Alcohol and rape

the standard £11,000 award

The BBC talks about alcohol being a 'contributing factor' which some will read as 'court is implying she deserved it', but could also be read as simply meaning 'court is asserting that being drunk increases your risk of getting raped'.

drunkenness is costing society millions

i fail to follow this argument, is your dad a temperance advocate or just being cranky?

i mean, sure, alcohol abuse contributes to violence and dissipation but to reckon its effects financially seems... odd.

"It is not illegal to go out and have a drink, it is illegal to rape somebody."

^ kind of sums it up for me. Yes drinking has an effect. A pleasant one.

I think it's something of a no-brainer to state that something that impairs your judgment can lead you to make decisions that put you in a dangerous situation. The big factor here is whether it's danger caused by your own ineptitude (ie, trying to drive and wrapping your car around a pole) or danger caused by other people taking advantage of your condition (rape, theft, beatings, etc). In either case, I don't think alcohol should factor into the determination of guilt or the compensation/punishment offered.

re: finances (and strenuously avoiding the thread topic itself): I can imagine a Dad Argument revolving around higher insurance premiums...

elmo - no, he's not a temperance advocate as such. Yes, he's definitely cranky. He just means: excessive alcohol consumption is getting out of hand and overloading services and that means money that the health service (for instance) can't afford is mopping up after soaks rather than, say, paying for more people to have the drugs they need. In crude terms.

Doctor Casino - there was a parallel cited with leaving yer windows unlocked and invalidating yer insurance. A highly unfortunate comparison imho.

court is asserting that being drunk increases your risk of getting raped

yeah but might as well replace being drunk with 'being attractive', 'wearing sexy clothes', behaving provocatively' etc. in that argument.

Or 'being in the vicinity of a rapist', perhaps?

"having a vagina"

the argument pre-supposes a constant and unstoppable presence of rape out there in the world, which would be a kind of shitty attitude for the law to take. As in, you wouldn't have a few drinks and then tight-rope walk over a shark pit, but, get this, it should not be accepted that for a young woman to have a drink in public is any way akin to tight rope walking over a shark pit. 'men are garbage and there's nothing you can do, lol it's yr fault, honey' << yeah nuts to that

quite. i agree with Dan basically. xpost

no good GIS results for "canola liquor" :(

The Dad Argument here is that alcohol in no way factors into the guilt, only into the compensation. I see how he's trying to separate the two. I think in practice you can't.

Bar Exam veterans to thread.

The punishment meted out to the convict shouldn't depend on the victim at all. Asserting that you make bad decisions and are more likely to endure harm when drunk is all very well but it doesn't mean that you've in any way participated in the morally repugnant and criminal act perpetrated by the accused.

the argument pre-supposes a constant and unstoppable presence of rape out there in the world, which would be a kind of shitty attitude for the law to take.

this is how the world is, though

The Dad Argument in no way relates to the punishment meted out. That remains exactly as it would have been if the woman had been sober.

HI DERE sadly otm.

some days i feel more rapey then others though.

It's not "men can't help themselves", it's "criminals prey on people they think they can dominate/control/succeed against"; if you were going to steal a backpack from a coffeeshop, would you grab the one being held by the girl in the back of the store or the one left unattended by the beefy guy who just grabbed the key to the bathroom?

I think it's odd that there is a standard award for rape.

"One drink for the young lady, and one discounted rape, please. You can put both of those on my tab."

http://i34.tinypic.com/68de9j.jpg

shit wrong thread~!

ur kidding me

Yeah, I had no idea there were standard awards. I guess there are for... all crimes?? I have absolutely no idea.

yeah you can't really give someone other than the rapist "some blame" without also giving him "less blame". it's kind of zero sum.

11k seems laughably low to me, btw, but i'm an american.

xp yes, rapists exist. if you want to put into effect some kind of mechanism to encourage women to be more cautious, penalizing their compensation after they've been raped seems beyond stupid to me as an "incentive"

Can we use a word besides "compensation"? It's making me think of work bonuses.

It makes me think of the settlements they give, say, miners with black lung...only they're usually giving the compensations to the families of the deceased at that point, which is sort of like closing the rapey barn door after the horse has fled.

I'm o_O at the "Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority"

What on earth are the evidentiary requirements for getting an £11,000 award for an unsolved rape?

The argument goes: no increased blame to the victim: just a decrease in, erm, the 'settlement'. I just don't think you can do this without implying, without meaning to, to a small and reckless segment of the population (the one HI DERE is talking about) that they're more likely to get away with it. Even if they're not (as blame and prosecution is being separated from compensation).

Kerm, I guess there can be very clear evidence that you've been raped even if they don't catch him.

What on earth are the evidentiary requirements for getting an £11,000 award for an unsolved rape?

Apparently you start with the compensation calculator:

https://www.cica.gov.uk/portal/page?_pageid=33,278794&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

So that's a payment made by the Crown (conceivably recoverable from anybody convicted of the crime) to victims of crime?

this would all make sense if it was like, a negligent sexual assault. he is doing something that he should reasonably anticipate will result in him raping her, then since she is drunk she trips and falls and accidentally lands on his penis. since her drunkenness contributed to her getting raped, she gets a reduced award when she sues him and wins. lol torts

Uh, no shit there can be clear evidence... What happens when there isn't?

I don't think rape trials ever include pratfalls and screwball farce.

there was the famous case with the window and the mistaken identity...but that might be an urban legend

was joke

I know, I was doing a po-faced extension of it.

Apparently you start with the compensation calculator:

https://www.cica.gov.uk/portal/page?_pageid=33,278794&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

-- HI DERE, Tuesday, August 12, 2008 3:27 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

OMG o_O

That calculator seems to suggest that if you're raped and there's no physical injury and it doesn't break your psyche, you might get a grand.

Uh, no shit there can be clear evidence... What happens when there isn't?
Er, it's a flawed system that can leave some victims without compensation?

I like how that compensation calc URL has "dad portal" in it.

Heh. Maybe the dad portal has a 'Have Your Say (on strangers' compensation') section a la BBC.

SHIT. i had blurred vision for about 6 weeks after i got robbed and punched in the face.. could have gotten a grand!!!!!! should obv have gone to A+E after the event.

i had two pints before i was robbed though so really i'd have only got £750

but yeah clearly if you're blonde and raped you'd get less than if you were ginger