The reason why it’s so typical is that outside a trial setting, certain activities by an individual are likely to make him or her a victim.

The point is, it’s not typical. In all the discussion about 9/11, I’ve never heard anyone say “it doesn’t excuse the terrorists, but those office workers were stupid for working in a building they knew was a target”. I’ve never heard anyone say about the recent Sago mine disaster, “it doesn’t excuse the oportator, but the workers should have known that there was a risk that they would be given defective breathers”. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that JFK was stupid for running for a job which is a prime target for assassination. And what about all those soldiers killed in Iraq? Nobody suggests that the victims in these cases should be held responsible through some theory of “contributory negligence”.

People make cost/benefit tradeoffs with risk as with everything else. I could cut the risk of being attacked in the street to zero by never venturing forth from my home, but I don’t do that because it would leave me with a very impoverished life. People understand that. People expect me to be best judge of where in my life the correct balance is between risk and reward, and they don’t blame me when the dice come down snake-eyed every now and again.

Yet for some reason rape victims get treated differently. For some reason, like almost no other crime, some people seem determined to shift the blame away from the perps onto the victim. I’ve heard a few theories as to why they do, some more plausible than others, but I’d like to hear from someone who does (or has done) this, why they do (or did) it.

In short, if one consorts with criminals, it’s a whole lot more likely to be victimized than if one consorts with saints.

Yeah, Vilon made the same point. Apparently rape victims are contributorily negligent if they don’t check the criminal back of every person they associate with. Nobody else is held to this standard.

“Contributory Negligence” is a legal defence in a civil action, in which the defendant claims that his responsibility for plaintiff’s is reduced because of plaintiff’s own negligence. It’s not a criminal defence, but even in a civil action for rape, it would be unlikely to fly.

This whole line of argument is victim-blaming. I’m familiar with the process – I’ve seen it often enough. I don’t understand why people do it. Perhaps you could explain.

Maybe this explanation will fly, maybe not. In the context of criminal prosecution, blaming the victim is improper, though not unusual. The reason why it’s so typical is that outside a trial setting, certain activities by an individual are likely to make him or her a victim. In short, if one consorts with criminals, it’s a whole lot more likely to be victimized than if one consorts with saints.

So it’s human nature to point out that an actual victim of crime undertook some risky behavior that correlates with high incidence of victimization. The explicit denial of that correlation being an attempt to excuse criminal behavior strikes some as false, but it makes sense to me.

Does not excuse the perverts but still, there is a smell of contributory negligence in the air.

Saying “does not excuse the perverts” doesn’t help when that is exactly what you are doing.

“Contributory Negligence” is a legal defence in a civil action, in which the defendant claims that his responsibility for plaintiff’s is reduced because of plaintiff’s own negligence. It’s not a criminal defence, but even in a civil action for rape, it would be unlikely to fly.

“Yer honour, I am less responsible for raping her because she should have known that I would rape her”.

This whole line of argument is victim-blaming. I’m familiar with the process – I’ve seen it often enough. I don’t understand why people do it. Perhaps you could explain.

But the rape charge is different than most. There is an issue of consent involved in most cases. Associated with consent are the facts surrounding the event and those include sociological acceptations and customs.

I have dealt with one person whose rape story “didn’t ring true” for me (a guy who’d been accused of rape and insisted she’d raped him rather than the other way around)

Do you mean that the person whose rape story didn’t ring true for you was a guy who had been accused of rape. Or that you had been accused of rape, with the implication that this had some bearing upon the fact that this other guy’s story didn’t ring true for you.

If it is you who have been falsely accused of rape by a woman who in fact had raped you, then I’d be very interested in hearing your account.

I don’t actually know if a stripper performing for a roomful of horny kids is more likely to be raped than, say, a suburban soccer mom crossing a grocery-store parking lot after dark (but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Amp had statistics on it). Reason suggests, though, that 1) a stripper would have a lot of experience with rooms full of horny guys (let’s face it, women’s bridge clubs don’t often hire strippers) 2) strippers aren’t in their line of work for the fun of it. In other words, if you take your clothes off for a bunch of horny guys 19 times and nothing bad happens, you may reasonably think nothing bad will happen the 20th time either, and really needing the money may skew your judgment a bit.

In criminal law, though, there is no such thing as contributory negligence. A crime is a crime, no matter how foolhardy the victim may have been.

As for Hostler’s statement, I would interpret it as meaning that to the best of her knowledge she’s never seen a false rape claim, and I think that’s perfectly reasonable. To advocate for and support someone, you have to believe her, so she has to start with the assumption that a woman claiming to have been raped is telling the truth; and it would be very rare for that claim to be proven false. Even if an advocate followed a rape case all the way through a court trial and the defendant was found not guilty, that would usually mean that there wasn’t enough proof that he did do it, not that he clearly didn’t do it — assuming here that the identity of the alleged rapist wasn’t at issue.

Nope. If that had been what she meant, then when Bill asked her, basically, “what about people who are lying”, she would have responded that it wasn’t her job to determine whether they were lying. Instead she said that she’d never come across someone like that – manifestly indicating that she was, in fact, making a judgment. There’s no way to spin “I never see people like that” into “I wouldn’t presume to judge”.

