concerns

[lilahfairy]

dont get me wrong, i know that false accusation happens
and i abhor it.
it ruins the lives of innocent people.
and it ruins the chances of conviction and being believed for those of us who have been raped.

but some things i find worry or just dont understand.

how is a woman being a prostitute relevent to whether she has been raped or not?
does a prostitute not have the same rights as anyone else to say no?

how is either the accusers or defendents sexual history relevent to whether a rape was committed?? (i dont believe it should be allowable for either party, defendent or accuser. .)
whether a woman has had sex with people before, or indeed with that particular person before, has no bearing on whether she consented this particular time with this particular person to that particular act, surely???
previous sexual activity does not give automatic consent to further sexual activity.

ive read so much about 'well she was a hooker' 'she slept around' 'she didnt report it immediately' ' there were no injuries' 'i know him and he doesnt seem the type' etc
and it infuriates me. because none of that makes a difference to whether a woman consented to sex on that occasion.

and then things like 'the cps allowing almost all reports to get to court with little or no evidence'
the statistics from the police refute that. 20% of reports get to court.
and statements about most reports being false allegations, with no evidence to back that up.
(retractions are not necessarily false accusations. sometimes the victim decides she just cannot go through the court process because its pretty horrible and traumatising with little chance of conviction)

or the assumption that if you know someone they cant be capable of rape.
'i know him and i know hes not lying or capapble'
i didnt think my bf was capable of rape. until he raped me. it have never crossed my mind that he might.
my childhood abuser was an upstanding member of the community. hard working, gave money to charity, wife and kids. no one would suspect him. not even his wife. because he never showed that side of his character to them. sex offenders tend not to. abusers tend not to. they can be very good at leading double lives and saying all the right things to the people who matter.

im just perplexed when i read about how 'if she acted this way or that way before or after the event she cant have been raped' and how people seem to think there are so very many false reports when there is no evidence to suggest that, aside from their own experience and anecdotal accounts. and given that the forum is for people who have been falsely accused, yes they are going to hear alot from and about people who have been falsely accused.
and im not saying i dont necessarily believe the people who are saying they have been falsely accused.
but i cant see how that is generalised to saying its a common occurance when the statistics dont point to that.
adn that alot of the 'evidence' against the accusers is just opinion about the characters of the accused and the accusers. and about attitudes towards women, re:alcohol, promiscuity,
if a man who is drunk and has slept with lots of women previously, is pinned against a wall and a woman sticks her hands down his trousers against his wishes, he would probably be discrimnated against in the sense that people assume men enjoy all sexual contact ****, but i dont think anyone would say he had been 'asking for it' or that his actions lead to it or that he should have been thinking about the fact that he might be sexually assaulted.
or if he were raped by a man. would it be a 'grey area' because he was drunk and promiscuous???

you have no reason to believe me, i know
but i know from personal experience that the most charming responsible people can also be rapists.

lilah
x

[Guest]

with regard to the point about victims sexual past being known to the cout,it is not.its only the defendant who the jury no all about.
i think they should be told if the victim was or is a prostitue no im not saying they deserved to be raped,what i am saying it shows there character.

[diana_holbourn]

Guest,

How, exactly, does knowing someone's a prostitute show you their character? What does it tell you about their character? And what relevance does that have to whether they were raped or not?

Even if a prostitute has sex with several men a day, it doesn't mean they're less likely to be telling the truth about being raped, or less likely to be raped. In fact, prostitutes are in more danger than many other people. There's a big difference between having sex with someone where you're basically in control of what happens and having an experience where control is taken away from you and you may fear for your life because of the violence or threats from your attacker. If in a courtroom, the lawyer for the defendant tries to make the conversation all about how it can be that a prostitute, who sleeps with so many men, could refuse to sleep with his client, and summarises his points by casting doubt on whether she could possibly be telling the truth bearing in mind that she supposedly has lower moral standards than the rest of society or obviously isn't too fussy about who she goes with, he's really missing the point, probably deliberately.

And I'm not aware that the law is so clear-cut that defendants can have their sexual history revealed in court while complainants won't. What's your source for that information?

[Saffron]

Hi Diana

Unfortunately, in cases where it is so often one person's word against anothers, character is highly relevant. Being a prositute does cast aspersions on the moral fibre of a person's character. I'm not saying that just because she is a prostitute she "deserves" to be raped, just that her testimony will automatically be viewed as less reliable. This is sad, but it is an assumption jurors will make. At the end of the day, she participates in an illegal "profession"....if she was a drug dealer, would the same apply? she would still be breaking the law.

And in my experience of a real trial, the "victim's" sexual history is not, in general, allowed to be revealed, whereas the defendant's can be picked over in great detail by the prosecution.

In general, questions about a victim's sexual history are not permitted, unless the defence barrister makes a special application to the judge, and it has to be a very convincing argument.

