Ruth Coppinger holds up thong in Dail

LLMMLL · 16-11-2018 12:31AM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I don’t assume all these women are lying L, and I would base any assumptions I make on what appear to me to be reasonable grounds for making that assumption. One of the reasonable grounds on which I make that assumption is personal experience. The fact that your personal experiences may differ from mine inform what we believe to be reasonable assumptions. Your earlier assumption for example you predicted that I would agree with you, and you were wrong, but it was still a reasonable assumption to make and I wouldn’t criticise you for it as I know you and I don’t think the same way about a whole lot of things, so what appears to either of us to be reasonable assumptions to make about other people, are likely to be just as different as our differences of opinion.

Right but you've sidestepped any even vague definition of reasonable assumption and seem think that any assumption is reasonable.

You may not be criticising my assumption but I'm pretty comfortable criticising yours. As I've said it has no predictive power, and will mostly turn out to be false. It's not reasonable at all.

I guess I’m asking what do you feel is so fundamentally wrong with assuming that underwear is indicative of sexual intent? I can understand that it may well be humiliating for the complainant in a rape trial, I think we can agree that’s a reasonable assumption? My point is that if it wasn’t their underwear, it would simply be something else, and barristers would find all sorts of ways to push the envelope because that is what they do. Rather than shying away from comments like that, I say let them make them, and figuratively at least - give them enough rope to hang themselves. Comments like that generally don’t help their case, because they sound exactly as they are - the barrister making a moral judgement on the complainants sexual behaviour. It’s not an unreasonable assumption IMO to imagine that the members of the jury would have seen those comments the same way I do.

The main problem I have with trying to deduce sexual intent from underwear is that anyone who does is likely to get it wrong. From what women on this thread are saying, wearing a thong does not mean they intend to have sex. Anyone who makes this assumption is likely to be wrong. It's fundamentally flawed.

Best case scenario is that a juror makes no assumption from the underwear. In that case there's no point introducing them.

Worst case scenario is that a juror makes the faulty assumption that a woman intended to have sex based on the underwear she was wearing. In this case introducing them leads to faulty reasoning.

There is zero benefit to introducing them.

Mrsmum · 16-11-2018 12:36AM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

And yet it was a female who suggested it as a reasonable argument?

I just don’t get why you would think a handful of women on here should over-ride anyone else’s opinion based upon their personal experiences of women (or indeed men) who wear thongs and the reasons why they wear them. It’s like you can’t accept that people might have different reasons for doing things to your reasons for doing things. The fact that you wear thongs because you don’t want VPL only tells me something about you, it doesn’t tell me anything about anyone who is not you.

The SC was only doing her job, giving her client every advantage.

I was giving you an example of other reasons why women wear thongs but you seem hell bent on thinking they are a sign of sexual intent end of story. With respect your personal experience is only based on the situations where a woman in a thong presented herself to you and most likely that was in a sexual context. But you just cannot in any safe fashion extrapolate from that that thongs = being up for sex. Because every woman will tell you there's more to thongs than sex. You said yourself people "have different reasons for doing things" so no-one else can say what her reasons were.

One eyed Jack · 16-11-2018 12:48AM

LLMMLL wrote: »

Right but you've sidestepped any even vague definition of reasonable assumption and seem think that any assumption is reasonable.

You may not be criticising my assumption but I'm pretty comfortable criticising yours. As I've said it has no predictive power, and will mostly turn out to be false. It's not reasonable at all.

I’ve given you my definition of a reasonable assumption, and you disagree with it. It has plenty of predictive power in that I was fully expecting you to disagree with me. In that sense, it was entirely reasonable for me to make that assumption based upon my previous experiences of how our discussions have gone. It hasn’t turned out to be false, and I can predict with a fair degree of accuracy that we will continue to disagree. Your reasonable assumptions don’t count for anything as far as I’m concerned, they only count to yourself.

The main problem I have with trying to deduce sexual intent from underwear is that anyone who does is likely to get it wrong. From what women on this thread are saying, wearing a thong does not mean they intend to have sex. Anyone who makes this assumption is likely to be wrong. It's fundamentally flawed.

