“we need stronger legislation to deal with this problem”

But that’s just a meaningless sentence. What’s the legislation going to do? Who’s it going to target? Is it going to criminalise something? Haven’t they already committed a series of crimes? Good post otherwise (and I’m not your biggest fan), but this bit of verbal diaorrhea could use the chop.

Can’t disagree with much of this post (though I think that people do get upset by paedophiles, domestic violence, rape, grooming and molestation regardless of the race of the perpetrator).

Also, don’t follow the final phrase, because I haven’t actually heard anyone attaching blame to the girls involved in this, and, in the circumstances, that is probably quite right.

But I have some sympathy for the men involved when I hear them lambasted for their politically incorrect perceptions that the victims were “easy meat” and lacking in any kind of sexual morality.

Because, from everything I’ve read, such perceptions were accurate.

“Did you know that British Pakistani women don’t get raped by British Pakistani men? Neither did I, because it’s not true.”

Has anyone really said that British Pakistani men don’t also rape British Pakistani women? Over the last couple of days I’m seeing a lot of ‘we mustn’t generalise!’ (and we musn’t) but I must really seeing much in the way of this kind of generalisation at all. One of the problems that many on the left face is that the difficulty in pointing out that, in some communities, it’s apparent that there is a lack of respect towards women, without having to crawl through a minefield of ‘culture’, ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’.

“But sexual violence in the UK is rife. Lots of white men do it too – just in different contexts.”

I’m a fan of the politics of this site and had been for a long time before I posted here, but I’ve never seen as much ‘whataboutery’ in such a short space of time over a single topic as I have done with this particular story. Also, the different context issue, that’s what makes any potential rural/Pakistani/Muslim factor important because the context is different. Not all crimes are perpetrated for the same reasons and will have different motivators will behind them. As I said in another post, these potential factors make this case *different*, not necessarily *worse*.

“So why do the same people not get heated about that? Why not get heated an angry about internet grooming?”

I’m no fan of the Daily Mail, MumsNet and similar hysteria generators but it has to be pointed out that, if the outcry created by outlets like these is to believed, there’s a (usually white) paedophile lurking behind every bush, playground, schoolgate and in every working class home up and down the country. Look at the furore about social networks and them being a hotbed of grooming – before the media discovered the word ‘troll’, obviously.

“Why not call for legislation to deal with domestic violence, rape, grooming and molestation? ”

I thought we had legislation for this already?

1) There was a Times article in march about a girl who killed herself because of this and police had the texts between two of the men who abused her. They both said it was ok because she was a worthless white slut. One of the men charged the other day said it was the girls fault, she was a whore etc.

2) In the Blackburn case, where there are 36 people involved, the Times stated that “people came from miles around” so people in the asian community knew and did f all about it, they basically sheilded these people, rather than informing the police.

3) It is a pakistani muslim problem when it is done by gangs of pakistani muslims. There no sikh rape gangs as far as I am aware.

4) Yeah, but the BBC and the Grauniad etc have done f all on this issue despite Jack Straw raising it in about 1997.

They think we are less than them, probably because they follow the one true god and we are infidel scum. And as for infidel women… Well you just have to look at how muslim women are treated in muslim countries – wear a veil as men can’t control their lust and will sin? stonings, acid in womens faces.

There are a load of these gangs in different places in operation and have been for years and the pakistani muslim commnunity knew about it and did nothing.

Accusation 3: We shouldn’t be afraid to say its a Pakistani problem
Sure it is – if you just want to concentrate on one type of crime in one area over a specific period of time. But sexual violence in the UK is rife. Lots of white men do it too – just in different contexts. So why do the same people not get heated about that? Why not get heated an angry about internet grooming?

Why not call for legislation to deal with domestic violence, rape, grooming and molestation? Why do these people suddenly find their morality when Asian men are involved, and focus just on those kinds of sex crimes?

I do wish you’d make up your mind on whether you approve of whataboutery Sunny.

