Accused rapist Ched Evans to be released from prison

[bmd]

If this case is to set that bar at what is too drunk to consent (which I'm assuming it must at least to some degree, in the absence of other clear definitions of what is and isn't too drunk), then it's setting it at a bloody low level given the amount that a lot of women drink when out on the town at weekends (ie binge drinking). She'd certainly not drunk an unusual amount by that score, though maybe she had drunk it a bit quicker than normal.

This case decided that she was drunk and unable to consent. Another woman may drink double this and go through the same process and be judged, by the jury, as not being too drunk to consent.

You're making out that it's a units thing. It isn't, it's about capacity to consent.

 

[bmd]

i don't have a particular opinion on the Evans case i just don't think free spirit should be being roasted in this way when imo there's clearly a discussion here to be had. i am not whatsoever convinced that it can ever be good for police to be able to pursue rape complaints without the participation of the person alleged to have been attacked, regardless of the perceived circumstance. sexual assault is a particular and not easily generalised event, subjective experiences from those involved are particularly important in ascertaining the nature of what went on and in their absence do we trust the plod and judiciary to fill in the gaps?

The police will pursue domestic abuse cases without the victim's consent too. I'm sure there are plenty of other crimes like this.

eta: prosecution is as much about protecting the public from harm as it is about justice for the victim.

 

[Das Uberdog]

i would be interested to see if there were any case law examples of successful prosecutions for domestic abuse without the testimony of the person being abused - genuinely, i have no idea and my presumption would have been it would be extremely difficult/nigh on impossible to attain a full conviction without the participation of the victim

 

[belboid]

you are a total cunt - anything i say there not correct? i invited correction numerous times if i'd got the wrong end of the stick.

try thinking - then you might be able to work out why FS has been acting like a complete piece of shit, and an utterly dishonest one at that.

 

[belboid]

i would be interested to see if there were any case law examples of successful prosecutions for domestic abuse without the testimony of the person being abused - genuinely, i have no idea and my presumption would have been it would be extremely difficult/nigh on impossible to attain a full conviction without the participation of the victim

try looking for half a second then, you'll fnd shitloads.
http://www.nelsonslaw.co.uk/site/ne...asescouldstillbeprosecutedwithoutvictims.html

 

[bmd]

i would be interested to see if there were any case law examples of successful prosecutions for domestic abuse without the testimony of the person being abused - genuinely, i have no idea and my presumption would have been it would be extremely difficult/nigh on impossible to attain a full conviction without the participation of the victim

Yep, there are plenty since the law was changed a couple of years ago. Of course the victim has to make an initial complaint but even if they withdraw it the prosecution goes forward.

If your mum or sister was raped by a man who the police could have prosecuted but didn't because it wasn't the primary wish of a previous victim, what would you think of that?

 

[Das Uberdog]

Yep, there are plenty since the law was changed a couple of years ago. Of course the victim has to make an initial complaint but even if they withdraw it the prosecution goes forward.

If your mum or sister was raped by a man who the police could have prosecuted but didn't because it wasn't the primary wish of a previous victim, what would you think of that?

obviously if someone i knew and cared about was attacked by anyone in any circumstance i'd be sick to the stomach and would want all kinds of things to happen. i never think these what ifs particularly help discussions like these.

i still think there's a problem here in that the woman seems to have never, at any point, placed a complaint against Ched Evans for anything other than having lost track of her handbag. instinctively i dislike a legal precedent which gives the entire initiative of prosecution for something like rape in the hands of the police. who is to say someone has been sexually abused, other than the person in question? and if they genuinely appear to have no opinion either way (not even placing an accusation then withdrawing it) i find it difficult to see where the motivation to prosecute comes from.

 

[Citizen66]

It's going to be something to the tune of Do do do do, Dah dah dah dah by the Police, isn't it?

Mine was to: "she'll be wearing pink pyjamas when she comes..."

 

[belboid]

i still think there's a problem here in that the woman seems to have never, at any point, placed a complaint against Ched Evans for anything other than having lost track of her handbag. instinctively i dislike a legal precedent which gives the entire initiative of prosecution for something like rape in the hands of the police. who is to say someone has been sexually abused, other than the person in question? and if they genuinely appear to have no opinion either way (not even placing an accusation then withdrawing it) i find it difficult to see where the motivation to prosecute comes from.

as repeatedly pointed out before, there is NO precedent here. There was a significant amount of supporting evidence from the various scenes, including the lies of Ched Evans.