Best case scenario is that a juror makes no assumption from the underwear. In that case there's no point introducing them.

Worst case scenario is that a juror makes the faulty assumption that a woman intended to have sex based on the underwear she was wearing. In this case introducing them leads to faulty reasoning.

There is zero benefit to introducing them.

That assumption is entirely based upon your experience though. What part of ‘our experiences differ’ did you not understand? I could also have predicted that every woman’s experience on this thread would correlate with your own, it literally doesn’t actually mean anything. It just means that our experiences differ.

Those best and worst case scenarios are entirely based upon your assumptions, which are based upon your experiences, and that’s why you come to the conclusion that there is no benefit to introducing them. I disagree, I think the benefit to introducing them is that it allows the defendant to argue that based upon the persons choice of underwear, this informed their honest belief that the encounter was consensual. Whether or not that is a reasonable assumption would be up to the individual members of the jury, you would go one way, I would go the other. I wouldn’t assume it was the only piece of evidence though.

It’s callled keeping an open mind, you should try it some time.

LLMMLL · 16-11-2018 01:01AM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I’ve given you my definition of a reasonable assumption, and you disagree with it. It has plenty of predictive power in that I was fully expecting you to disagree with me. In that sense, it was entirely reasonable for me to make that assumption based upon my previous experiences of how our discussions have gone. It hasn’t turned out to be false, and I can predict with a fair degree of accuracy that we will continue to disagree. Your reasonable assumptions don’t count for anything as far as I’m concerned, they only count to yourself.

Huh? I'm not asking you about your assumption that I disagree with you.......

I'm asking about your assumption that women who wear thongs are intending to have sex.

Are you saying you have personal experiences of what women wear and the reasons for doing so?

Without prying too much Can you share those experiences? Is it that you've encountered women who have been wearing thongs when you hooked up with them? Did they tell you this is the only time they wear thongs? How many of these women have you encountered?

That assumption is entirely based upon your experience though. What part of ‘our experiences differ’ did you not understand? I could also have predicted that every woman’s experience on this thread would correlate with your own, it literally doesn’t actually mean anything. It just means that our experiences differ.

You could only predict that every woman on this thread would offer the same experience as me if it was the case that most women wear thongs for various non sexual reasons. On every thread about rape/feminism you'll usually get a few women such as.planespeeking who agree with your line of thinking, so one would expect a few women to come on saying they only wear thongs when intending to have sex.

However, I saw 0 in the first 20 pages unread before skipping to the end.

The "that's just your experience" line might hold some weight if I was just talking about myself or was likely to have some skewed experience. But I see thongs randomly all the time. Do you really think the Penneys staff member whose thong was staring me in the face as she bent over to pick up an item on the floor was wearing that all day at work because she intended to have sex?

Those best and worst case scenarios are entirely based upon your assumptions, which are based upon your experiences, and that’s why you come to the conclusion that there is no benefit to introducing them. I disagree, I think the benefit to introducing them is that it allows the defendant to argue that based upon the persons choice of underwear, this informed their honest belief that the encounter was consensual. Whether or not that is a reasonable assumption would be up to the individual members of the jury, you would go one way, I would go the other. I wouldn’t assume it was the only piece of evidence though.

It’s callled keeping an open mind, you should try it some time.

There is no benefit to allowing a defendant to make claims that can't possibly have any value. It is impossible to predict sexual intentions from underwear. No defendant should be allowed to make claims like that.

One eyed Jack · 16-11-2018 01:07AM

Mrsmum wrote: »

The SC was only doing her job, giving her client every advantage.

I was giving you an example of other reasons why women wear thongs but you seem hell bent on thinking they are a sign of sexual intent end of story. With respect your personal experience is only based on the situations where a woman in a thong presented herself to you and most likely that was in a sexual context. But you just cannot in any safe fashion extrapolate from that that thongs = being up for sex. Because every woman will tell you there's more to thongs than sex. You said yourself people "have different reasons for doing things" so no-one else can say what her reasons were.

With respect, you can’t possibly know what my personal experience is based on, and you already know this because you point out that no-one else can say what her reasons were, and in the same way, you can’t possibly know with any degree of certainty why I would be of the opinion that in my experience, many of the women and a few of the men I know would wear thongs for sexual encounters.

