Accused rapist Ched Evans to be released from prison

[ViolentPanda]

I'll lay odds that you had sex with people who were at least this drunk / off their faces more than once over the years, probably when you were both in a similar state.

I'm really hoping that you're not projecting past experience onto others. Just because you may have engaged in drunken fucks, doesn't mean that everyone else has, however fervently you assert it.

The precedent being set here is that this level of drunkeness removes the woman's legal ability to consent to having sex with you or anybody else, so whether she's begging you for it or not it'd be rape if the police and cps later decide to get involved for whatever reason and decide that in their opinion she was actually too drunk to legally give consent.

You don't understand precedent.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Except that he didn't 'find' her. His mate arranged it for him. tbh it is rather odd, and off, that his mate got to walk away from this. If he's guilty of rape, then his mate is guilty of precuring a woman for someone to rape - he's guilty of inviting and encouraging someone to rape. Odd that this isn't any kind of offence.

"Procuring" is an offence, but as the CPS were originally prosecuting him for rape, they didn't push a procuring charge, and when he was acquitted of rape, anything else went by the by.

 

[free spirit]

The issue of what she said was of limited significance; that's not what you claimed, though. You said that consent was irrelevant. You were wrong.

semantics, it amounts to the same thing.

Again, you misunderstand. If he did not reasonably believe that she had the capacity to consent, then it follows that he cannot reasonably have believed that she had, in fact, consented, notwithstanding what she may or may not have said.

no, I've not misunderstood, I've outlined it as clearly as I can, and am saying the same thing as you are.

Ok. So in a case where someone says 'yes' but doesn't have the capacity to consent, has she consented or not?

as of this case she hasn't consented legally, prior to this case she would have been viewed as having consented.

OBut you're wrong about what previous cases said, and what this one means.

oh really? Well I've the one who's specifically quoted the previous case law on the subject to back up my point, you're the one who merely asserts that I've got it wrong but refuses to give any specifics.

You are wrong. There are previous cases in which it was made clear that voluntary intoxication can remove capacity, so as to vitiate consent. This was explicitly addressed in Bree, and before that, in Lang.'

OK, sorry for the delayed response, but I've just been through all the previous judgements via the R v Malone court of appeal judgement, and confirmed what I thought, that none of them had previously involved a situation where the defendants were both claiming that the woman involved had actually consented, and the woman involved had given no evidence to the contrary, as in this case.

All of them in one way or another had the woman saying that she'd not consented, with Malone being about the closest to saying that he thought she had, although only implied consent as opposed to this case where both the male witnesses stated that she had given her verbal consent to having sex with the 2nd guy, and the woman has merely said that she can't actually remember what happened.

And this was the most recent appeal court judgement on the matter prior to this case from R v Bree

However where the complainant has voluntarily consumed even substantial quantities of alcohol, but nevertheless remains capable of choosing whether or not to have intercourse, and in drink agrees to do so, this would not be rape.

this is also a repeat of the previous R v Malone judges summary.

In drink in this case the woman allegedly agreed to have sex with him, and didn't offer any evidence to the contrary in court, and yet he was found guilty on the basis that she was actually judged to have been too drunk to have had the capacity to give her consent.

In the second case to which reference was made, the appellant Lang was charged with rape, the only effective issue at the trial being whether the girl had consented. The prosecution’s case was that the girl had submitted only after a struggle and in the belief that further resistance was useless. The defence introduced the question of her drinking in an attempt to show that she might well have consented, being in a less inhibited state of mind than she would have been had she taken no drink.

You do realise that those things are crimes, unlike being raped? Otherwise guilty people ought not to be afforded a defence by virtue of their own voluntary intoxication. But you seem to be suggesting that they ought to be afforded a defence by virtue of their victim's voluntary intoxication!

no, I'm suggesting that if someone is capable of being held criminally responsible for their actions when drunk, then they also ought to be held to be capable of being responsible for their actions when deciding whether or not to agree to have sex with someone.

Your obfuscating again. Is the law (principally s.1 and the case law around consent) wrong? Or has it simply been wrongly applied here?

