nebraska judge orders the word "rape" cannot be used in rape trial

The word "rutting" and its colloquial use of "ruttin'" still allowed.

Reading the entirety of that article actually gives a few cues as to why this would be contentious in this particular case.

So this is one of those 'did she wear a short skirt' things eh?

And no, the entire article isn't really that clarifying.

I think "intercourse" would do the trick. Their reasoning sounds pretty sound to me.

i.e. "sex" is a terrible description.

how about 'insert penis unpolitely?'

impolitely even

Jeb you need to be sent to the rong thread on timeout

If I was that prosecutor, I'd be using the word "penetrate" a lot.

Are anti-abortionists allowed to use the word "baby-killer" in court?

Is Jeb able to make horribly forced analogies?

is deej able to high five

I don't see the problem here. They are trying to find a word which is as neutral as possible. "Sex" I think is bad, "sexual act" is better but not good. I would go for "intercourse". That's all.

Can they make lewd gestures instead?

Umm I'm not saying the decision was a good one, but: given that the woman has no memory of the events, the word "rape" involves some complex legal judgments and interpretations, which is kind of what the jury is there for.

(I think the word may also being classed as inflammatory here, since -- in the narrow legal definition of terms -- this guy is presumably being tried for a crime defined as maybe "sexual assault?" But it seems unneccesary to actually ban a word from the proceedings, as opposed to just being very clear about when the word involves speculation, opinion, judgment, or ... accusation, I suppose.)

Or maybe use modifiers like "unsexily sexed" and "sexily sexed"?

^^^Yeah i mean like the guy in the article said, it just seemed like this was the judge being lazy, he didn't feel like figuring out what to do on the fly

xp to nabisco

I don't agree with this reasoning:

He has no problem, for instance, with the fact that courts have gradually jettisoned the word victim for the less loaded complainant. The former proves too much. But he cautions that there is no value-neutral word for unwanted sex and that the word intercourse "understates what happens in a rape case."

I think "intercourse" is a very clinical word.

Intercourse is better because it is more likely to mean 'the act of sex', whereas the phrase 'having sex' is more likely to imply a consensual deal. So I do like Jeb's idea, if it has to be changed. The judge is clearly wrong in allowing 'sex' if 'rape' is off the table.

Can people in murder trials not use the word "murder"?

i'm not sure how someone claiming she was raped can't claim she was raped, though. I get it if yr talking about the lawyers involved, but when she's testifying it doesn't make any sense to me that she can't use the word to describe what she says happened...?

big hoos aka the steendriver orders the word "fag" cannot be used in hotel lobby

Well that's the logical conclusion. You would have to say 'kill', and then the jury trial would deal with identifying what type of killing it was (ie self-defense vs. manslaughter etc).

i will put a bitch in the street xpost

Yeah the word victim is indeed different. When lawyers use that term, they are trying to paint a picture of someone without evidence. In this case, a similar thing would be the lawyers saying "rape victim" when referring to their client, and maybe that is what should be banned. But a witness saying "I was raped" should be fine, because her testimony is part of the body of evidence, and it makes no sense to censure the evidence. Hmmm?

Well that's the logical conclusion. You would have to say 'kill', and then the jury trial would deal with identifying what type of killing it was (ie self-defense vs. manslaughter etc).

x-post

"The fact that judges are not rushing to ban similarly conclusory legal language from trial testimony—presumably one can still say murder or embezzlement on the stand—reflects not just the fraught nature of language but also the fraught nature of rape prosecutions."

Maybe all criminal trials should be forced to be conducted via Pictionary.

"Arrr...gorilla? Oh!"

"sexual assault" is as clinical a term as "intercourse"

I agree about the woman being able to make the claim, whether the jury decides to concur or not. However -- depending on the laws in Nebraska -- the fact that she has no memory of anything here is kind of problematic: it means the claim is speculative. If Nebraska happens to consider having sex with a person who's too drunk/drugged/whatever to reasonably consent a form of "sexual assault," then one could technically object to the term "rape," no?

BTW, the main difference with the "murder" analogy is that there's already an official ruling that the death in question was a homicide. In court, it's just a question of whether the defendant did it (and whether or not it was justified, etc.).

"intercourse" sounds kind of consensual to me.

Well, you're mixing terms there. Murder is one thing, homicide another. Murder is unlawful killing, and not synonymous with 'homicide'. If you want to replace 'kill' with 'homicide,' technically that's fine, but in society today 'homicide' usually carries the meaning 'murder' in most people's minds.

So in fact there is no difference at all with the 'murder' analogy.

life on the street xpost

As for the rape being speculative, that's really beside the point. Her testimony is part of the body of evidence, and it is up to the jury to decide how much water that part of the evidence holds, with the judge having the responsibility of apprising them of the law.

"And there's another problem underlying Cheuvront's order: Jurors will not be told of it. Not only is the "dangerous" language to be hidden from them, but the fact that it's been hidden will be concealed from them as well."

