the context where it came up. I think we can probably say, though, that just from a future-danger angle, a guy who rapes at knife-point may be more likely to escalate into torture, murder, etc. This should probably be reflected in sentencing, provided you're looking for a deterrence/prevention model.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

The thing is though, you're effectively saying to the woman who was date-raped, "oh well, it could have been worse" which is dismissive to her trauma. All rape has serious and long reaching consequences regardless of the perpetrator or the violence level involved.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Legal penalty. The various categories of rape like date rape are all serious crimes. An 18 year old sleeping with a 17 year old is not the same category of thing whatsoever, the 365-day gap is not a miraculous leap. There's no moral difference between those categories. To me the other does not seem quite the same thing.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

I can think of several reasons and they all boil down to asking the question "What is the goal of the criminal justice system".

If all you care about is punishing wrong doing then the degrees of awful are largely irrelevant, they committed rape and they get to suffer the penalties for that.

However there are several problems with this approach to crime. It provides no mechanism of reintegrating the offender back into society once their sentence is served nor does it address the reasons why they committed the crime in the first place. No instead you lock the criminals up with all of the other criminals where they can teach each other how to be even better criminals and even better acceptance of the warped moral codes present in prison.

In effect you create a system which just breeds more crime unless all jail terms are life sentences.

If however your criminal justice system is to focus on the perpetrators providing whatever restitution possible to their victims and then retraining them so that they are unlikely to re-offend (aka rehabilitation) then there is a very large difference in how you should treat a guy who goes too far with a date and rapes her and one who plans to rape someone by making a violent attack on them.

In the first case the rapist would not likely conceive of himself as a rapist and would "never consider doing such a thing" because they have a flawed view of what rape is and restitution and rehabilitation are quite likely to be effective for him. In the case of the second guy, he knew what he was doing, knew it was evil, and just didn't give a damn and the odds that he will capable of being rehabilitated is quite small and a much more aggressive treatment is going to be called for.

The issue is not which is worse for the victims, the issue is how can society best deal with the different types of offenders.

[yansirramus.livejournal.com]

The general consensus seems to be that Clarke got his words snarled up. Everyone know what he meant to say, but unfortunately what he meant to say was not what he actually did say, and what he did say was pretty appalling.

He has 'clarified' in an interview this morning, I believe, and he's not going to resign. Nor should he. There are enough incompetent people in that Cabinet without chucking out the half-decent ones.

I do have one serious question about his proposal (the actual proposal that they were actually talking about before everything disappeared into a storm of media hysteria) that 'co-operation' can lead to a 50% reduction in your final sentence. While I appreciate that the courts are overcrowded, the more incentives you offer, the more attractive you may make the guilty plea to those who are not in fact guilty, just unlucky or badly represented. Still, overall I don't think it's a bad policy. It will apply to people who co-operate from the beginning (ie from their arrest, not a few weeks later when their lawyer sees the case against them is looking formidable) and will punish repeat offenders.

And actually, the real story of yesterday was Theresa May getting skewered by the Police Federation in her talk about police reforms. That is a truly serious issue and an extremely public embarrassment of a Cabinet Minister, but as the story is a little dry for our soundbite-addicted media, the whole thing is passing by with barely any comment at all.

Depressing.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Very odd but we just had a Liberal Candidate (a former Judge) in our recent election express the same sentiment (http://blog.decisioncanada.ca/conservatives/liberal-candidate-suggest-some-sexual-assault-offenders-should-not-go-to-jail/) during his campaign. Liberal leader Ignatieff had his back on this issue too.

[foolsguinea.livejournal.com]

Rape will always have a very low conviction rate so long as you a) require evidence to convict perpetrators, b) see "rape" as happening in cases where consensual sex is also possible, & c) want to keep consensual sex legal.

Any assault where the physical evidence is ambiguous is unlikely to lead to a conviction.