It looks to have been wrongly applied in this situation to me. The previous court of appeal judgements make broad sense, and I don't have a problem with them. This one seems inconsistent with all of them. The judge seems to have effectively directed the jury that if she was drunk then she couldn't legally give her consent, which is the opposite of the appeal court ruling in Bree.

So you will need to consider the evidence of the complainant's state and decide these two questions: was she in a condition in which she was capable of making any choice one way or another? If you are sure that she was not, then she did not consent.

which is a lot different to the bree judgement

However where the complainant has voluntarily consumed even substantial quantities of alcohol, but nevertheless remains capable of choosing whether or not to have intercourse, and in drink agrees to do so, this would not be rape.

Had the judge merely read that out rather than embellishing it in his own words, then I'd strongly suspect that the jury would have returned a different verdict.

I also don't think the specific grounds used in his appeal were done well, as they make no reference to the Bree judgement compared to the judges summary. Presumably this is why he's replaced his legal team.

I think that's me done with this topic for a while, hopefully this has helped to clarify my position on it, and why I've been saying all along that this judgement is at odds with all previous judgements on the subject.

If people want to think of me as a rape apologist etc then that's their choice, I've merely been pointing out that in no previous court case would this have been considered as being rape, and that I think this sets a dangerous precedent that really did deserve at the very least to go to the court of appeal as it seems to be at odds with their previous rulings on the subject.

 

[free spirit]

fuck off with this bullshit. you would have been roasted on this 10 years ago too.

I can remember a fairly robust, but detailed discussion around this law back in 2002/3 when it was going through parliament, and the level of debate was a hell of a lot more informed, and less prone to random abuse from people who couldn't even be arsed to investigate the specifics of the situation being discussed.

Maybe you're right though, maybe it has been this shit for the last 10 years. Shame, this place once had so much promise.

 

[killer b]

Really. Maybe that's because discussing a law going through parliament doesn't involve poring over videos of rape victims to assess how pissed they are.

 

[free spirit]

Voluntary intoxication should not be allowed as a defence

afaik it isn't.

 

[free spirit]

I'm really hoping that you're not projecting past experience onto others. Just because you may have engaged in drunken fucks, doesn't mean that everyone else has, however fervently you assert it.

Go up to newcastle on a friday or saturday night, stand in a taxi queue there at kicking out time say on the bigg market, and pretty much all the blokes in that queue copping off with a woman would be in the process of going for a shag with someone who is at least as pissed as this woman.

now tell me this is a safe and sound interpretation of the law.

ps this is not about my behaviour, this was never my scene, I used to go clubbing for the love of the music and dancing, and avoid those places like the plague, but I spent enough time passing through those places and in those taxi queues to know that the level of intoxication involved here was the same level of lower than for most of the women out in these areas every weekend. The woman in this case even admitted as much in her police interview, saying that she normally drank more than that, or words to that effect.

 

[Athos]

semantics, it amounts to the same thing.

No, it doesn't.

no, I've not misunderstood, I've outlined it as clearly as I can, and am saying the same thing as you are.

We are not saying the same thing, at all.

as of this case she hasn't consented legally, prior to this case she would have been viewed as having consented.

Simply wrong. There's no reason to believe that, prior to this case, a jury presented with the same evidence would have come to a different conclusion.

oh really? Well I've the one who's specifically quoted the previous case law on the subject to back up my point, you're the one who merely asserts that I've got it wrong but refuses to give any specifics.

I've tried to. But you are incapable of understanding.

OK, sorry for the delayed response, but I've just been through all the previous judgements via the R v Malone court of appeal judgement, and confirmed what I thought, that none of them had previously involved a situation where the defendants were both claiming that the woman involved had actually consented, and the woman involved had given no evidence to the contrary, as in this case.

The facts are not the same; the principles are clearly set out, though. The idea that consent turns on capacity, which can be negated by voluntary intoxication has been recognised well before the Evans case. You've missed the point.

The fact that two people accused of rape claim the victim consented is hardly surprising. You seem to assume that the jury accepted that she had indicated a willingness to have sex; there's no way you can know that.

