False Allegations

Really good post on media reporting of false allegations of rape

It’s still rape

There are a lot of good things about this article. I like the way it emphasises that rapists are not some strange subspecies that lives in dark alleyways but “fathers, brothers, husbands”. I am glad that they highlighted the abysmal rape conviction rate.

But then they spoiled it all by using the word ’sex’ in the headline and elsewhere. Sex with a woman who does not or cannot consent is rape. Sex with a woman who is being forced to do it by someone other than yourself is rape. Sex with a woman who you can reasonably suspect is not able to consent is still rape.

These men justify it by calling it anything other than rape. I wish the media would not allow them that comfort.

The 17-year-old jailed for having sex with a 15-year-old, or The 17-Year-Old who got away with raping a 17-year-old?

We haven’t discussed this issue, but my personal opinion is that it is possible to have truly consensual sex if one is slightly under the age of consent (I do support age of consent laws, for want of a better alternative, but I do think they need to be applied flexibly) although I’m not sure whether that was the case here. I also think that the law which gives a tougher penalty for non-consensual oral sex is stupid, but fairer penalties for rapists really isn’t at the top of my list of priorities at the moment.

This article concerns me for a couple of reasons.  Firstly is this paragraph:

Back in 2003, Wilson, was a 17-year-old pupil getting top grades and showing enough promise as a footballer to catch the attention of Ivy League schools. Popular among students and teachers, he was voted Homecoming King, an honour bestowed on a star student or athlete.

Today Wilson is two years into a 10-year prison sentence for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year old girl at a New Year’s Eve party three years ago.

I’m not sure whether telling us about what a good student and footballer he was, was meant to make us think he’s innocent or to make us feel more sorry for his current predicament. If it was the former, it’s continuing a dangerous myth; intelligent, popular, gifted men can be rapists just as much as unemployed, borderline mentally ill, loners who’ve never had a girlfriend. If it was the latter, it’s irrelevent; if his jail sentence is wrong then it’s wrong irrespective of  what their circumstances were before (reminds me of the case of three teenage Pacific Island girls who were given a disgustingly low amount of compensation after being wrongly jailed, essentially on the assumption that they wouldn’t be earning much).

The TV programme Primetime got its hands on the tape which shows Wilson, then 17, having sex with a seemingly drunk 17-year-old girl. She was earlier filmed passed out on the bathroom floor. Another section of the tape shows a second girl, 15 at the time, having oral sex with several boys in succession. Wilson was one of them. The girl later said she had not been drinking on the night in question.

It doesn’t sound like the seventeen year old was in any position to consent to sex to me. She later reported Wilson for rape, but he was acquitted of this by the jury. Yet the article doesn’t seem to challenge this verdict, like they do his prison sentence.

I wish even a fraction of the attention given to people (supposedly) wrongly convicted of rape was given to women wrongly deemed to be lying. And if convictions are viewed to not be binding, then acquittals should be viewed just as critically.

Not about sex

‘Israeli president sex case delayed’

I’ve seen multiple headlines similar to this, and they annoy me no end.

It’s not a sex case. It’s not a sex trial. The men in such cases are not on trial for having sex (although sometimes their victims seem to be, but that’s another issue). It’s about rape and other forms of violence.