There is currently uproar throughout the media regarding the fact that only 1 in 20 rape cases results in a conviction. You can barely pick up a paper without there being some editorial or other claiming it is too difficult to get a guilty verdict, or that the system is failing because so many people are being exonerated.

Well, just hang on a second.

Just because people are not being found guilty is no reason to change the law. That is like a spoilt child changing the rules to a game just because he isn’t winning. You shouldn’t manipulate the rules to engineer a preferred result. If you look only at the statistics you could just as easily conclude that this crime attracts the most false accusations, most of which hold no legal merit. I am not saying that is the case, far from it, but the raw statistics provide just as much evidence for this hypothesis as they do for the theory that, “people must be getting away with it”.

I realise that rape is one of those crimes that is extremely difficult to prove, because in many cases it invariably comes down to a matter of one persons word against the other. But lets be clear here, we live in a society that believes in innocence until proof of guilt. Unfortunately in these cases, the burden of proof must lie with the accuser, and surely it has to remain this way?

If you are chatting to a woman, and things are going well, it is extremely difficult to get irrefutable proof from that woman that her flirting definitely means ‘yes I will have sex with you’. Nothing ruins the mood quicker than a request to read from a prompt card directly into a camera phone that, “I, *Woman A*, of sound mind and body, plan to have sexual relations with Mr Angry”. They do not like that. Trust me, I have tried. These embarrassing moments are going to become all the more common if current suggestions ever become law.

“So, do you fancy coming back to my place for ‘coffee’?” I will ask suggestively.

“Sure”, she will reply with a look that tells me I’m in here.

“Excellent, well, if you wouldn’t mind signing here, here and here, and initialling here, just in case there is any actual intercourse to be had that’d be great.” I will conclude, while she searches frantically for the nearest exit.

Then there is the most spurious of all claims, that of, “I was too drunk to give consent, therefore I was raped”. Well, no. I’m afraid that doesn’t work either. Being drunk does not absolve you of your responsibility with any other law, so why should it in this case? You cannot claim you were too drunk to make a sound choice about whether or not to drive home, can you? Therefore you cannot make the same claim about your decision making ability, or lack of it, regarding who you go home with.

All this media coverage has already had one alarming affect, and that is a drastic drop in the number of one night stands being had. In my experience, at least.

——————– UPDATE—————————

From Tim Worstall’s place, it appears that the conviction rates are actually much nearer to 50%. Much fudging of figures has been going on for dramatic effect, clearly.

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