All of them in one way or another had the woman saying that she'd not consented, with Malone being about the closest to saying that he thought she had, although only implied consent as opposed to this case where both the male witnesses stated that she had given her verbal consent to having sex with the 2nd guy, and the woman has merely said that she can't actually remember what happened.

What she did or did not say, and her capacity to consent are evidential questions, for a jury, and are peculiar to the circumstances of this case. But there's nothing about the verdict that is inconsistent with the pre-existing case law.

You seem to be hinting that a not guilty verdict should be returned if there are some words spoken that would ordinarily amount to consent. But that would be perverse in cases such as this where a jury decides as a matter of fact that, regardless of what might have been said, the defendant had no reasonable belief in consent.

And this was the most recent appeal court judgement on the matter prior to this case from R v Bree

this is also a repeat of the previous R v Malone judges summary.

I would say your selective quoting is a cunt's trick, but I'm beginning to believe that it's more a case of stupidity than disingenuousness.

In drink in this case the woman allegedly agreed to have sex with him, and didn't offer any evidence to the contrary in court, and yet he was found guilty on the basis that she was actually judged to have been too drunk to have had the capacity to give her consent.

I really can't tell if you're dishonest or thick. You repeatedly make this assertion, despite having been told many times that it's not accurate. He was found guilty not merely because she was too incapable to consent, but also because he had no reasonable belief that she had consented i.e. he was having sex with someone whilst knowing that she had not consented to have sex with him. The jury were convinced of that fact, beyond reasonable doubt, having heard all of the evidence.

no, I'm suggesting that if someone is capable of being held criminally responsible for their actions when drunk, then they also ought to be held to be capable of being responsible for their actions when deciding whether or not to agree to have sex with someone.

Whether or not the victim ought to be held responsible is irrelevant; it is the defendant who is on trial. And, in a case where a jury decides that he did not have have a reasonably held belief that she consented, then, quite rightly, he will be convicted.

It looks to have been wrongly applied in this situation to me. The previous court of appeal judgements make broad sense, and I don't have a problem with them. This one seems inconsistent with all of them. The judge seems to have effectively directed the jury that if she was drunk then she couldn't legally give her consent, which is the opposite of the appeal court ruling in Bree.

No, that's not what he directed, at all. If he had, the appeal would have succeeded.

Had the judge merely read that out rather than embellishing it in his own words, then I'd strongly suspect that the jury would have returned a different verdict.

Complete speculation.

I also don't think the specific grounds used in his appeal were done well, as they make no reference to the Bree judgement compared to the judges summary. Presumably this is why he's replaced his legal team.

If only he'd had your fine legal mind on board, eh?

I think that's me done with this topic for a while, hopefully this has helped to clarify my position on it, and why I've been saying all along that this judgement is at odds with all previous judgements on the subject.

It isn't, at all.

If people want to think of me as a rape apologist etc then that's their choice, I've merely been pointing out that in no previous court case would this have been considered as being rape, and that I think this sets a dangerous precedent that really did deserve at the very least to go to the court of appeal as it seems to be at odds with their previous rulings on the subject.

As has been pointed out, you don't understand how precedent works.


I'm glad you're knocking it on the head, because you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Cid]

Go up to newcastle on a friday or saturday night, stand in a taxi queue there at kicking out time say on the bigg market, and pretty much all the blokes in that queue copping off with a woman would be in the process of going for a shag with someone who is at least as pissed as this woman.

How many of them will be calling their mate in to have a go when they've finished?

 

[Athos]

Go up to newcastle on a friday or saturday night, stand in a taxi queue there at kicking out time say on the bigg market, and pretty much all the blokes in that queue copping off with a woman would be in the process of going for a shag with someone who is at least as pissed as this woman.

now tell me this is a safe and sound interpretation of the law.

ps this is not about my behaviour, this was never my scene, I used to go clubbing for the love of the music and dancing, and avoid those places like the plague, but I spent enough time passing through those places and in those taxi queues to know that the level of intoxication involved here was the same level of lower than for most of the women out in these areas every weekend. The woman in this case even admitted as much in her police interview, saying that she normally drank more than that, or words to that effect.