Rape and sexual assault cases are frequently notoriously difficult for either guilt or innocence to be proven, unless there is compelling physical evidence. By and large it is a question of the jury being asked to decide who they believe. In these cases the character and veracity/duplicity of the witness/defendant is the only thing that jurors can base their judgement on. To allow one to be questioned about their previous sexual history but not the other is quite frankly a travesty.

saffron

[diana_holbourn]

What I was saying is that although prostitutes are less moral in certain areas of their activity than the rest of society, it doesn't mean they're generally less moral. So, for instance, some of them might be more honest and go out of their way to help others more than some people who are considered fine upstanding members of society. So it would be impossible to judge really just from the fact that someone was a prostitute which one was more likely to be telling the truth - them or their alleged attacker. Unfortunately, because of jury prejudice against prostitutes, however, juries might be less willing to trust them.

But I agree that the rules about the disclosure of sexual history ought to apply equally to the defendant as to the accuser, unless the defendant is known to have raped or coerced people into sex before.

I'm not sure how typical your trial will have been of trials in general in terms of the sexual history that got disclosed. Maybe things have changed recently. But an article on an interview with ten barristers in 2000 called "Prosecuting and Defending Rape: Perspectives From the Bar" says (BAR =barrister):

[Saffron]

I agree that people's perceptions are not always correct, but in cases where the evidence is based on 2 differing accounts of an event, people's perceptions become crucial. Similarly, if the defendant was a pimp, this would be raised in court.....but surely has the same degree of relevance? after all, both prositutes and pimps sell sex for a living. you could I suppose argue that a pimp has no idea of the real value of loving sex, selling it in such a brutal, bargain basement-type way. But the same cvould be true of a prostitute.

I do also agree that so-called "pillars of the community" can be just as devious and morally corrupt as anyone. It is unfortunately, a question of asking the jury who they believe, and this will continually be a problem. I can't think of an adequate solution. However I do think that by protecting the alleged victims so heavily, and weighing the scales so strongly in their favour means that our justice system is fundamentally flawed. Beyond all reasonable doubt, remember?

Wth regard to the article you have quoted above, I believe that the new laws on disclosure came into play in the 2004 sexual offences act.

[diana_holbourn]

I wouldn't go so far as to say that juries shouldn't be told that someone is a prostitute; but from what I can tell, accusers ought to be given more of a chance to explain their side of the story, since the problem with raising sexual history is not that it is raised in itself, but that it's so manipulatively used to discredit a person's character. I wouldn't have a problem with the court being told that someone was a prostitute if they were asked how their experience of rape differed from their experience of consensual sex with people - why it was so much worse. The problem is that issues are played on that influence the jury but are really irrelevant. For instance, much might be made of the issue of how it could be that she didn't consent to having sex with the man who raped her when she consented to it with so many others, when the truth might be that she would have consented to have sex with him, only he didn't give her the opportunity for consent, but attacked her violently and had sex with her in the middle of that, as an act of domination; and the reason she didn't want it was not because she'd merely chosen not to have sex with the man in question, but because she was out of control of what was happening at the time, afraid of suffering more injury, and just wanted to get away. The problem is that the defence barrister will steer the questions towards his possibly very different concept of things, asking her a string of things that might be totally irrelevant, like how many sexual partners she has a night, and not allowing her to explain things beyond the limits of his questions. This is the problem with sexual history being brought up - the restrictions put on the accuser's freedom to explain herself fully, and thus the room there is for sexual history to be used in a misleading way with little challenge. I would guess that the same thing might happen with defendants.

Prosecutors won't necessarily ask accusers questions that enable them to explain themselves fully either. Perhaps it would help if guidelines were given to barristers advising on important questions to ask and the importance of allowing accusers, and maybe defendants, more freedom to explain themselves.

Do you know what the new laws on disclosure of sexual history say?

[Saffron]

I agree that the sitation is a minefield, and I think that each case should be judged individually. One thing I have learned through all of this is that one should never make assumptions based on what is reported in the press. I have learned to keep my mouth firmly shut, and not to offer any judgement unless I know all the facts!

Having said that, I'm afraid I don't know what exactly the new disclosure laws say. From my own experience I know that our barrister was not permitted to ask my husband's accuser anything about her sexual history, although my husband's was picked over minutely by the prosecution. Apparently she would have refused to testify otherwise. She also gave evidence from behind a screen, and insisted on the public gallery being cleared before she entered the court. During his summing up, the judge stated that this was NOT so that she didn't have to face her "attacker", but because she did not want to be seen by the public gallery. I wonder why? Whatever her reason, it conferred victim status on her before the trial had even begun.

I still remain firmly convinced that in cases where consent is the main issue, there being no physical evidence, parity of questioning MUST be given. Juries are made up of ordinary people, not necessarily intelligent, perceptive, wise people, just ordinary people. And as we know, ordinary people are subject to the same assumptions and biases as anyone else. By allowing the defendant's sexual history to be revealed but not the victims, the scales of justice have the accuser's thumb firmly weighing them down.

[diana_holbourn]

I wonder if the reason your barrister said he wasn't permitted to bring up the accuser's sexual history was because he hadn't presented as good a case to the judge as many barristers could have done. I do remember you once saying he wasn't a very good barrister.

It sounds as if the accuser and the barrister representing her, on the other hand, really knew how to manipulate the system. It's a shame such injustices happen.

[webmoo]

Just a quick note:
This topic was more about the law in rape cases detailing what is allowed and not allowed to be said etc. Thus, I&#39;ve moved it to the "rape law" catagory as it&#39;s more relevant there. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif[/img]