I’m certainly not saying that they are always a sign of sexual intent, and I have previously made the point that most teenage girls I know wear them as a fashion item. What I disagree with is actually what you’re trying to point out about me in that for most of this thread, and for Ms. Coppinger, there is a concerted attempt to play down any possibility that under ordinary circumstances, plenty of women (and some men) wear thongs for sexual purposes.

I think that idea has very limited application in that it is because of the context in which we’re having this discussion, that there is an attempt to suggest that “thongs can never be sexy, one must never think of thongs as sexy, they’re the equivalent of Bridget Jones big pants, totally unsexy!” and I’m just thinking, well that’s not my experience of people who wear thongs and the reasons why they wear them. Is there some sort of a problem with assuming people wear thongs because they want to look sexy?

And what the hell has that got to do with someone who is raped? It’s that sort of denial of what I see as a reality, in that it’s an attempt to deny the jury the opportunity to make up their own minds about whether or not they consider underwear relevant in any specific case, or not. I don’t think it’s doing anyone any favours to attempt PR spin. I don’t think it was clever on the barristers behalf, and I don’t think it’s clever of posters here to attempt to play down what is for a lot of people a very common experience. I should qualify in case anyone gets the wrong idea that I’m talking about sex, not rape.

LLMMLL · 16-11-2018 01:11AM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

With respect, you can’t possibly know what my personal experience is based on, and you already know this because you point out that no-one else can say what her reasons were, and in the same way, you can’t possibly know with any degree of certainty why I would be of the opinion that in my experience, many of the women and a few of the men I know would wear thongs for sexual encounters.

I’m certainly not saying that they are always a sign of sexual intent, and I have previously made the point that most teenage girls I know wear them as a fashion item. What I disagree with is actually what you’re trying to point out about me in that for most of this thread, and for Ms. Coppinger, there is a concerted attempt to play down any possibility that under ordinary circumstances, plenty of women (and some men) wear thongs for sexual purposEs

Again you're completely misunderstanding.

I think everyone on this thread would expect someone intending to have sex to wear their best underwear. As far as I'm aware not one person has disputed that.

Yet if as you say they are a fashion item amongst teenagers, that you could reasonably assume a teenager would wear.one for non sexual reasons, how could you reasonably distinguish whether one of these teenagers was wearing one because they intended to have sex or because they were wearing them for fashion reasons?

If you would assume it's for sex, as you've said you would assume, then that is completely.unreasonable.

One eyed Jack · 16-11-2018 01:18AM

LLMMLL wrote: »

Huh? I'm not asking you about your assumption that I disagree with you.......

I'm asking about your assumption that women who wear thongs are intending to have sex.

Are you saying you have personal experiences of what women wear and the reasons for doing so?

Without prying too much Can you share those experiences? Is it that you've encountered women who have been wearing thongs when you hooked up with them? Did they tell you this is the only time they wear thongs? How many of these women have you encountered?

You’re prying too much already L.

You could just take me at my word though, no?

You could only predict that every woman on this thread would offer the same experience as me if it was the case that most women wear thongs for various non sexual reasons. On every thread about rape/feminism you'll usually get a few women such as.planespeeking who agree with your line of thinking, so one would expect a few women to come on saying they only wear thongs when intending to have sex.

However, I saw 0 in the first 20 pages unread before skipping to the end.

The "that's just your experience" line might hold some weight if I was just talking about myself or was likely to have some skewed experience. But I see thongs randomly all the time. Do you really think the Penneys staff member whose thong was staring me in the face as she bent over to pick up an item on the floor was wearing that all day at work because she intended to have sex?

The “that’s your experience” line holds weight for me though, and that’s good enough for me because it’s entirely reasonable to me. It obviously isn’t in any way reasonable to you, and to that all I can think is “tough titty really”.

There is no benefit to allowing a defendant to make claims that can't possibly have any value. It is impossible to predict sexual intentions from underwear. No defendant should be allowed to make claims like that.