If it was the case that all these blokes fall foul of the law as it stands after Evans, why haven't we seen thousands of prosecutions? Becasue juries are capable of weighing evidence, to work out what really happened. And that evidence trumps even your anecdotal observations about Newcastle taxi queues.

 

[Lo Siento.]

Go up to newcastle on a friday or saturday night, stand in a taxi queue there at kicking out time say on the bigg market, and pretty much all the blokes in that queue copping off with a woman would be in the process of going for a shag with someone who is at least as pissed as this woman.

now tell me this is a safe and sound interpretation of the law.

ps this is not about my behaviour, this was never my scene, I used to go clubbing for the love of the music and dancing, and avoid those places like the plague, but I spent enough time passing through those places and in those taxi queues to know that the level of intoxication involved here was the same level of lower than for most of the women out in these areas every weekend. The woman in this case even admitted as much in her police interview, saying that she normally drank more than that, or words to that effect.

Fucking hell.

There's a difference between 2 drunk people consenting to have sex with each other, and someone having sex with someone passed out drunk. And the difference isn't hard to spot and the line isn't hard to draw. Men incapable of drawing that line are rapists.

 

[free spirit]

I would say your selective quoting is a cunt's trick, but I'm beginning to believe that it's more a case of stupidity than disingenuousness.

it's called quoting the salient points, it'd be a bit fucking pointless to quote the entire judgement from start to finish, I provided the link so that you can go through and quote any parts of it you consider refute what I'm saying, as I always have throughout this thread, but you repeatedly seem incapable of doing that.

That's how quoting works, you on the other hand never quote anything, merely give the references and assert what you think they say with an air of false authority. Unless I'm wrong, this isn't your specialist field, so you don't have specific personal expertise to draw on that would entitle you to expect your personal opinion to be given significant weight without any need to actually quote and reference evidence to support your position.

No, that's not what he directed, at all. If he had, the appeal would have succeeded.

so, what I quoted directly is not what he stated? or do you have a different interpretation of his words?

and the appeal would only have succeeded on those grounds if those were grounds used in the appeal.

 

[free spirit]

Fucking hell.

There's a difference between 2 drunk people consenting to have sex with each other, and someone having sex with someone passed out drunk. And the difference isn't hard to spot and the line isn't hard to draw. Men incapable of drawing that line are rapists.

yes, and that wasn't what happened in this case here either, at least not as far as any of the court reports, or documents I've seen state.

so would you like to try that one again?

 

[Athos]

... I provided the link so that you can go through and quote any parts of it you consider refute what I'm saying...

so, what I quoted directly is not what he stated? or do you have a different interpretation of his words?

Well, for instance, your quote from Bree failed to include the sentence immediately before, which says:

If, through drink (or for any other reason) the complainant has temporarily lost her capacity to choose whether to have intercourse on the relevant occasion, she is not consenting, and subject to questions about the defendant's state of mind, if intercourse takes place, this would be rape.

And, immediately after the line you quoted out of context:

...consent may evaporate well before complainant becomes unconscious.

Unless I'm wrong, this isn't your specialist field, so you don't have specific personal expertise to draw on that would entitle you to expect your personal opinion to be given significant weight without any need to actually quote and reference evidence to support your position.

You know as little about me as you do about the law.

and the appeal would only have succeeded on those grounds if those were grounds used in the appeal.

The appeal would have been put on those grounds, had the judge said that! But it wasn't; because he didn't.

 

[Lo Siento.]

yes, and that wasn't what happened in this case here either, at least not as far as any of the court reports, or documents I've seen state.

so would you like to try that one again?

You want to quibble with the word "passed out"? The jury found that she wasn't in any state to offer consent. If anyone in your anecdotal Newcastle taxi rank is having sex with people unable to consent, then they're rapists.

 

[Athos]

You want to quibble with the word "passed out"? The jury found that she wasn't in any state to offer consent. If anyone in your anecdotal Newcastle taxi rank is having sex with people unable to consent, then they're rapists.