Those two sentences don't entirely make sense together: speculation is not "part of the body of the evidence." It's speculation and opinion. (You also can't testify in a murder trial and say "it's my opinion that he killed him.")

This hardly matters, though: I agree that people should be able to make competing claims (within reason) in a case like this.

My guess is that the judge just didn't want to have to deal with the defense popping up every time the word is used to object that it's speculative or presumes/asks for a legal opinion.

I see what you mean by speculation. But you're going down a very dangerous path there, because then any woman who consumes any alcohol and gets drugged and then raped is barred from using the word 'rape' in her testimony, since she can't tell without a shadow of a doubt whether she blacked out because of alcohol and had 'consensual sex', or whether she was indeed raped.

She should be allowed to go on the witness stand and say: "I had this amount of alcohol which has never made me black out before, but I did black out, and therefore I believe I was raped."

If she can't say that, I think it would be seriously wrong.

I don't really disagree.

I can see how the legal system might be wary about keeping the "therefore I believe" part restricted to the jury, but I don't really disagree.

But you're going down a very dangerous path there, because then any woman who consumes any alcohol and gets drugged and then raped is barred from using the word 'rape' in her testimony, since she can't tell without a shadow of a doubt whether she blacked out because of alcohol and had 'consensual sex', or whether she was indeed raped.

It's one judge's ruling. It doesn't set a precedent.

Yeah, I see what you're saying re: the legal system. It would just be weird for me if she had to get up there and say "I've never blacked out drinking that much before, and then I woke up having intercourse." She couldn't say she believed she had been drugged, because that part would be speculative, and she couldn't say she believed she was raped. And her testimony would sound like she's just an airhead who doesn't know her limits.

Moreover, for witnesses without the mental capacity to respect these limits on speech, it's a great opportunity for lawyers to sabotage a case.

The problem with cases like these -- wrapped up in countless state laws about consent and sobriety and so on -- is that the legal question somehow shifts from one person's sobriety and consent to the other person's ability to interpret sobriety and consent, which is really airy and philosophical and screwed up and provides a lot of foggy cover for what has to be, in most cases, clearly wrong. (Thus far, there can't be many women who are willing to go through a horrible protracted trial like this unless something has genuinely gone wrong -- but of course, that's exactly the kind of thinking that's totally inappropriate for a jury, and why such close weird attention to language is getting paid here.)

That's a good point. Me think U smart.

Wish we could say the same about you.

zing a bing bong!

Ned in mean shockah!

Yeah I can't think of anything.

seinfeld barred from nebraska courtroom shockah.

Just to carry the murder analogy a little further - I don't see how this is all that different from a case where the defendant admits to having killed someone but claims it was accidental. At issue is not what happened, but intent. And even in that case I don't imagine the judge would bar the word "murder"

I don't know about barring, but if a person were on trial for manslaughter or something and a witness said "he murdered him, I know he murdered him," I can certainly imagine that being objected to, stricken, and the witness told not to speculate or judge along those lines. This barring seems like a pre-emptive thing to avoid doing that with basically everyone who speaks the entire time.

I don't understand how a woman can be considered to be "speculating" on her own alleged rape. She either consented or didn't consent, and if she was so intoxicated she wouldn't even remember consenting my understanding is that she legally didn't consent. She can be telling the truth or lying, but she cannot be speculating.

I mean if there's something unclear about this situation the problem is with the law and not with the rules on whether you can say "rape"

That's why I was saying those two things above:

(a) I doubt any of us are familiar enough with Nebraska's laws on sexual assault to know what the standards are about intoxication and consent, and

(b) those standards may actually come down to whether a man can be reasonably expected to know a woman's level of intoxication

If, for instance, the latter were true (and, e.g., a man claims a woman consented and he had no reason to believe she wasn't competent to do so), then it would be somewhat "speculative" or form a "legal judgment" for her to describe it is a rape, no?

I'm not disputing that people should be able to make and argue out the accusation (which remains the case in every courtroom but this one), but you see how the word kinda presumes a verdict?

Yeah, I see your point.

Well thought. Seriously.

can a guy claim to be raped under the same circumstances?

umm, by a woman, non anally, i mean.

Sure -- thing is, though, our culture puts all the agency in these matters on men, which means that even in an equivalent situation, a man is more likely to just rue it as a mistake, not to feel violated or traumatized enough to take any action about it. I mean, yeah, I don't think it's particularly uncommon that men are (technically) sexually assaulted in that way, but the power dynamic is such that there's not nearly the same level of harm.

Woe to the poor man who does feel traumatized and violated by such a thing, and gets to encounter the stigma and mockery that would come from doing or saying anything about it.

(I.e., it's a double standard, but the double standard is actually engrained enough in everyone that in many cases it becomes ... true?)

i think penetration is the problem?

I'm not a man so I don't know the answer to this question but do you not think a man could physically respond to stimulation even if did not want it emotionally/mentally? Also sexual assault does not need involve penetration.

i definitely think it would be possible to stimulate a drunken man to the required extent. i know that sexual assault doesn't need to involve penetration, but it's hard to imagine anything but forced penetration affecting a man the way a serious sexual assault would affect a women.