Going round in circles now. I’ve already explained to you that just because something holds no value to you personally, it would be unreasonable IMO to assume that it holds no value to someone else. Defendants make claims that assist in their own defence all the time, that are of no value to the prosecution. What you’re attempting to do is essentially prohibit a defendant from making claims they feel would assist in their own defence. Good luck with that, let me know how it works out.

LLMMLL · 16-11-2018 01:28AM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

You’re prying too much already L.

You could just take me at my word though, no?

No I don't take you at your word.

I don't necessarily think you're lying but you could be drawing some ridiculous conclusions from your personal experience.

For instance if.yournpeesonal experience is that you encountered 3 women who wore thongs to a date with you and had no knowledge of their general thong wearing behaviour then I'd be incredibly sceptical of your personal experience.

If you have multiple female friends who told you that they only wear thongs for sexual purposes then I'd be a little more inclined to give weight to your experience.

And the women on this thread who have uniformly rubbishes the idea of thongs equalling sexual intent are not just part.of my personal experience. They're a part of your too.

The “that’s your experience” line holds weight for me though, and that’s good enough for me because it’s entirely reasonable to me. It obviously isn’t in any way reasonable to you, and to that all I can think is “tough titty really”.

Yes it's not reasonable to me at all. And if personal experience with no further analysis would be your standard for a jury to assess evidence, and you believe that personal experience of that particular evidence varies so wildly that individuals like you and me would have polar opposite conclusions, then that evidence further has no evidentiary value.

If the conclusion that can be drawn from a piece of evidence is random then how can that be evidence?

Going round in circles now. I’ve already explained to you that just because something holds no value to you personally, it would be unreasonable IMO to assume that it holds no value to someone else. Defendants make claims that assist in their own defence all the time, that are of no value to the prosecution. What you’re attempting to do is essentially prohibit a defendant from making claims they feel would assist in their own defence. Good luck with that, let me know how it works out.

Actually it's not entirely circular. Since your position is now that potential assumptions are based solely.on personal experience and personal experience varies wildly, then the conclusions drawn from a piece of evidence are randomly chosen from the set of possible conclusions. They therefore have no value. We haven't dealt with that before.

As you've ignored, defendants are already prohibited from making certain claims. So I can let.you know now how it's worked out. It's worked out fine.

hatrickpatrick · 16-11-2018 03:11AM

This is an absolute no brainer. These lines of questioning shouldn't be allowed in court as they infer things about consent which are simply not true.

Regarding the hoary old chestnut of the "why do lads think women dress with them in mind" argument, can I just point out as a lad (can't speak for other lads, but I'm going to take a wild guess here) - many of us care about our appearances primarily from the standpoint of sex appeal. The idea of dressing to feel good about one's self is at least somewhat alien at least to me, and I suspect to many other lads - when I dress up, nine times out of ten I'm hoping to attract sexual advances. The other one time out of ten is to show respect for an event or a friend who is hosting something, but if it's just a random night out in a club or concert, if I wear something snazzy it's generally in the hopes that I might get the shift.

Clearly women don't see it this way, but all humans have a natural tendency to assume that their experiences are universal, so just as women find it infuriatingly baffling that guys assume women dress up to attract lads, many lads find the idea of dressing sexily for a purpose other than attracting come-ons equally baffling, because for a lot of us, that's really the only reason we do it.

Obviously this has no bearing on the consent debate and is a ridiculous argument to be having, seeing as, for one obvious thing, just because you want to attract someone doesn't mean you want to attract just anyone (I could be dressing up to impress a specific crush, it doesn't necessarily mean "I just want to ride literally anyone who's up for it" which is the insidious assumption which seems to be being implied by raising these issues in court) and for another thing, just because you want to attract someone, doesn't necessarily mean that you want to engage in full-on sexual activity with that person. So even if you can get past the mismatch between lads dressing up (primarily to increase sex appeal) and women dressing up (apparently not primarily to increase sex appeal), it still wouldn't actually mean that a person automatically consented to sexual activity with this specific individual, at this specific time, and in this particular form of sexual activity.