Also, to try and leap from that statement to an opposition to “innocent until proved guilty” – especially when she’s explicitly said that she doesn’t assume that all men arrested for rape are guilty – is ridiculous.

Surely. Luckily, I don’t make that jump. I’m just talking about numbers that discredit a specific strong claim.

Because otherwise it would be just you and God in the room, and he would probably end up asking the same question.

It seems clear-cut to me, to, but I don’t come to the conclusion you do. I have dealt with one person whose rape story “didn’t ring true” for me (a guy who’d been accused of rape and insisted she’d raped him rather than the other way around) – but even though I have serious doubts, I can’t say he was lying. I simply don’t have the information to reach that conclusion (he didn’t stick around very long for starts). I doubt very many rape crisis counselors develop a deep enough relationship with every one who calls that they’d be able to peg the theoretical one-tenth-of-one-percent liars. Long term therapists might, I suppose, but they deal with only a small percentage of people calling crisis centers.

In particular, “contributory negligence” has both a factual component and a philosophical one.

Factually, does a victim’s clothing influence the likelihood of rape? While widely supposed, this is irreducibly a factual issue. And on that we are all in luck, because I know of no one better versed in the factual research on rape than Amp.

I favor the philosophical component. Even assuming clothing influences the likelihood of rape, does that mean that victims are “contributorily negligent”? Again, the “contributorily” part refers to facts. The negligent part refers to a value judgment about those facts. Assuming it is foreseeable that certain clothing would make a woman more likely to be raped, what value judgment do me make about people who refuse to yield their freedom of expression in the face of such threats?

After all, MLK knew that he increased his likelihood of being killed when he advocated for the disenfranchised in the South in the 1950s and ‘60s. What value judgments do we make about MLK?

The principle difference between a sexily-clad woman and MLK is the importance we place on their expression. That is not a reflection on them; that is a reflection on us.

I believe that the right to expression should be protected without regard to the content of the expression. I think it is abhorrent that anyone should feel constrained in their self-expression by threats of violence. Consequently I have abandoned my embrace of the “contributory negligence” theory.

At this time, the rapes from the US troups in Bagdad go unpunished, if you are a basketball start in Colorado what happens? Prisonners rape each other without any real societal repercussions. Do we agree that gay rape is not as bad? Do we think prisonners give up that right if they are arrested for a drug charge? I would love to live in a world where things are this simple, sadly they are not.

What I am saying is that each person has a different trigger point. Sane people, with proper educations have very high trigger points, but they do have them. My point was that most humans must understand how these trigger points work.

If I walk home one night, take the darkest road, by myself, wearing expensive diamonds, I might get robbed. I never said the robbery was justified, but only that any sane person would recognize the need for some quantum of self protection. By taking risks, one is contributorily negligent to one’s destiny.

But I wonder why I argue with someone with visibly limited vocabulary and reasoning capacities. I was just under the impression this was a subject posted, open for discussion by sane and well articulated individuals.

Does not excuse the perverts but still, there is a smell of contributory negligence in the air.

So is it your belief that rape never happens in cultures where women are covered up in loose cloth from head to toe? Or that only women who are “asking for it” with their clothing ever get raped?

What you’re saying is bullshit from top to bottom. Rape is caused by rapists, not by victims’ clothing choices.

She says “I can’t say that I’ve come across one that wasn’t [telling the truth]”. That seems pretty clear-cut.

No, it doesn’t. She didn’t say “I know that none of the people I’ve met were lying.” She said that she can’t say she’s come across one that wasn’t telling the truth.

Given how strict she was about bounding the discussion of her role, she could reasonably be interpreted as saying that it’s not her place, since she’s not a trier of fact, to attempt to verify or discredit the truth of what people who claim to be victims say.

Also, to try and leap from that statement to an opposition to “innocent until proved guilty” – especially when she’s explicitly said that she doesn’t assume that all men arrested for rape are guilty – is ridiculous.

As for that incident. Listen, you walk in a house in the middle of the night filled with horny kids where 70% of them have rap sheets, you get in the living room and start dancing and stripping. A kid makes a comment about a broomstick and the room goes quiet. Still, the stripper does not get the hint?

We should now live in a world where a woman has to wear a Chador to hide her face, but if a mother agrees that her 13 year old kid dress like a stripper with low cut jeans, tight outfits knowing weak minded people are out there… I don’t know. Does not excuse the perverts but still, there is a smell of contributory negligence in the air.

O’REILLY: You don’t believe as an American citizen that you should give anyone the presumption of innocence. Is that what you’re telling me?

HOSTLER: Oh, absolutely. But my role in sexual assault is to support a woman or any victim that comes forward to say that they were sexually assaulted.

Even without the ‘but’ I would interpret ‘Oh absolutely’ as agreeing with the proposition that ‘you should give anyone the presumption of innocence’. The English language is not logical in this regard. Saying Yes to a negative proposition agrees with the positive.

Q: Don’t you like tomatos?

A: Yes, I do.
A: No, I don’t.

A: Yes, I don’t.
A: No, I do.

The first pair answers sound normal to me as a native speaker., but there’s something odd about the second pair. They parse as logically but not naturally correct. I suspect that other native speakers with less of a mathematical background than I have would find them even odder.