Treat Rape Like Every Other Crime | Hacker News Reader

Treat Rape Like Every Other Crime

bloomberg.com

36 pointskgwgk12 comments

The problem with "Listen and Believe" is, as this article points out, that taking a supposed victim's word as a fact foregoes due process in convicting a supposed criminal in the court of public opinion.

Rape is a serious crime that can ruin someone's life. But being falsely accused of rape can also ruin someone's life. Because even when the allegations are revealed to be fraudulent some doubt will remain. This also holds true for similar "taboo" crimes like sexual abuse of children.

The reason rape cases so often end up without a conviction is not that we (in the US and Europe) live in a culture that doesn't take rape seriously -- quite the opposite (otherwise fraudulent accusations of rape wouldn't be so damaging) -- it's that these crimes are inherently hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt, which a state of law requires to make a conviction.

That’s not what listen and believe means, you know …

It's not? What does it mean, then?

I take issue with her final paragraphs where she accuses "the left" of wanting draconian punishments for rape - this is a straw man. What I think most of us want is for a rapist to be treated equally whether a white Stanford athlete or a poor young black man.

Often I don't like comparing rape with other crimes, since there are so many nuances involved that it is tough to classify. But comparing some aspects to how it works in murder cases sounds actually quite reasonable. I would argue that most murders are worse than most rapes (yes, that means the example you just think about is still validly worse). So if you look how to treat victims of rape it should be reasonable to look how victims of murder (indirect victims of course, like family members) are treated.

I think the difficulty in comparing is that murder has a clear and defined definition in everyone's minds - person A willfully did something to end the life of person B. I posit the two conditions are universally known (you may need to tease the willful part out of some), the end result is universally accepted to be bad, and the only time victim "has it coming" is in very exceptional cases where the victim is disliked or "provoked it", and even then the murder is still very frowned upon.

Rape is different because across persons within societies, "what rape is" varies, culpability varies, and the end result, having had sex, is considered a good thing by many people. Some people honestly believe forced oral sex isn't rape. Or that one member of a couple can't rape the other. Additionally, many still believe you can "ask" for rape.

As others already noted, rape is a murky case in many times because of how frequently both parties are intoxicated, lack of reliable witnesses, and difficulty in determining culpability of the persons in the case. Add in that you have a public which judges with varying degrees of understanding as to what rape is, and that's why many people argue that it needs to have some special consideration; the societal odds are stacked against the victim, and of course, the non-intended punishments are very serious for the accused.

Juries in general are really a problem for these sorts of cases not only because of the individual biases that they bring, but also because jury duty is a horrible component of the US legal system in general: http://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/16202923895/interlu... (semi- long comic)

It's really not too suprising why there was a strong push to believe victims - everything about the process is just a mess for them, along with the judgement that does come for victims. To make the entire issue of rape more complex, even non-convictions still damage all parties involved.

The truth is that in a legal sense, rape is understood like any other crime - the problem is that society still has a wildly varied opinion on rape as a crime. Legally, there are a lot of very common sense practicalities which, while being a bit of a wet-blanket on sex, give clear legal and actionable definitions to parts of relationships/intercourse. (e.g., sex is a contract)

I don't thnk it's that the law needs to catch up - society needs to come to a better conclusion on rape.

We have immense social debt that we've got to address after all:

Make sure chronically working poor stop being poor. This is environment that breeds all kinds of radicals and fuels organized crime.

Make every crime prosecuted again. No unreported rapes please. No thieveries that get unaddressed. No corruption that gets reported in media but ends with a slap on the wrist. Right now it feels impossible because of sheer numbers of such crime. Very simple: those numbers just got to decrease to tenable levens.

Stop war on drugs and redirect effort towards real crime. Drugs can only be battled by going after their social base - poor, disgruntled, illega immingrants.

Demilitarize police and make them act as defenders again, not a privileged caste with self-interest.

Everybody got to spent time and effort on cooperating here, instead of looking the other way AND instead of radical "activism" that only increases rifts between people.

In many places migration also needs to be taken care of, because it's impossible to clean a house when its door just keeps swinging.

You suggest fighting crime by fighting poverty because poor=criminal?

Violent criminals are overrepresented in the poorer demographics. Richer demographics prefer safer, more comfortable corruption-type crime.

Let's assume you are right, then we still can't forget that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...

To minimize one variable we need to modify a cause, not just something that correlates.

Also I think what you say is an assumption and there may not even be correlation.

> Also I think what you say is an assumption and there may not even be correlation.

There can be no meaningful discussion if you demand a cited argument for every link in the chain from origin. Both anecdotal evidence and formal studies show that violent crime is overrepresented in poorer demographics, and richer demographics don't tend to put themselves at physical risk. Yes, domestic violence is seen at all levels, but street violence is not.

Trying to argue about the nature of the argument itself on this point is just playing academic parlour games. It's taking people who want to talk about an advanced physics topic and derailing the conversation by making them instead define what a meter is - when everyone interested in the topic already agrees with the definition of that basic building block.

> It is hard to fathom how Rubin Erdely went along with all this

Incentives. If it didn't crumble, the same story could have won her a Pulitzer.

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