this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
275 points (97.3% liked)

World News

39171 readers
3327 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Something I’ve learned from watching true crime shows is that it’s really hard to prove lack of consent

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

IANAL. <-- disclaimer.

Consent is not part of the definition of rape in France.

Currently it is defined as any sexual penetration act perpetrated by « violence, coercion, threat or surprise ». Court have also ruled that trickery falls under "surprise". So I can't tell you I'm a astronaut to get laid either (HIMYM was basically a TV show about a guy in a suit raping women). This was ruled during a case where a serial rapist used a model's picture on dating apps to invite woman to have sex in the dark with a blindfold at his place. Turned out he was a 60y old average dude and not Chris Hemsworth and the charge were initially dropped before reaching our higher level of court. (Yes that case was fucked up on too many level...)

There's currently a long standing debate in France, which predate that trial, to include consent as part of the legal definition and a commission has been mandated earlier in the year to study the issue. It's probably not going to happen for a while since we have other political issue at the moment and the right wingers currently clinging to power aren't exactly feminists.

The pro argument are relatively simple to imagine. Rape is when someone does sex stuff you don't want. So it seems to make perfect sense. That's what the Belgian law has and what the EU is pushing.

From what I understand from the people against it, it is more technical. In our legal system, you need to prove that a crime has been committed (innocent until proven guilty) but somehow they think it would shift to burden of proof to the defense because the only way to include it in our legal system would be to assume "non consent" by default and the accused would then have to prove consent.

The other anti argument is that absence of consent is impossible to prove and that the current definition is build to cover the case of non consent with provable definition.

There are probably as many lawyers on both side of the argument and as I said, I am not one of them, law is complicated I'm not qualified to have an opinion on what would be better.

Either way I'm just not really sure adding consent would change most of the outcomes as the main issue to convict is usually the lack of proof and witnesses and most cases ending up deadlocked by a "he said - she said" scenario.

From a purely legal standpoint "consent" isn't required in that case. It falls under "surprise".

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Thank you for that explanation! I learned a few things about rape laws in France. What I knew before pertained to US and UK law.