Anyone who knows me around here will know that I'm fiercely critical of certain issues men face with regard to sexual assault accusations (the idea that drunk sex is automatically male on female rape, the idea that one's name can be published in the absence of any guilty verdict, etc) but in this case, the protesters are 100% correct. Bringing up the clothes somebody is wearing as a means of establishing whether there was consent is inherently flawed, for the reasons outlined above - most obviously, even if wearing a thong = "I want to get the ride", doesn't necessarily mean wearing a thong = "I want to ride this particular person". Someone who goes out with the express intention of hooking up with a stranger can obviously still be raped, since they still have the right to decide which strangers they are and are not interested in having sex with.

I would have thought that this was obvious, and I'm fairly dismayed to see this kind of sh!te happening in court in the 21st century, and that it's even necessary to have a debate about it. Anyone who thinks that "I want to have sex tonight" = "anyone can have sex with me, and I don't get to decide who gets to and who doesn't" is either missing this rather obvious factor, or has an absolutely repulsive attitude towards sex. It's similar to the idea that if a man has an erection, he automatically consents - sexual desire does not automatically equal consent. If it did, then for example a married man who happened to get a boner around another woman could be assaulted by her, and it would be assumed that he was automatically ok with cheating on his wife - the point being, sexual consent is a conscious decision which happens on a case by case basis. It is not impacted or decided by any factors other than, very simply, "I want to ride this person" or "I don't want to ride this person".

neonsofa · 16-11-2018 08:10AM

ceadaoin. wrote: »

This.I only wear thongs when I don't want a visible underwear line through my clothes. Seems like most of the people on here saying that wearing a thong means a woman wants sex or that thongs are associated with sex in the first place are men. Like is it so unthinkable that a woman might wear an item that men find sexy not for men at all, but for other reasons!

And it's being argued that if the guy in this case was also under the impression that it indicated her intention to sleep with him then he reasonably assumed consent (alongside other factors apparently) and well sure he wasn't to know. So if that is the case and people think that it is acceptable, then it's absolutely vital that this is being highlighted as ridiculous, so that other men don't make the same "mistake"- if we are saying it's acceptable and valid to infer consent based on what someone is wearing then that is a very slippery slope. What happens when some man claims he genuinely believed a woman was consenting because she was wearing stilleto heels or a short skirt. Oh well off you go then? Innocent mistake? Sure next time, just make sure to check the underwear yeah.

Lillybloom · 16-11-2018 08:18AM

batgoat wrote: »

You deem it as okay but in all likelihood we will see changes that rightfully won't allow such situations in the future.

If a person kills themselves as a result of unnecessarily traumatising them. That's an example of a justice system failing and it does happen. There was no relevance to what type of underwear she was wearing. Underwear doesn't imply consent or a desire to have sex. A person wearing a thong, I don't view it's more probable that they want to have sex. I would say puritanical viewpoints are more likely to result in that view than anything else.

So even if the underwear could help convict tye defendant you still wouldn't allow it as evidence?

tritium · 16-11-2018 08:20AM

batgoat wrote: »

None of the above was applicable to this scenario, it was simply to imply she wanted to have sex because of how she dressed.

This relates to the case in terms of the psychological impact of such treatment of victims.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/mum-ayrshire-girl-who-killed-13591548?fbclid=IwAR1Ep_gGqKEfyrcurkbsm55HfWd0XvAAlDr_7ed8t5DFoa--bE6O2suFxNs

Given you presumably only have access to the summing up rather than a full transcript of the trial, how do you actually know that. Do you know how the defence knitted the various pieces of evidence they presented together to make a defence. What other elements they presented along with this to show their was reasonable doubt? If you do please feel free to share.

Lillybloom · 16-11-2018 08:20AM

LLMMLL wrote: »

Right but you've sidestepped any even vague definition of reasonable assumption and seem think that any assumption is reasonable.

You may not be criticising my assumption but I'm pretty comfortable criticising yours. As I've said it has no predictive power, and will mostly turn out to be false. It's not reasonable at all.

The main problem I have with trying to deduce sexual intent from underwear is that anyone who does is likely to get it wrong. From what women on this thread are saying, wearing a thong does not mean they intend to have sex. Anyone who makes this assumption is likely to be wrong. It's fundamentally flawed.

Best case scenario is that a juror makes no assumption from the underwear. In that case there's no point introducing them.