Strictly speaking, you should add 'unless they have a reasonable belief that the other person has consented'. Because it's possible to have sex with someone who hasn't consented, and for it not to amount to rape. For a conviction, the jury must be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant did not reasonably believe that consent had been given. That's important, because otherwise people could claim that they unwittingly raped someone. They can't. Evans didn't. He knew what he was doing. He knew then what he is, and he knows now, and, deep down, so must his family.

 

[Lo Siento.]

Strictly speaking, you should add 'unless they have a reasonable belief that the other person has consented'. Because it's possible to have sex with someone who hasn't consented, and for it not to amount to rape. For a conviction, the jury must be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant did not reasonably believe that consent had been given. That's important, because otherwise people could claim that they unwittingly raped someone. They can't. Evans didn't. He knew what he was doing. He knew then what he is, and he knows now, and, deep down, so must his family.

I guess. And I suppose that might be a necessary legal technicality. But in the real world it's impossible to "unwittingly rape someone". You just know, and the pretence that it's possible to do so is a substantial driver of the whole "I could get smeared as a rapist" horseshit.

 

[Athos]

Anyway, free spirit, I'm done with your bullshit; I'll try to resist the temptation to respond to ny more of your posts, because there's little point. You don't understand what you're talking about, and won't be told by people who do. You're so determined to defend this rapist that you won't listen to reason; you prefer to repeat the same mistakes/lies, as if they'll become true if you say them enough. It's not really possible to discuss anything with somebody with that mindset.

If it makes you feel better to believe that parliament, the judge, the jury, the appeal court and everyone here got this wrong, and that you alone got it right, then be my guest.

 

[el-ahrairah]

I'll lay odds that you had sex with people who were at least this drunk / off their faces more than once over the years, probably when you were both in a similar state.

The precedent being set here is that this level of drunkeness removes the woman's legal ability to consent to having sex with you or anybody else, so whether she's begging you for it or not it'd be rape if the police and cps later decide to get involved for whatever reason and decide that in their opinion she was actually too drunk to legally give consent.

i've done some things but i've never gone into a hotel room and had a go on my mate's semi-conscious pull. i've never done that because that would be a sexual assault.

it seems to me from reading this thread that you are convinced that she gave explicit consent and then changed her mind after the event. but this is a different version of events reported by the media covering the trial. where are you getting your information from?

 

[el-ahrairah]

someone mentioned implied consent... as i understand it, there is no such thing as implied consent in legal terms. if a rape allegation is made, it's up to the defendant to prove that the consent was there and would have been understood as such by most people and that the alleged victim was able to give consent. i really can't see any issues with this. evans was unable to convince a jury that any consent was given or that she was able to consent even if she'd announced as such. this is, i expect, because the law has been worded in such a way that the power imbalance of "implied consent" is balanced out.

 

[free spirit]

Well, for instance, your quote from Bree failed to include the sentence immediately before, which says:

And, immediately after the line you quoted out of context:

well I wasn't contesting that bit, the judge covered that bit adequately in his summing up, so the bit I quoted was the pertinent bit to the point I was making as it's what was missing from the judges summing up

You know as little about me as you do about the law.

fair enough, I may have mixed you up with someone else

The appeal would have been put on those grounds, had the judge said that! But it wasn't; because he didn't.

again, had he said what? What i quoted him as saying?

here's the full direction (or at least all the direction included in the court of appeal decision to refuse leave to appeal)

"A complainant consents if, and only if, she has the freedom and capacity to make a choice, and she exercised that choice to agree to sexual intercourse."

There are two ways in which drink and/or drugs can affect an individual who is intoxicated. First, it can remove inhibitions. A person may do things when intoxicated which she would not do, or be less likely to do if sober. Secondly, she may consume so much alcohol and/or drugs that it affects her state of awareness.

So you need to reach a conclusion upon what was the complainant's state of intoxication, such as you may find it to be.

Was she just disinhibited, or had what she had taken removed her capacity to exercise a choice?

