So because this girl can’t remember if she gave consent, this guy can’t be charged with rape? Conviniently overlooking the fact that if she’s so drunk she couldn’t remember, she’s in no position to give consent or fight off an attacker?
I’d agree with this; surely this just sends a message that if the person is drunk enough, you can get away with rape? Not only that their case will seem “tainted” but that the case will actually be thrown out of court?
Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK?
That’s fatal for the case, is it? Well, if the law is such that even the victim’s barrister feels he has no case if the victim was too drunk (to the point she was wavering into and out of consciousness) then the fucking law needs to be changed.
If she was too drunk to remember, and too drunk to fight off an attacker, then surely she was too drunk to give consent? Please tell me others agree here.
Sounds very similar to spiking a woman’s drink at a bar so you can take them home later to have sex with her - regardless of whether she even knows it’s happening. The moral aspect alone makes it a no brainer in my opinion. Anything other than a very positive “yes” is unacceptable in my book.
Poor reporting might be disguising a reasonable judicial decision…or it might just be yet another embarassing British judge who lives on his own planet.
If the report is true that the accuser accepted that she “could not remember whether she gave consent or not”, then I don’t see how it could be possible to convict anyone beyond reasonable doubt.
If it is true that the judge simply extrapolated from this the concept of ‘drunken consent’, then he’s a shameful creature. If the case was more complex than has been reported, or if there were other less clear-cut elements, I wouldn’t be surprised.
It makes sense that one cannot consent to sex when drunk… but aren’t you considered to be 100% responsible for pretty much every criminal act you can name, including if you drunkenly have sex with a woman who is also drunk (and thus who cannot give consent)?
You gotta wonder about the kind of guy who will have intercourse with someone who’s unconscious, or barely conscious. I love how these things never call the morality of the guy into question.
The accuser’s case was lost when she admitted on the stand she couldn’t remember whether she gave consent or not. She handed the defense reasonable doubt right there.
Regarding the man: more often than not, drunk people have sex with similarly drunk people. Consent is clearest with the clear-headed.
With regard to drunken consent: I think many a man here, if they were completely honest, has at least considered trying something “new” with a drunken woman he knows damn well she wouldn’t consent to sober.
But – unless there was physical evidence of her struggling, or evidence of club drugs like GHB and rohypnol in the woman’s system, or the man was stupid enought to record the sex act (a la R. Kelly), I don’t think I could vote to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
To me it sounds like a testimony screw-up. I mean, on the face of it, I’d accept the maxim in the thread title. There’s an awful lot of drunken consensual sex out there, every night.
There are quotes in the article that worry about scenarios like a woman having one glass of wine and then being fair game for rape:
This makes no sense at all.
“Did he rape you?” “Yes.” “So, you didn’t give consent?” “No, I did not.” “But you had three wine coolers that night, didn’t you? Are you *sure *you didn’t give consent?” “Well, yeah. Bastard raped me. I thought we’d established that, what-- are you retarded?”
Whatever testimony was presented, it prompted both the prosecutor and the judge to declare the case unprosecutable. It sounds like the woman said that she may have given consent – in which case, what can you do?
If you go any other way, every date that involves alcohol and ends with sex is prosecutable as a rape, even if both parties are into it at the time.
I’d like to see more details before calling for blood.
It’s interesting that she indicated that she wasn’t even sure that sex had taken place. If she wasn’t sure, and there was no other evidence (semen, injuries, eye-witnesses, or otherwise) then how was the case even charged? Without those, it’s a she said/he said, and the presumption of innocence must prevail.
Still, I agree that it’s one hell of a lousy precedent. It means that any girl that passes out is fair game to a rapist with a rubber.
I’m assuming that British jurisprudence operates under the “reasonable doubt” standard for criminal convictions? If the alleged victim in the case is unable to remember whether there was a sex act, there is no way reasonable doubt can be overcome. The judge should’ve just kept out of it, or if a directed verdict was required, direct it on the basis of reasonable doubt.
As for the issue of whether one can be intoxicated and still consent, I’d like to ask everyone here if they’ve ever had sex while intoxicated, and if so, do they believe that they have been raped? Have you ever had sex with a partner who was intoxicated, and if so do you think you’re a rapist? I’ve had sex with drunk people abd had sex while drunk, sometimes at the same time, and I am neither rapist nor raped. From a British legal perspective, can a drunk person consent to sex? I don’t know. From a common sense perspective, insisting on making drunken sex partners into rape victims strikes me as being very foolish.
The woman gave no consent, and thus it was rape. The case has been thrown out, and so it’s a miscarriage of justice, and the guy got away with it.
There was sex, but it was consensual. We still have the problem that the woman was, not just drunk or tipsy, but drunk to the point of unconsciousness; It’s not exactly the most rational state of mind. As people have pointed out, they’ve had sex with their partners whilst drunk themselves; have you had sex with them whilst they were unconscious? Or vice versa? Added to this, the guy chose to have sex with a clearly drunk out of her head woman; doesn’t really say much for his morals, or his intelligence.
There was no sex at all. The guy is innocent, and the victim has remembered wrongly (which is possible, she was very drunk). However, because she cannot remember, her barrister decides to drop it, and the judge tells the jury to find him innocent? Sure, from the evidence here, I myself would have reasonable doubt. But how about we let her bring her case, and him his defence, so that I can decide for myself, rather than simply throwing it out completely? The whole point of “reasonable doubt” is that a jury finds it to be so, not the judge or the barrister.
And whichever is the truth of the matter, the problem still remains that this is telling people “Hey, if you get a woman drunk enough so she passes out, you can rape her and get away with it!”