Worst case scenario is that a juror makes the faulty assumption that a woman intended to have sex based on the underwear she was wearing. In this case introducing them leads to faulty reasoning.

There is zero benefit to introducing them.

It coule help convict the defendant, if the defendant claims his victim intended to have sex with him when she woke up thst morning the cho8ce of underwear could invalidate his claim if she chose old unflattering underwear.

Often to weigh up probabilities lots of little details need to be conaidered to form a picture, each of which alone are fairly irrelevant.

batgoat · 16-11-2018 08:23AM

Lillybloom wrote: »

So even if the underwear could help convict tye defendant you still wouldn't allow it as evidence?

I literally specified forensic information, yes but even in that scenario there wouldn't be a general need to bring them into the courtroom. Do you think a thong indicates a woman wants to have sex? That's exactly what the defence were trying to claim and the reality is using Ln clothing to make such deductions is completely flawed and warped.

Lillybloom · 16-11-2018 08:25AM

batgoat wrote: »

I literally specified forensic information, yes but even in that scenario there wouldn't be a general need to bring them into the courtroom. Do you think a thong indicates a woman wants to have sex?

It depends on the circumstsnces and the inidividual that is why you are making a sweeping generalisation.

For one woman it might be, for another it could be increase the probability she didn't intend to have sex. Each woman is different, they don't have one hive mind.

tritium · 16-11-2018 08:27AM

batgoat wrote: »

So spurious evidence that can negatively impact the victim psychologically is all good? A rape trial is traumatic for the victim in its own right so allow unnecessary humiliation and trauma to the trial is not okay. Worth checking the piece that was linked to btw.

Is it better or worse than convicting an innocent defendant? That btw is the inevitable consequence of lowering the bar for what would be allowed, an increase in false positives- as soon as you seek to alter the balance both false negatives and positives move, in opposite directions. We’ve already seen btw, what happens when, through agenda or incompetence, this sort of thing becomes more common- the UK justice system is still figuring out the consequences of the Liam Allam case.

So, for everyone looking to simply outright ban certain evidence, without context in this case, under the assumption that you know what happened better than a judge who has sat through the entire trial, I’d ask you this;

Are you happy to send more innocent people to jail?

batgoat · 16-11-2018 08:29AM

Lillybloom wrote: »

It depends on the circumstsnces and the inidividual that is why you are making a sweeping generalisation.

It doesn't though. As pointed out, women wear thongs for all manners of reasons. You cannot use clothing to conclude intent and to do so is more a reliance on misconceptions or particularly warped thinking.

tritium wrote: »

Is it better or worse than convicting an innocent defendant? That btw is the inevitable consequence of lowering the bar for what would be allowed, an increase in false positives- as soon as you seek to alter the balance both false negatives and positives move, in opposite directions. We’ve already seen btw, what happens when, through agenda or incompetence, this sort of thing becomes more common- the UK justice system is still figuring out the consequences of the Liam Allam case.

So, for everyone looking to simply outright ban certain evidence, without context in this case, under the assumption that you know what happened better than a judge who has sat through the entire trial, I’d ask you this;

Are you happy to send more innocent people to jail?

Clothing doesn't indicate intent so should not be viewed as a reason to convict or not to convict. Simple as that tbh.

Lillybloom · 16-11-2018 08:29AM

From what I've heard, it can be psychologically impact people to wrongfully convict them of crimes they didn't commit. It seems empathy is only afforded for some people and not others.

Lillybloom · 16-11-2018 08:30AM

batgoat wrote: »

It doesn't though. As pointed out, women wear thongs for all manners of reasons. You cannot use clothing to conclude intent and to do so is more a reliance on misconceptions or particularly warped thinking.

When did I say you can use it to conclude intent?

It can be used with other pieces of evidence relevant to the specifics of the case.

tritium · 16-11-2018 08:31AM

nullzero wrote: »

I have to say that a man of 27 who is in that situation with a 17 year old isn't a person who deserves much sympathy, in addition his being married is another strike in my book . However we have to accept that the evidence provided must have compelled the jury that no rape occurred, regardless of the immoral behaviour of this man.