"A woman clearly does not have the capacity to make a choice if she is completely unconscious through the effects of drink and drugs, but there are various stages of consciousness, from being wide awake to dim awareness of reality. In a state of dim and drunken awareness you may, or may not, be in a condition to make choices.

So you will need to consider the evidence of the complainant's state and decide these two questions:

was she in a condition in which she was capable of making any choice one way or another? If you are sure that she was not, then she did not consent.

If, on the other hand, you conclude that she chose to agree to sexual intercourse, or may have done, then you must find the defendants not guilty."

Actually I was a bit wrong on this the court of appeal does seem to have covered this point, but decided it wasn't important.

As it seems to us, those directions to the jury amply encapsulated the concept of the drunken consent amounting to consent. The judge did not use those express words; there was no obligation on him to do so.

Now to me, not clearly indicating the point that drunken consent is still actually consent was a pretty major omission in the summing up, given that it was really the point on which the entire trial hinged. Nothing in his summing up really covers this point in the way that the appeal court had described it in Bree, and that's why I've repeatedly referenced this specific line, as it's the salient point that was missing from the judges direction to the jury in this case.

However where the complainant has voluntarily consumed even substantial quantities of alcohol, but nevertheless remains capable of choosing whether or not to have intercourse, and in drink agrees to do so, this would not be rape.

Had I been in the jury and only seen the judges direction on this, I may well have felt I had to find him guilty if I thought she was drunk, regardless of whether she'd actually given her consent or not. Had I also been given the clear line quoted above, I'd have found him not guilty, as I'd have understood that the law allowed for drunken consent, rather than assuming that drunkeness in itself automatically removed the womans capacity to give her consent.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Unless I'm wrong, this isn't your specialist field, so you don't have specific personal expertise to draw on that would entitle you to expect your personal opinion to be given significant weight without any need to actually quote and reference evidence to support your position.

For what it's worth, I've researched the Sexual Offences Act 2003 at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and have been teaching it for the past four years. I'd say that Athos' analysis on this thread has been pretty much spot on. Yours, by contrast, is very confused.

 

[Lo Siento.]

Had I been in the jury and only seen the judges direction on this, I may well have felt I had to find him guilty if I thought she was drunk, regardless of whether she'd actually given her consent or not. Had I also been given the clear line quoted above, I'd have found him not guilty, as I'd have understood that the law allowed for drunken consent, rather than assuming that drunkeness in itself automatically removed the womans capacity to give her consent.

You what? In what possible world is this statement...

There are two ways in which drink and/or drugs can affect an individual who is intoxicated. First, it can remove inhibitions. A person may do things when intoxicated which she would not do, or be less likely to do if sober. Secondly, she may consume so much alcohol and/or drugs that it affects her state of awareness.

So you need to reach a conclusion upon what was the complainant's state of intoxication, such as you may find it to be.

Was she just disinhibited, or had what she had taken removed her capacity to exercise a choice?

... not a clear direction that the law allows for drunken consent?

 

[killer b]

Christ. This is starting to look like a sex-crime freeman on the land thread.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

someone mentioned implied consent... as i understand it, there is no such thing as implied consent in legal terms. if a rape allegation is made, it's up to the defendant to prove that the consent was there and would have been understood as such by most people and that the alleged victim was able to give consent. .

No, it's not up to the defendant to prove anything. That's a cornerstone - just - of our legal system.

 

[free spirit]

i've done some things but i've never gone into a hotel room and had a go on my mate's semi-conscious pull. i've never done that because that would be a sexual assault.

it seems to me from reading this thread that you are convinced that she gave explicit consent and then changed her mind after the event. but this is a different version of events reported by the media covering the trial. where are you getting your information from?

the court of appeal documents, and press reports with transcripts of her evidence etc. I've not seen any evidence to state that she was semi concious, and in 15 pages of this bollocks, nobody else has produced that evidence either, though it seems to be a common misconception about what had happened. I've just reread all the BBC reports of the trial from the time as well, and can't see that allegation in there.

This is her statement to the police about how drunk she was that night, from the bbc.

She told police: "I felt tipsy but not out of control.

