Is rape rape?

[Zbigniev Hamson]

The short answer is "yes" of course.

But with the furore over Ken Clarke's comments, and now Tory MEP Roger Helmer stepping in with similar words, now seems as good a time to get to the bottom of this.

Are there degrees of severity in rape, or is any rape equally heinous? Are Ken Clarke and Roger Helmer dinosaurs from another age, or simply not getting a valid point across very well and getting shouted down by the PC brigade? And regardless of which way you stand on it, is it right that a debate about reforms to the criminal justice system as a whole has been effectively lost and forgotten in the middle of it all?

[Lissa]

Ken Clarke screwed up because he used the phrase "date rape" when he meant "statutory rape". There is clearly a difference between a 16 year old and a 15 year old having consensual sex which is technically a crime because the 15 year old cannot consent, and someone forcing someone else to have sex with them against their will.

Even excluding that exception - and it is an exception as the age of consent differs around the world and 16 just happens to be UK law rather than a morally definable dividing line between childhood and adulthood - there are different degrees of rape. There are different degrees of murder and lawyers, courts and the media accept that. Killing someone is more serious than raping them so how can there not be different degrees of rape? It is a form of assault and there are lots of different categories of assault. In practice there are different forms of rape as those accused often plea bargain down from the original charges.

It troubles me that there is a belief that more rape convictions would be an indicator that the problem is being tackled. To that end they want to extend the definition of rape so more men are guilty, they want to lower the evidential threshold from "beyond reasonable doubt" to "balance of probabilities" and various other unjust methods of getting more guilty verdicts. The system needs a total overhaul in how victims are treated, how evidence is gathered, how evidence is presented and how the suspects are treated. It doesn't need a whole load of miscarriages of justice where innocent men are convicted because they couldn't prove they were innocent just to please pressure groups and misguided reformers.

The misguidedness of some reformers is never more obvious than when they got a recent proposal to extend the right of anonymity to those accused of rape as well as the accusers. They claimed it would imply the woman was lying and that this was monstrously unfair. The opposite is surely true - someone accused of rape is innocent until proven guilty. Given the damage caused by an accusation it seems entirely fair to grant them anonymity until they are convicted. But because no one in government has any guts when it comes to the subject of rape, the proposal was dropped.

And - because this whole subject really annoys me - why is it that whenever anyone suggests women take care of themselves when they go out this is shouted down as daring to suggest it's a woman's fault if she's raped? It's common sense that you don't do stupid things if bad things could happen as a result. Don't leave your car keys in the ignition - that's not saying you deserve to have your car stolen, it's saying don't be stupid and your car will be safer. Don't wander down a dark alley and play with your iPhone - that's not saying you deserve to be mugged, it's saying don't be stupid and you're less likely to be mugged. Don't walk home on your own after a night out - that's not saying you deserve to be raped, it's saying don't be stupid and you're less likely to get raped. Prevention is better than a cure.

[Anthony Williams]

By law, a 16 year old having consensual sex with a 15 year old is classified as statutory rape.

Is that as bad as some forcing another person, against their will to have sex? I think not.

I'm over-simplifying things of course, but there are all sorts of things that are classified as rape. If two people get drunk and have sex, and then one of them says that she doesn't remember giving consent, then that's rape by law, and someone who thought that they were having consensual sex can find themselves carted off to prison.

Again, not nearly as bad as someone forcing someone into non-consensual sex.

I don't think it can be as simple as "rape is rape" - there are more factors to consider.

Ant x

[Anthony Williams]

Oh, and Lissa phrased a lot of how I feel much better than I'm able to today!

Ant x

[Rob McCow]

I don't know - but I do know it's a minefield.

I thought about starting a thread on this a few days ago, then chickened out!

[Andrew Curnow]

I think Lissa has summed it up perfectly - we should just all print that off and send it to our MPs.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Is no-one going to fight the "Ken Clarke must burn" corner?

[Jason Thompson]

Rape, like any sex crimes, immediately brings out the most ridiculous reactions in government and media. Of course there are different degrees of rape, just as there are different degrees of murder, robbery and any other crime. The problem is that somehow suggesting that seems to be taken to mean that some forms of rape are somehow more 'acceptable' than others, which is not at all what is meant. However, like all crimes, different degrees of the crime require different levels of punishment.

[Rob McCow]

I doubt it, Zbigniev!

David Milliband calling for his resignation was miles over the top. He's not come out with a set of bigoted, blinkered views, he was sensibly debating the issue (by the accounts I've read - I've not heard exactly what he said myself). It really wasn't worth the front page hysteria of the papers. In fact, their screeching, puritan attitude sickened me.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Well to be honest it sickened me too, but there seemed so much of it, and so many letters and columninst supporting that view (in certain newspapers at least) that I was interested to see how common that view actually was. One of the columnists I read actually seemed to be using Have I Got News For You as her primary source of what Ken Clarke actually said.

[Andrew Curnow]

I think it's a very sad sign of how our society works - the TV news and the newspapers made a big story out of it, on the back of comparatively very few complaints. Then people start complaining not because they heard Ken Clarke on the radio and were offended, but because they've read that he said something (allegedly) offensive and are dutifully outraged without being particularly well-informed.

[Dirk Gently]

The exact same thing that happened with the Brand/Ross/Sachs affair, Andrew.