It is terribly important both for the world and for
Joe Biden that he ceases to be president when his term ends. It is cruel and
unusual punishment that a man obviously suffering from dementia should be
expected to do any more than relax at home. It is dangerous that such a man is
president when the world faces a serious threat from Russia and a still more
serious threat from China. It is for this reason above all that I hope that
Donald Trump does not win the nomination to be the Republican candidate. A Republican
candidate in his forties or fifties will beat Biden easily.
I became more and more dismayed with Donald Trump
through his presidency, but the way he left it dismayed me more than anything
else. Politicians have to accept defeat even when they think they were robbed,
otherwise we don’t have democracy. Let the courts decide if anything untoward happened,
but otherwise congratulate your opponent and walk away.
But despite my opinion of Trump, the recent civil case
where he was convicted of sexual assault, but not rape in 1996 demonstrates
again how the law treats sexual cases differently from any other case.
If Trump were accused of committing a burglary in
1996, the police would require some evidence other than a single witness statement
that he had indeed committed this crime. For instance, there would have to be
evidence that Trump had broken into a property. There would have to be evidence
that something had been stolen from that property and that it was in Trump’s
possession. Without any such evidence it would be considered absurd to believe
someone who merely said I saw Donald Trump committing burglary.
But with no more evidence than would be available in
the burglary case Trump has been convicted of the more serious crime of sexual
assault simply because one witness, who couldn’t remember when the attack
happened, said that it did.
But if it is true that Trump committed sexual assault
in 1996, but not rape as the jury must have believed, this means that the
person he supposedly sexually assaulted was not raped as she claimed, which
must logically mean that she was not telling the truth about the rape. But if
that is the case, how can we believe similarly logically that she was sexually
assaulted? Why believe someone who didn’t tell the truth about the rape?
I cannot without looking it up easily remember what happened
in 1996. Did I see the English Patient that year or the year later? Did I go to
the cinema, or did I watch it on video? I can’t remember a single event from 1996
without looking it up. So how can we trust witness statements from so long ago
without any other evidence?
This is also the reason why everyone who cares about
justice ought to be scared by the Scottish Government’s wish to abolish juries
in rape cases. One of the reasons that it wishes to do so is that it thinks juries
tend to believe rape myths. The other is that it wishes to increase conviction
rates for rape. Presumably the Scottish Government thinks that if Trump’s accuser
were Scottish and Trump had been living in Scotland at the time, then Trump
should right now be in a Scottish jail.
But people don’t usually believe in myths. Few people
believe the stories about Zeus or Thor or even King Arthur as matters of
history. Why should so many people believe myths about rape? One of the reasons
is that some of what are described as rape myths are not myths at all, but rather
matters for juries to decide.
The number one rape myth is “That women commonly or
routinely lie about rape.” How do I establish that this is indeed not the case?
Do I establish it experimentally? Do I establish it by means of logic or
reason? It is not obvious how I am supposed to investigate who really told the
truth in a series of rape cases. It is for the trial to determine the truth. I
might investigate miscarriages of justice, but this is more likely to find men
who were unjustly sent to jail rather than women who lied. So, it looks as if
the claim that it is a myth “That women commonly or routinely lie
about rape” is assuming what it is trying to prove. Women don’t lie, therefore
women don’t lie about rape.
But women do lie. There is not one class of human
beings that lie called men and another that don’t lie called women. Moreover,
if we assume that women in rape cases don’t commonly lie, then you might as
well not merely abolish juries in rape cases, you might as well abolish trials
too. If women don’t lie about rape, then as soon as a man is accused by a woman
he should “do not pass go, do not collect £200, but go straight to jail.”
But a recent case suggest things might be rather more
complicated. A famous footballer was accused of rape and sexual assault, but
later the charges were dropped, and the original complainant is apparently
still living with the footballer, having his baby and they will soon be married
to him. So, did a rape or sexual assault take place? We have no idea. Perhaps
it depends on whether the complainant wants her future husband to live with her
or be in jail.
Which brings us to cases of rape involving
intoxication preventing the woman being able to consent. But I imagine rather a
lot of women and men for that matter become intoxicated at their wedding and
then have sex afterwards. Do all of these grooms commit rape?
So too if any one of these grooms obtains consent for
the first time the couple have sex after the wedding, but does not obtain it
for the second, then that too will mean a rape has been committed. We mustn’t after
all believe the rape myth that “That consent to one sexual encounter
constitutes consent to another”
If the Scottish Government had its way, then if Donald
Trump slept with a woman in 1996, but that woman said she consented to sex with
him when they went to bed, but didn’t consent when they had sex again in the morning,
then she must be believed automatically because she is a woman and he must go
to jail because women never lie and he didn’t obtain consent in the morning from
someone he had sex with the night before?
There need be no evidence that Trump had even met the
woman. There need be no evidence that they had had sex at all apart from the
woman saying that they had. Neither she nor he need have any memory of when the
encounter occurred, and it could have occurred decades ago.
We need juries precisely because in many rape cases
there is no objective evidence and therefore a jury has to assess who is more
believable. We need juries because otherwise in the case of a divorce or a
relationship breakdown any woman could claim and convict any man because at any
time during the relationship or marriage sex occurred without consent. This
would mean that any man in any relationship could be convicted, because women
never lie. The judge, without the jury, having been trained to not believe any
rape myths would ensure it.
The logical response to this would be that no reasonable
man would ever have sex with any woman. The risk would be too great. If this is
what the Scottish Government wants then the decline in the Scottish population
is going to continue precipitately and soon there not merely won’t be any
Scottish nationalists to vote for it, there won’t be any Scots at all.