"I usually drink more than that. I haven't blacked out before, not being able to remember anything."

She didn't change her mind, she just couldn't remember what happened at all according to her court statements

Mr Morgan: "You were happy for this sex to go on weren't you?"

Woman: "I don't remember."

When Mr Morgan suggested she agreed to Mr Evans getting involved when he entered the room, she said: "I don't remember."

Out of all the previous cases various posters have cited, this is the only case in which the defendants have both stated that the woman gave her consent, and the woman hasn't actually challenged that in court, merely said that she can't remember to every question on the subject.

It's the police and CPS here who seem to have decided that she was raped due to being too drunk to consent, not her, she just says she can't remember what happened.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And that does go back to the burden of proof, tbf. I haven't read everything, but a few posters here have been assuming that she was either unconscious or semi-conscious.

If she had said yes to his joining them, that does leave us with something other than rape. Sleazy as fuck behaviour by these two men, yes. But is it rape if she said ok? This thread's become polarised between those who won't accept that Evans isn't guilty - giving his conviction as proof, which doesn't stand up if you're questioning the conviction - and those who are questioning the verdict.

It's really shitty, bullying behaviour to accuses anyone questioning it of being a rape apologist or worse - as both Athos and Ddraig did - implying that they are rapists themselves. That's really fucking vile behaviour. You should both be fucking ashamed of yourselves for saying that.

And selectively applying the 'jury knows best' attitude is wrong too. Do you also apply that to the clearly absurd jury decision in the Mark Duggan case? Juries get stuff badly wrong sometimes. Hiding behind the system and pretending that it doesn't royally fuck up sometimes is silly.

 

[free spirit]

For what it's worth, I've researched the Sexual Offences Act 2003 at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and have been teaching it for the past four years. I'd say that Athos' analysis on this thread has been pretty much spot on. Yours, by contrast, is very confused.

probably so, it's not my specialist subject, never claimed it was. But just confused, or entirely wrong?

As a specialist in the field, are there many other similar cases to this since Bree (or prior to it), where the defendants have been found guilty on the basis of the womans level of intoxication alone, but not where she was actually passed out or close to it or had been spiked?

Would you agree that this case is a little unusual in that the entire case hinges on how drunk the woman is assessed as being, not on whether she consented, or her statement about what happened etc.

And following this case, how are people supposed to be able to assess if a woman who's wanting to have sex with them is potentially going to be judged to have been too drunk to consent if in the morning she can't actually remember what happened?

Basically how's the concept that drunken consent is still consent supposed to survive this case? as I really don't get where the line is supposed to be drawn any more.

Bearing in mind that it's entirely possible for someone to be pretty lucid at the time, but still not actually remember it in the morning (and in this field I have a lot of experience both personally and professionally).

 

[free spirit]

If she had said yes to his joining them, that does leave us with something other than rape. Sleazy as fuck behaviour by these two men, yes. But is it rape if she said ok?

careful now LBJ, the lynch mob will be after you.

 

[Lo Siento.]

And that does go back to the burden of proof, tbf. I haven't read everything, but a few posters here have been assuming that she was either unconscious or semi-conscious.

If she had said yes to his joining them, that does leave us with something other than rape. Sleazy as fuck behaviour by these two men, yes. But is it rape if she said ok? This thread's become polarised between those who won't accept that Evans isn't guilty - giving his conviction as proof, which doesn't stand up if you're questioning the conviction - and those who are questioning the verdict.

It's really shitty, bullying behaviour to accuses anyone questioning it of being a rape apologist or worse - as both Athos and Ddraig did - implying that they are rapists themselves. That's really fucking vile behaviour. You should both be fucking ashamed of yourselves for saying that.

And selectively applying the 'jury knows best' attitude is wrong too. Do you also apply that to the clearly absurd jury decision in the Mark Duggan case? Juries get stuff badly wrong sometimes. Hiding behind the system and pretending that it doesn't royally fuck up sometimes is silly.

Could give a long list of reasons why the Duggan comparison isn't apt, not least the varying likelihood of being believed by a jury if you're a rape victim and if you're a police officer.