Following your line of thinking, it would be impossible to charge someone with the rape of a person who was unconscious if no marks were left.

 

[Das Uberdog]

as repeatedly pointed out before, there is NO precedent here. There was a significant amount of supporting evidence from the various scenes, including the lies of Ched Evans.

Following your line of thinking, it would be impossible to charge someone with the rape of a person who was unconscious if no marks were left.

whether or not the precedent is in this particular case i don't like the precedent.

the scenario of an unconscious person is more definitive than this case imo, but yes if there is no complainant (i.e. the victim never puts forward an accusation of rape) then i don't think it's a particularly good thing for the police to be able to decide what's happened on their behalf. personally i think it's quite important for sexual abuse cases to be navigated by the subjective experience of those implicated... the actual distress of a victim of sexual assault should be a necessary part of understanding - from a legal perspective - if anything untoward has occurred. i'm less solid in the case of someone who is actually passed out mind you, but that doesn't appear to have been the case here anyway.

 

[belboid]

whether or not the precedent is in this particular case i don't like the precedent.

in which case it isn't the supposed precedent you dont like, its the law.

the scenario of an unconscious person is more definitive than this case imo, but yes if there is no complainant (i.e. the victim never puts forward an accusation of rape) then i don't think it's a particularly good thing for the police to be able to decide what's happened on their behalf. personally i think it's quite important for sexual abuse cases to be navigated by the subjective experience of those implicated... the actual distress of a victim of sexual assault should be a necessary part of understanding - from a legal perspective - if anything untoward has occurred. i'm less solid in the case of someone who is actually passed out mind you, but that doesn't appear to have been the case here anyway.

so if someone is too out of it to know what happened, anything can be done to them? wow. you do realise how dodgy that is, dont you?

 

[bmd]

obviously if someone i knew and cared about was attacked by anyone in any circumstance i'd be sick to the stomach and would want all kinds of things to happen. i never think these what ifs particularly help discussions like these.

i still think there's a problem here in that the woman seems to have never, at any point, placed a complaint against Ched Evans for anything other than having lost track of her handbag. instinctively i dislike a legal precedent which gives the entire initiative of prosecution for something like rape in the hands of the police. who is to say someone has been sexually abused, other than the person in question? and if they genuinely appear to have no opinion either way (not even placing an accusation then withdrawing it) i find it difficult to see where the motivation to prosecute comes from.

Yeah, you're right. I was trying to underline the point that the Police's motivation to prosecute is also about protecting the public.

Anyway, it's not in the hands of the Police, it's in the hands of the CPS. We then get into whether we trust the judicial process.

 

[belboid]

We then get into whether we trust the judicial process.

I doubt there are many here that do trust the judicial process, but because it is overwhelmingly biased against rapists and abusers being successfully prosecuted (as we can see re the Rotherham cases at the moment), we shouldn't be doing anything to make things easier for them. In the -very few - cases where prosecutions are taken forward without the victims explicit complaint, it is because the evidence is already very strong indeed - as it is in this case.

 

[bmd]

I doubt there are many here that do trust the judicial process, but because it is overwhelmingly biased against rapists and abusers being successfully prosecuted (as we can see re the Rotherham cases at the moment), we shouldn't be doing anything to make things easier for them. In the -very few - cases where prosecutions are taken forward without the victims explicit complaint, it is because the evidence is already very strong indeed - as it is in this case.

This is why I'm arguing so strongly in this case: sexual crimes are woefully prosecuted. There's no way that this case would have won on anything other than very strong and clear evidence. What worries me about the people who are against it is that they are undermining a system that's already heavily weighted against the victims. The power is already with the defendant.

 

[Das Uberdog]

in which case it isn't the supposed precedent you dont like, its the law.


so if someone is too out of it to know what happened, anything can be done to them? wow. you do realise how dodgy that is, dont you?

you don't see how dodgy it is that these complaints can be pursued without the testimony, support or involvement of the person who has been attacked? no, not anything can be done to them but i do think that in ascertaining whether or not a sexual assault has occurred it is vitally important to consider whether or not anybody feels that they have been violated.

 

[ViolentPanda]

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.

Fuck me, no equivalence.

 

[ViolentPanda]

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

Quite.

 

[ViolentPanda]

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

He thinks you're Diamond , who's the (supposed) "expert" in EU law that he's mistaking you for.