**Otto ** It might be foolish – or it might be the truth. I am recalling a friend of mine who was fucked up the ass by a guy when she was drunk after a party he threw at his house. Now – she consented to vaginal sex and a blowjob with the guy about an hour earlier that evening, but not the anal rape that followed the second or third time they had sex. She was already tired and he just flipped her over.
How does even a skilled prosecutor get a conviction under these circumstances?
How can a skilled defense attorney NOT introduce reasonable doubt?
This was just debated on a BBC political debate programme called Question Time. The general consensus seemed to be that while there is a very valid debate to have around rape and the level of difficulties women have in reporting it and being believed by authorities this was the wrong case to hang the debate on.
The girl admitted that she just can’t remember what happened. A mans life can’t be ruined on that kind of evidence.
Got to say this seems like the (legally) right outcome to me. If she can’t remember whether she gave consent or not, then you have to admit that it’s possible that she did. And if you admit that, then you can’t very well simultaneously maintain that rape was committed beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecutor stated this himself before the judge made any intervention. There’s a difference between being unconscious and not remembering anything the next day; I’ve had many an embarrassing evening recounted to me the next day during which I was apparently up to all sorts without remembering a scrap of it in the morning. Reading the BBC story, it also becomes clearer that it is the prosecution which withdrew the case, not the judge - the judge merely instructed the jury as a result of the prosecution’s actions. As I understand it, had the woman been able to convince the jury that she had been actually unconscious, then the burden of proof would have shifted to the defendant, but because she claimed merely that she could not remember, and would not have given consent, then it effectively became the defendant’s word against no-one’s. This BBC article has a brief overview of the whole consent problem.
I’m not saying that this guy wasn’t an absolute shit, nor am I ruling out the possibility that he raped her (I think it’s quite likely, and I’m not inclined to believe the sort of person who has sex with someone they’ve been charged with getting home safely). If you’re sober and escorting someone in that state home, you don’t sleep with them even if they beg you. BUT if she was walking and talking and just doesn’t remember any of it, then there remains the possibility that she did indeed consent to sex. So he can’t be found guilty of rape.
It doesn’t seem so, as again it depends what you mean by “passes out”. It seems that this girl wasn’t actually unconscious, merely so drunk she didn’t remember what she’d done the next morning. As I said earlier, this hardly morally exculpates the defendant, but it does make him pretty impossible to prosecute. No precedent has been set; the very simple standard of reasonable doubt has just been applied.
I don’t think anyone’s defending the morality of this guy, nor are the news organisations failing to comment. It’s just generally the case with quality UK newspapers (and I guess I’ll grudgingly allow the Times this status) that the editorialising is kept quite stringently separate from the reporting. If you check out the various opinion pages over the next few days, you’ll find plenty of voices calling the morality of the guy into question. But the link in the OP was to a factual report on the legal issues, and as such it’s not really surprising that they didn’t take time out to moralise. It’s too early for the opinion pages to have this in yet; I’ll check back tomorrow and I bet you you’ll see what you’re after there.
Yep, I was watching the program, and disagreed with the consensus; so I thought i’d have a look around for a bit more detail. That’s where I got this from.
While this isn’t the most clearcut case for which to hang the debate on, the fact remains that this judgement did take place, and as a result, it seem that a dangerous precedent has been set in place.
Oh there was sex. The guy freely admits that they had sex in the corridor. The girl had a flashback to something happening in the corridor and went to the police. While she may have been very drunk and collapsed afterwards it appears that since it happened in a corridor she may been very drunk but not unconscious.
When I was a student I had many a blackout. I lost hours when I was fully awake and partying. I’ve woken up in bedside girls and not known how I got there and who they were. Later finding out that I’d spend hours with her and then went back to hers and had sex.
I’m not saying that the girl wasn’t raped while unconscious in that corridor, I can never know for sure but I think under the circumstances in this instance there wasn’t a solid case against the man.
I actually surprised that it actually even got to court since I’m assuming the girl had told the police etc. that she couldn’t remember if anything bad or not happened.
Can you put this precedent into words, precisely? Because I don’t see any precedent at all.
You don’t mean ‘this is telling people “Hey, if you get a woman drunk enough so she passes out, you can rape her and get away with it,”’ do you? Because it does no such thing.
Again: no. It appears that the woman did not testify that she had passed out. As the law stands, if the woman had convinced the jury that she was actually unconscious, then it would have been up to the defendant to prove that she consented. She therefore can’t have testified to being actually unconscious, as in that case the trial would have continued, and the jury allowed to decide whether she was or not. Rather, she testified to being unable to remember, which is a quite substantially different thing. The continued use of the word “unconscious” is confusing matters greatly, as British law as it stands states that an unconscious person can not consent. Had it been the woman’s testimony that she was unconscious, this would be a different matter, but it wasn’t. I think this is the crucial point.
In addition, those worrying that this gives licence to administer alcohol/drugs until the “appropriate” level of intoxication is reached should read the relevant passage of the Sex Offences 2003 Act, which specifically states that in this instance the defendant shall not be presumed to have “reasonably believed” that consent has been given.
OK then - Dead Badger and others have convinced me that it won’t necessarily set a precedent. It just seems very worrying to me that someone could, it appear, very easily get away with something like this - and may have done so in this case. And I’d still argue that the case should have continued; it isn’t up for the judge or barrister to decide whether there’s reasonable doubt, but a jury.
It occurs to me I didn’t pit the guy in question in the OP; I think we can be pretty certain he’s either a shit or a moron.