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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (74258)	9/10/2003 12:02:19 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

There would probably be few cases where we would disagree if the facts are clearly known. (Of course in the real world the facts are often not so certain as they are in these hypotheticals). And therein hangs an issue. Should the standard of rape be the same as all other crimes -- proof of rape by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the woman didn't consent and therefore it was rape, or should, as X seems to suggest, the standard be different and the man required to prove that it wasn't rape because there was consent?

To: TimF who wrote (74258)	9/10/2003 12:11:09 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

Another issue related to my last post that I thought deserved a separate post. It used to be that rape required independent verification. That standard has been attacked by fenimists and largely discarded. The argument is that if the unsupported word of a person is acceptable proof that they were robbed at gunpoint, then the unsupported word of a person should be acceptable proof that they were raped. In the case of stranger rape, that makes sense. But in the case of date rape, it's harder. In a robbery, the issue almost always is, did it happen, not did the victim consent to being robbed. There is an assumption that people don't want to be robbed. Or assaulted. Or otherwise made the victims of crime. For stranger rape, the same presumption seems solid. Few if any women want to be raped by a stranger at gunpoint. But for "date rape," the situation is different. There, you have a situation where intercourse often does in fact take place consentually. So the fact of the event -- that intercourse took place -- can be testified to with the same confidence that the fact of being robbed or assaulted happened. In both cases, the testimony of the victim that the event occurred is normally sufficient evidence of the event. But with date rape, there is a further element --that of consent. Whether the intercourse was consensual. And here, one departs from the certainty of fact into the uncertainty of opinion, of belief. Did the words and actions constitute consent or not? There is also the question of granting and withdrawal of consent. Was consent granted and then withdrawn? This is also different from most crimes. The assumption is that a person doesn't consent to being robbed until the robbery is underway, and then suddenly withdraw consent. For these reasons, in terms of date rape, the kind and reliability of evidence of the victim seem to be of a different kind and category than with traditional crimes. I think this is part of what makes this situation harder for police, prosecutors, and jurors.