You can't speak to how others are affected are what is serious to someone else. Ask any man who was orally stimulated or fondeled by an adult when they were a child how serious they found it.

xpost

No, that's just bad stand-up. If the law says there's a point of intoxication beyond which a person is categorically not competent to consent to sex, the physical ability or willingness to do it isn't necessarily an excuse. (But granted, it seems like prosecutors have a very hard time getting convictions in any case where an adult woman, no matter how intoxicated, was an active participant in sex.)

xpost

no reference to child abuse anywhere so far, which is obviously a completely different kind of sexual assault.

i also didn't claim that an erection was any kind of permission nabisco, if that's what you're saying.

Sexual assualt is about the perpetrator asserting power over someone else so I see no problem comparing adult victims to child victims.

Well in this context the crux of it is that children are totally categorically not able to give consent, no matter what, intoxicated or sober, so we don't even have to begin to ask these questions.

My point in bringing up that example was to show darraghmac how the actual sex act has no bearing on how the victim is impacted. Sorry if it muddied the waters. Point being I don't think anybody's in the position to comment on how "serious" or affecting an assault should be on someone else.

nobody's in a position to comment on anything, as far as i can see. ah well.

I could say something very rude and slightly offensive here but unlike many on ILx I employ a filter that keeps me from being jumped on.

i really need one of those...

but i'd keep turning it off, cos, well y'know, fuck it.

No, S, you're exactly right -- that's why I was saying "woe is the poor man who really is deeply harmed by this," because chances are he will keep it to himself to avoid the stigma and stereotyping and insistence that there is something wrong with him for caring at all.

(Not that plenty of women haven't gotten treatment just as rough.)

No, the murder analogy was flawed, because the victim him/herself wouldn't be giving testimony. I think (seriously) what bugs me about this is that the judge is banning <i>any</i> usage of it, supposedly. There are certainly times when you should disallow someone from using that term, but when someone is <i>on trial for rape</i>, it seems just logically imprecise to not allow anyone to say the word. Unless I'm missing something in the facts here.

Stupid html.

. . . that doesn't work here b/c you're supposed to use BBcode.

Actually, he's on trial for sexual assault. (But they're not allowed to use that term, either.)

So yeah, same thing. That's why I'm saying obscene gestures are the way to go.

I'm also not sure this is a complete ban on those terms, considering they include the crime: "On the charge of that one thing we were talking about, you know, with the intercourse, we find the defendant ... guilty."

Great thread, you guys should do this again sometime.

Next week, same time same place.

Hoos what the fuck is up with you and rape today?

BTW, a friend of mine did essentially have a woman *take advantage* of him once - as I understand it they went home from a bar and hooked up, but he told her he didn't want to have sex (maybe because he didn't have a condom? I forget the details.) and they went to sleep. In the morning, he woke up to realize she was having sex with him.

But yeah, obviously this didn't have the same kind of trauma for him that rape seems to have for women. I mean he was pretty pissed off about it, but he was still able to tell it to me in a "guess what happened to me this weekend" kind of way.

blame it on my newsfeed xpost

But for that small minority of dudes traumatised by being taken advantage of by a woman, their pain is in some ways worse than that of a child who was molested (since much of the entire world very much acknowledges and sympathises with child survivors of sexual assault). This is twisted, but it's something I realised while reading this thread.

L+F, given that victims of child sexual abuse can totally internalize a sense of shame and responsibility over the whole thing, and suppress it for years and years, and face intense feelings of shame and embarrassment and stigmatization when admitting it, I think that's way off base: acknowledgment and sympathy surely help, but they have not made these things so much easier for people in any situation.

Yeah, I think it's always worse for children.

Sorry, nabisco -- I should have made it clearer that, as a survivor of CSA, I was finding some twisted crumbs of "comfort" in there (my sense of humour around this must come across as bitter a lot of the time, even though I don't feel bitter, just bewildered by it all!). I don't know if it's always worse, though, Hurting. There are certainly a lot of ambivalent feelings around the incident(s) of abuse, which (of course) vary a great deal from person to person.

Well, I defer to you on that one then, obviously.

But I was trying really hard not to speak for all victims/survivors, since my experience was entirely subjective, so I really don't mind being challenged at all.

Mistrial
http://www.wowt.com/home/headlines/8458647.html

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/17/saudi.rape.victim/index.html

EVERYTHING is more fucked up in Saudi Arabia.

Defend the indefensible: Saudi Arabian judges

I didn't want to open that thread because I knew some bullshit like this was in it. Then I get it from somewhere else.

Mods, delete Wahabism, plz? Oh, this thread, too.

Wait, not this thread. I forgot it was a revive and not a new one.

Has there been any update on the situation since the mistrial was ordered?

would using "ape-ray" have been contempt of court?

but if they all got turned into monkeys, what could they do about it?

¡GUANO LOCO!