What were you doing 45 years ago?

[asterix]

Well I know I was at school. I can remember at around that time one of the teachers was sacked after being reported by a pupil or two for molesting them in some way. Can even remember his name. Later a history teacher was reputed to be up to the same tricks but no-one did anything about it AFAIK and it might have been a false rumour. Can't remember his name.

I bet you can remember what you were doing on the 22nd November 1963.... if you are old enough, of course...
(I'm not sure how relevent this is to the thread...)

You won't get me, I have a cast iron alibi.

 

[Dave7]

I remember it like it was yesterday as I was about to get married. still with the same lovely lady 45 years on.
I often tell her it seems just like yesterday..........and you know what a lousy day it was yesterday.
But on the serious note.....how does the "accuser" prove/convince the police/jury etc. that she has a genuine case ?

 

[billy1561]

About 45 years ago some low life nicked my bike. Couldn't get anywhere in those days without a bike aged 7.

 

[asterix]

Am I alone in thinking that the whole Yew tree and "offshots" (forgive the pun) operation has got slightly ridiculous and is rapidly descending into farce?

I am certainly bemused by it. What on earth is going on behind the scenes, I wonder?

Still I suppose at least something is being done about people who alleged to have ruined people's lives, well some of them anyway, not bankers obviously.

 

[SquareDaff]

Too right there isn't - there's still a culture where victims are expected to put a sock in it and stop embarrassing poor respectable celebrities over what happened all-those-years ago. See your OP for example. Listen to yourself, and go easy on the cliches about lives destroyed by false accusation. You don't need to be anonymous to defend yourself against an accusation of rape, any more than you need to be anonymous to defend yourself against an accusation of burglary - it's nonsense, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

As I say - we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't believe one party has the right of anonymity whilst another doesn't. Rape cases are sensitive issues and IMO both parties should be treated that way until guilt or innocence is proven.

And my OP was a question of whether you could remember exact details about an event 40+ years ago - not a judgement of either parties guilt or innocence

 

[swansonj]

I wonder if I could now bring a prosecution for assault against my old headmaster at my school for giving me the cane? He hit me six times on the backside hard enough to make me cry, and leave welts on my behind. He did it on two separate occasions for some minor misdemeanor like playing truant, swearing in class. It was early 1971, I was 13, a child. That behaviour was comon place those days, it is not accepted now, it should not have been accepted then. I wonder if I would have case, if I could prove it?

But, however incredible viewed from today, that was, at the time, legal, no? Whereas rape has always been illegal?

 

[Yellow Fang]

I don't think Ken Barlow has done anything that dramatic in the fifty or sixty years he's been in Coronation Street. Isn't that two Coronation Street actors who are being done?

 

[GlasgowFinn]

I don't think Ken Barlow has done anything that dramatic in the fifty or sixty years he's been in Coronation Street. Isn't that two Coronation Street actors who are being done?

Three if you include the guy that used to be in The Bill.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I don't agree with the UK public's use of the phrase 'being done' when referring to the legal process.

'I got done for speeding'

To me it implies 'being set up', as opposed to 'being held accountable for their actions'

Hey ho - semantics and all that, eh?

 

[theclaud]

As I say - we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't believe one party has the right of anonymity whilst another doesn't. Rape cases are sensitive issues and IMO both parties should be treated that way until guilt or innocence is proven.

And my OP was a question of whether you could remember exact details about an event 40+ years ago - not a judgement of either parties guilt or innocence

Your OP was about post-Savile historical allegations of sexual assault, and how it's all a "farce". The title is just mealy-mouthed window-dressing for the Café. Whatever you "believe", one party has the right to anonymity and one doesn't for very sound reasons, and as the result of a long struggle to mitigate the fact that the odds are stacked in favour of the rapist and against his victim(s). When you say rape is a "sensitive" issue, the only way it is sensitive for the perpetrators is that they strongly resent being held to account for their actions - it is no more inherently sensitive an accusation than any other crime.

 

[swansonj]

Others have said this but it bears saying again.

I would not remember what I was doing on a specific day 45 years ago. But I would remember if I had raped a girl, or had sex with an underage girl (I'm pretty sure I would remember having sex with a legal-but-only-just girl of 16 or 17 if I was 36 at the time). The only way I might not remember a specific incident is if doing that was common practice for me. And that's hardly an exoneration.

 

[theclaud]

[QUOTE 2434123, member: 45"]I'm sorry, but you know that's not true. Speeding convictions are everyday, benefit fraud is a right, tax evasion is revered, even theft is held in esteem in some quarter.

I know that we need the extremes to attempt to bring the needle even slightly towards the middle, but I do think you need to accept that some accused are innocent. Your comment above suggests that you're not doing this.

I'm a victim of being falsely accused. There were no actions for me to be held account to, but I was by some. Fortunately it didn't get far but even among my closest circle it was incredibly difficult, and some of it lasting. Had things been pushed further I have no doubt that the repercussions would have been immense. Even the threat of that was terrifying.[/quote]

I accept that entirely, and contrary to your assertion nothing I've written suggests otherwise. I'm saying that there isn't a specific problem with false allegation in regards to rape, and there is no justice gap - men are simply not at risk of being falsely convicted, and people who make malicious allegations are satisfactorily dealt with by the law. We've done this before, and talked about specific cases. And I did mean what I wrote about the supposed "sensitivity" of the issue - the truth is almost the complete opposite of the myth, inasmuch as rape is only held to be a terrible crime in the mythic versions of it, and not in the sense that it most commonly happens - which almost always occasions the sort of responses exemplified by the OP.

 

[swansonj]

[QUOTE 2434123, member: 45"]I'm sorry, but you know that's not true. Speeding convictions are everyday, benefit fraud is a right, tax evasion is revered, even theft is held in esteem in some quarter. [/quote]
I think you may be missing TC's word "inherently". Sure, different crimes are regarded in different ways in different sections of society. (We saw that on here when discussing Perverting the Course of Justice by taking your spouses speeding points, and we can see it in the changed perception of drink driving over the years). But that is a product of society, it's not inherent to the crime, and part of the problem with rape is that our society still regards it in some crucial ways as different to other crimes, and that different treatment is both reflective of and perpetuates the bad treatment of women by men that is embedded in our society.

 

[theclaud]

I think you may be missing TC's word "inherently". Sure, different crimes are regarded in different ways in different sections of society. (We saw that on here when discussing Perverting the Course of Justice by taking your spouses speeding points, and we can see it in the changed perception of drink driving over the years). But that is a product of society, it's not inherent to the crime, and part of the problem with rape is that our society still regards it in some crucial ways as different to other crimes, and that different treatment is both reflective of and perpetuates the bad treatment of women by men that is embedded in our society.

Exactly what I was getting at - there's a bizarre ironic disconnect between people's perceptions of the "sensitivity" of rape when it comes to popular (largely unfounded) fears of false accusation, and the crushing insensitivity with which the experiences of rape victims are greeted in almost every quarter. It's a demystification thing - it's only when it is understood that rape is an ordinary crime committed by ordinary men in the ordinary course of the way they view women, that it will be possible routinely to hold perpetrators to account. As it stands, we are required to bridge a gap between the endemic nature of the crime and its "special" status in the popular imagination.

 

[theclaud]

[QUOTE 2434179, member: 45"]You think?[/quote]

Yes.