Wow, people complain about victim blaming. Then we get this sort of character assassination **** on someone acquitted of a crime after what was likely a hellish ordeal.

That’s shameful to be honest

batgoat · 16-11-2018 08:33AM

Lillybloom wrote: »

When did I say you can use it to conclude intent?

It can be used with other pieces of evidence relevant to the specifics of the case.

And it was used in this trial to conclude intent, you already said that it was fine to use it in such a way... So the justification to use it is to imply intent of the victim based on what she was wearing.

16-11-2018 08:35AM

Lillybloom wrote: »

When did I say you can use it to conclude intent?

It can be used with other pieces of evidence relevant to the specifics of the case.

In the case last week the barrister tried to at the very least imply intent in her statement. Intent due to the fact that she wore a thong. it's wrong on so many levels

I have known women who might dress to please the man on a romantic night but I also have known women that wear thongs everyday. What the girl was wearing had nothing to do with the case & the judge shouldn't have allowed it.

Snipp · 16-11-2018 08:36AM

I think the main issue here is that while treatment of the victim can be quite distressing, the acused is innocent until proven guilty and therefore should be treated with an equal amount of empathy. Currently, the system results in both party's bearing uncomfortable questioning, if not favouring the accusee. One only has to look at the paddy Jackson case where innocent mens' reputations were seriously tarnished based on an accusation, while the female in question was never mentioned in the media.

16-11-2018 08:36AM

tritium wrote: »

Wow, people complain about victim blaming. Then we get this sort of character assassination **** on someone acquitted of a crime after what was likely a hellish ordeal.

That’s shameful to be honest

Well there was a minor and an adult. The adult showed poor judgement at best

16-11-2018 08:39AM

Snipp wrote: »

I think the main issue here is that while treatment of the victim can be quite distressing, the acused is innocent until proven guilty and therefore should be treated with an equal amount of empathy. Currently, the system results in both party's bearing uncomfortable questioning, if not favouring the accusee. One only has to look at the paddy Jackson case where innocent mens' reputations were seriously tarnished based on an accusation, while the female in question was never mentioned in the media.

the main issue was using a 17 year olds thong to imply that she wanted sex. This is what we are talking about not the result of the case.

Snipp · 16-11-2018 08:44AM

Sleeper12 wrote: »

the main issue was using a 17 year olds thong to imply that she wanted sex. This is what we are talking about not the result of the case.

What alternative do you suggest? Should the prosecutor be limited on what they can say?

16-11-2018 08:48AM

Snipp wrote: »

What alternative do you suggest? Should the prosecutor be limited on what they can say?

It was the defense barrister but yes the judge could & should ruled it out of order. The fact that the judge didn't suggests that he/she also believes that a girl wearing a thong is a girl looking for sex. It is shocking to think that we still have judges on the bench thinking this way

batgoat · 16-11-2018 08:52AM

Snipp wrote: »

What alternative do you suggest? Should the prosecutor be limited on what they can say?

Evidence can get dismissed as irrelevant and can be prevented from being used. It's pretty normal to do such things during trials.

Lillybloom · 16-11-2018 08:57AM

batgoat wrote: »

And it was used in this trial to conclude intent, you already said that it was fine to use it in such a way... So the justification to use it is to imply intent of the victim based on what she was wearing.

Quote me where I said it was fine to use someone's underwear alone to conclude intent? I clearly said that numerous details are required to build a case or story for each individual case.

Seemingly aribtrary details can be useful depending on the case.

If the placement of a spoon on a table alone can't be used to determine intent to commit murder, but within the context of a specific trial it could be very important. So if you were to simply ban spoons as evidence because they alone couldn't determine intent then that would be ridiculous.

Snipp · 16-11-2018 09:10AM

Sleeper12 wrote: »

It was the defense barrister but yes the judge could & should ruled it out of order. The fact that the judge didn't suggests that he/she also believes that a girl wearing a thong is a girl looking for sex. It is shocking to think that we still have judges on the bench thinking this way

You're missing my point. Should the prosecutor be limited on what he/she can say? You are forgetting that the accused is still innocent at this point. Being accused of wanting sex for wearing a thong is distressing I'm sure, but accusing an innocent man of raping a young girl is equally distressing.