Friday 21 May 2010

Sauce For The Goose, Ladies...

...so quit whining:
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition said it would extend anonymity in rape cases from victims to include defendants.
It's about bloody time!
The move will turn the clock back to the 1970s when the Sexual Offences Act introduced anonymity for those accused of rape, something later repealed.
Fair enough. Nostalgia is in - see 'Life on Mars' & 'Ashes to Ashes' - and you can't claim it's never been tried before.

Predictably, the hive has been shaken by this and the angry workers are massing to see off the intruder:
Ruth Hall, of Women Against Rape, said the decision was an "insult" and a backlash against the rising number of rape reports.

She said: "More attention needs to be paid to the 94% of reported cases that do not end in conviction rather than the few that are false.

"If men accused of rape got special rights to anonymity, it would reinforce the misconception that lots of women who report rape are lying."
It would appear that Ruth has been reading from the same crib sheet as JohnB when it comes to this 'extremely rare' (ha!) situation:
"False rape allegations are extremely rare, but receive disproportionate publicity.

"Of course, being wrongly accused is a terrible ordeal but the same can be said of being wrongly accused of murder, theft, fraud or any other serious offence."
Not quite. You can't claim that theft, fraud and - in some cases - even murder carry the stigma of being a sex offender. Ask any old lag.
"We are against a special case where men accused of rape are singled out for special protection."
But you're for a special case where women victims of sexual assault (unlike any other assault, fraud, etc) are allowed to remain anonymous?

Hmm, didn't really think that through, did you, sweetie?
Rape law campaigner Jill Saward said she is "horrified" by the news and accused politicians of turning their backs on victims of sexual violence.

Ms Saward, who has spoken out on tackling rape since being attacked at her Ealing vicarage home in 1986, said she completely opposes anonymity for defendants.

She said the changes may discourage genuine victims from coming forward and "send a damaging message".

Ms Saward said: "In just a week or so, what we have heard from this coalition is that rape victims and victims of sexual violence do not matter."
No, dearie. Let me explain something to you.

Rape is a horrible, horrible crime. False accusation of rape is a horrible, horrible crime.

There. Wasn't so hard to understand, was it?

4 comments:

JohnRS said...

Exactly!!

Equality means what it says, not lets favour our side and screw the guy involved. If they dont like it they can (wrongly) have bogh sides names exposed.

About bloody time, indeed.

(Also possibly another sign of intelligent life being discovered on Planet Politics maybe?)

Mr Grumpy said...

'the same can be said of being wrongly accused of murder'

The same as in same-but-different, like 1. consensual homicide is not the most popular of pastimes and 2. murder accusations are generally not made by the corpse.

JuliaM said...

"Equality means what it says, not lets favour our side..."

So many people these days must have faulty dictionaries...

"The same as in same-but-different..."

We really, really needd to start looking at those dictionaries...

Oh, and I see Julie Bindel has now weighed in, and is getting an almighty monstering in the comments.

Good. Nice to see there's something up with which even the CiF crowd won't put!

Stitch's Master said...

I don't see why, but feel free to explain, all parties in all cases can't be anonymous until the trial is complete. Then if there is a conviction / false allegation, by all means publish the name of the guilty party.