 

[belboid]

you don't see how dodgy it is that these complaints can be pursued without the testimony, support or involvement of the person who has been attacked? no, not anything can be done to them but i do think that in ascertaining whether or not a sexual assault has occurred it is vitally important to consider whether or not anybody feels that they have been violated.

the testimony and involvement of the person attacked WILL be included. I can see why it sounds a bit off, but it is far far better than abusers being able to get away with abuse. Even more so with domestic violence, when the reason for not wanting to cooperate is usually the fear of the reprisal.

In this case, and in others involving date rape drugs (not that we know whether this case did involve such a drug) the victim DOES feel violated, they are just unclear how. It is a deeply disturbing and very scary experience. Anyone in such a circumstance will be hoping that its found that they weren't (or were very unlikely to have been) raped, but they need to know what happened. And a charge of rape will then only be brought if the evidence is very strong - as it was in this case.

 

[bmd]

you don't see how dodgy it is that these complaints can be pursued without the testimony, support or involvement of the person who has been attacked? no, not anything can be done to them but i do think that in ascertaining whether or not a sexual assault has occurred it is vitally important to consider whether or not anybody feels that they have been violated.

The thing is, it sounds like you're saying that this prosecution sprung from thin air. It didn't, did it. The Police don't go around inventing sexual crimes to investigate.

 

[marty21]

you don't see how dodgy it is that these complaints can be pursued without the testimony, support or involvement of the person who has been attacked? no, not anything can be done to them but i do think that in ascertaining whether or not a sexual assault has occurred it is vitally important to consider whether or not anybody feels that they have been violated.

not dissimilar to Domestic Violence - I know of cases through my work, where the Police have pursued the case even though the victim hasn't co-operated with them - 'tell me wife/partner of violent man, why don't you want to co-operate with us ?'

 

[ViolentPanda]

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.

What do you know? You're only a lawyer who deals with some of this sort of shit!!!
Fucking experts, giving it all that...

 

[el-ahrairah]

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

I was paraphrasing but here's the law:

Rape

(1)A person (A) commits an offence if—

(a)he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,

(b)B does not consent to the penetration, and

(c)A does not reasonably believe that B consents.

(2)Whether a belief is reasonable is to be determined having regard to all the circumstances, including any steps A has taken to ascertain whether B consents.

---

It specifically relies on the demonstration of the defendant to show that they have taken steps to ascertain consent.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/1

e2a the link. so that you can see that i'm not lying.

 

[el-ahrairah]

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.

if she can't remember what happened, and is telling the truth, don't you think that that pretty much shows that she wasn't in a condition to give informed consent?

 

[ViolentPanda]

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 because Athos isn't trying to construct an argument about how the law is incorrect.

 

[Wilf]

In a way, FS raises important general issues about the potential criminalisation of 'normal drunken (consensual) sex' - though I don't think the law actually does that. Trouble is he's profoundly wrong to suggest this case is about that or even close to it. As well as the generally high bar in terms of getting a rape prosecution, it seems to me the prosecution faced a difficult job disentangling when her consent 'ran out' (from the first bloke) and then what state she was in with regard to being pissed. The thing is though, piecing all the evidence together, they did do that - the jury, seeing all the cctv, hearing the details, came to a clear conclusion. Yes, of course, juries get things wrong but I'm struggling to see any legal errors in this. And perhaps more importantly, from a real world judgement of his behaviour, it's 100% clear the situation was set up to allow evans to have sex with her when she was at her most vulnerable. Both legally and morally he's gulity as fuck.

Anything about this being equivalent to the 'normal' sexual politics and consensual encounters of a Friday night out, is just plain wrong.

 

[killer b]

if she can't remember what happened, and is telling the truth, don't you think that that pretty much shows that she wasn't in a condition to give informed consent?

I think this is the crux of FS's argument - that people do things when they're drunk which they can't remember after (get into fights, have sex with people, etc etc) which doesn't necessarily mean they were unable to consent / were not responsible for those things happening. However, he's only really concentrating on one part of the evidence for some reason, as if that's all the jury made their decision on.

 

[Wilf]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/b...top-ched-evans-from-getting-his-old-job-back/
Spiked getting in on the act.

 

[belboid]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/b...top-ched-evans-from-getting-his-old-job-back/
Spiked getting in on the act.

phew, now I know I'm on the right side of the argument

 

[bmd]

In a way, FS raises important general issues about the potential criminalisation of 'normal drunken (consensual) sex

What criminal issues are there around normal drunken consensual sex?