Pynchme:"Apart from all the legal biz; one thing I've never understood is how anyone can engage in sexual intimacy with anyone who was apparently repelled by the idea when sober."

I'd suggest that is an extremely rare situation. If two people have got drunk together, they are at least friends surely? If they met after having become drunk, how would either of them know how the other one felt when sober? Often, as I said about myself as a young bloke, it's got nothing to do with attraction or otherwise, merely overcoming shyness and insecurity and perhaps some social conditioning to do something you'd like to do but don't feel able to while sober.

By making consumption of alcohol or drugs an automatic bar to proving consent, all you are saying is that if a woman has regrets about the choices she made she can repudiate them with no onus of proof other than proving she had been drinking. Then the onus of proof falls on the man to demonstrate that consent was obtained. If he has "buyer's remorse" what recourse is open to him?

It's yet another example of the ways in which you demonstrate contempt for the capacity of women to take responsibility for their own decisions, but must look to responsible men to do it for them.

To digress a little, it strikes me that when we have a set of laws (Child Support) which automatically target fathers' income (yes, sometimes mothers' income too, but not as often) it is good to establish right at the outset that he is the responsible party. After all, it could get quite complicated if he claims he was not in a state to give informed consent and that he is therefore not responsible.

'<"...juror judgements in rape trials are influenced more by the attitudes, beliefs and biases about rape which jurors bring with them into the courtroom than by the objective facts presented, and that stereotypical beliefs about rape and victims of it still exist within the community...
'

As I've said, you cant legislate against this. The jury is supposed to represent the community.

'...jurors may query a claim of non-consent if a complainant did not verbalise it or physically resist. Jurors may also question how a defendant could reasonably be expected to know that the complainant was not consenting if she gave no overt sign that she was not consenting..."'

And well they might. So first you complain about jurors not using 'objective facts presented', now you think it's a problem when they do use the 'objective facts presented'.

I’ve had another look at the patently inadequate statistics at the end of the NSWRCC 2007-08 annual report. I still wonder why there is no proper cohort analysis of caller nos. All we are given are the number of new callers and repeat callers and a few percentages, with no comparison with the previous year. So I am wondering how many callers are police working on sexual assault/rape cases or therapists dealing with alleged victims etc etc. Do I have to assume that these are included in the 27% shown as “Supporters”? And then we are given a breakdown according to Disability and Cultural background…do we apply the numbers and percentages for those categories to “Supporters”?
There are no stats on face to face case work or court attendance etc. etc. and there is no information on key performance indicators.

With the space allocated to photos far exceeding the space allocated to token stats, I guess the NSWRCC just doesn’t think it is accountable to the public for spending taxpayer money. What do others think?

Do you think that the NSWRCC Annual Report should be independently audited?

http://www.nswrapecrisis.com.au/Resources/Annual_Report_2007-08.pdf

Houellebecq: I'm now wondering if you're trying to sound like an idiot or if it's unavoidable. The crux of our discussion was the community's assumption of 'consent', whereby the complainant is then required to prove a negative - that is, that she (or he) did *not* consent, such as by evidence of struggle etc.

The alternative idea is that consent should not be assumed - by anyone (especially, first of all - the offender) unless it is expressly given. That then would put the onus on the accused to prove, or at least state, what steps he (or occasionally, she) took to establish consent.

The quotes provided and the link were in response to your apparent need to be spoonfed some evidence that studies are done of community beliefs and attitudes to such matters.

Roscop: How about you email the site and ask them directly. Maybe you can check next year to see where your contact was recorded in the stats.

- and btw, how would shutting down a service like the RCC be of any help to men? I realize that you don't give a toss about female SA victims; although one would think that you'd share some common empathy with them... but I would also think you'd care about male victims of sexual assault (since you say you've been one, and how traumatized you were). I don't know any woman who doesn't care about SA victims, whether male or female. Can you explain why it's different for you ?

Now there's an idea. Maybe you could phone the centre and find someone with whom to discuss these issues - sort of work through it. Seriously - the service is there to help.

Antispectic: For once I actually agree with most of what you posted. You made some good points.

I think that it would be, and is, quite correct for men to make a statement to police and undergo a rape kit exam if they believe that they did not or could not consent to sex. I don't see any reason why they shouldn't.

Maybe the biz about paternity claims would even be dependent on that - not sure; I'd have to think about it a lot more.
In any case, a lot of men who have impregnated women just skip anyway. Unless the woman has the financial means to compell them to a paternity tests and whatnot, what's to stop them?

Short story: I once had contact from a young man from a small town who went to stay with an old school friend living in a large city. The friend engaged him in some celebratory drinking and he suspects that he might have been slipped something more. He woke the next morning with a sore bottom and semen evidence. He was too ashamed and didn't know where or how to seek help. He was traumatized. He had no money so felt he had to stay put while he worked something out. He was scared to go to sleep. That's an example of two people getting on the turps. Would you say he had a case ?

Pynchme,

Nice sidestep. And more arrogance. I had another look at your links...

* 9 in 10 respondents rejected that women are more likely to be raped by strangers

* about three quarters agreed that false claims of rape are rare and nine in 10 could say (if a juror starts with the assumption that women often lie about rape, this will influence the way s/he interprets testimony)

* 85 percent disagreed that women often say 'no' when they mean 'yes' and nine in 10 could say (testimony that the complainant said 'no' is unlikely to convince jurors with this belief that she did not consent)

* 93 percent of males and 96 percent of females disagreed that women who are raped often ask for it

I rest my case.