Yea it's not really legitimate rape is it?
That's not what I said.
But to expand on it, one of the charges relates to consensual sex where the girl then alleges that part way through assange deliberately nipped the end of the condom so that it leaked, which is the bit she'd not consented to. Now, if this were true, then it probably would fall into the rape category legally, but I just can't see it getting anything like the sort of sentence that someone would get for a situation where no consent existed at all.
TBH though, I can't really see that this has much if any chance of him being found guilty of it, unless he confessed to it, as it's obvious that he could just state that the condom must have broken itself and he'd pretty much have to be found not guilty on grounds of reasonable doubt, or whatever similar rule they have over there. This isn't me judging whether he's actually guilty of it or not, just saying that I see it as being very doubtful that any court would be able to convict him of it.
The other case possibly does have more chance of getting a conviction, but again she says in her statement that (paraphrasing) she was happy to be having sex with him until she discovered that he wasn't wearing a condom, and even in her statement she doesn't actually say that she told him to stop, just asked him if he was wearing a condom, then said that he'd better not have HIV, which I'd think a court would decide is a pretty unclear way of saying for him to stop. This probably has a slightly greater chance of a successful prosecution, but I'd still expect any sentence to be at the lower end of the scale.
To anyone saying 'rape is rape', you'd have to explain why the sentences for rape range from 4 years to life (in the UK). Also of relevance here is the prior consensual sex, which in this country at least is classed as a mitigating factor, which also feeds into my thinking that he'd likely be facing sentences at the very low end of the sentencing spectrum if he was convicted.
Mitigating:
- Victim engaged in consensual sexual activity with the offender on the same occasion and immediately before the offence
What I'm trying to say here is that I just don't see that he was really facing sufficiently long sentences if convicted to justify taking refuge in an embassy where he must have known he could end up spending years effectively under house arrest.
Therefore I'm tending more to the view that he actually did genuinely take refuge from fear of extradition to the US, rather than to escape the charges in Sweden. Before reading the statements, I'd had the opposite viewpoint fwiw.