And by the way, we have legislation that covers all of the offences you mention. It’s not more legislation we need, it’s better enforcement.

Agree with this entirely.

I’m sure people will try to pick holes in wording because, frankly, they actually quite like the four assumptions and want to defend them but, well, can’t since they are clearly idiotic when the light of evidence or rational thought is shone upon them.

And likewise some on here will try to use specific instances and deliberately misunderstand the points being made.

But the article sums it all up well enough for most sane people.

‘Accusation 3: We shouldn’t be afraid to say its a Pakistani problem
Sure it is – if you just want to concentrate on one type of crime in one area over a specific period of time’ – err…there are very few more serious crimes. We’re not talking about criminal damage, TWOCing, general yobbery. Sex pests do kind of fire off the parietal lobe in most normal, rational people. We still think of the Belgian’s as sex pests, as Catholic priests as tamperers and, however this has come about, young Pakistani blokes are now contenders.

*sigh*

Whataboutery is when you deflect criticism of somebody’s actions by pointing at something that someone else has done, which is irrelevant to the point your interlocutor is trying to make.

This isn’t that.

You’re claiming there’s something specific to the (Pakistani/Muslim/Asian/whatever) group that makes the men in it BAD NASTY RAPISTS, unlike other men in society who are DECENT and CIVILISED. You might be dressing it up in nicer language, but that’s what you’re doing.

We’re responding to that by citing well-documented cases of abuse of an identical nature (in the sense of “organised rings of middle-aged men picking up girls from bad family backgrounds, who they view as barely human, and then grooming them with money and drugs to be gang-raped”, which is pretty fucking identical in my book) that has been carried out in the very recent past by white British men.

That isn’t ‘whataboutery’. It’s “pointing out that your entire argument is stupid”.

Did you know that British Pakistani women don’t get raped by British Pakistani men?

Actually it is probably true that British Pakistani women don’t get raped by anyone.

And yes, sometimes it is political correctness gone mad when the police and social services ignore cries of help for risk of looking racist (which they clearly did).

And why did they fear being accused of being racist?

Accusation 1: It’s about their ‘culture’
Broadly, this can mean only two things: they targeted white girls because of their race, or their culture encourages this sort of behaviour. Both of these miss the wood for the trees.

No doubt these men felt it was OK to exploit white girls. But don’t think for a second they had any regard for Asian women either. Misogynists rarely make racial distinctions – they are willing to exploit any woman that comes their way.

But if you start from the position that it is misogyny that motivated them, you are simply assuming what it is you should be proving. Perhaps it was not misogyny but racism that motivated them? Perhaps it was misogyny and racism?

But even if it was misogyny, the question is whether they had an equal regard for White and Asian women. Not whether they thought one group was all pure and the other all “sluts”. If someone thinks that some White people are thieves but all Black people are, they can’t point to the White group and say that proves they are not racist.

They just found it easier to groom and rape white girls in this case. They may be racist too – but I highly doubt that was their motivation for this crime

Why do you highly doubt it given their repeated statements that race was constantly on their minds?

The second argument implies something in their culture encourages such behaviour towards white women. But does it really? Thousands of women in Pakistan get trafficked and/or raped every year. They definitely don’t get special consideration in the culture.

How do you know? Perhaps they do, it is just not perfect. Perhaps there is a range of behaviours that women can exhibit that bring different degrees of contempt down on these women.

Is Catholicism overall at fault? Is Judaism to blame for ultra-Orthodox Jews suppressing sexual abuse of kids?

People routinely say so around here.

There isn’t an ‘Asian community’ any more than there is a ‘white community’

Then perhaps you should stop referring to British Pakistani women?

Accusation 3: We shouldn’t be afraid to say its a Pakistani problem
Sure it is – if you just want to concentrate on one type of crime in one area over a specific period of time. But sexual violence in the UK is rife. Lots of white men do it too – just in different contexts. So why do the same people not get heated about that? Why not get heated an angry about internet grooming?

This is just deflecting. White men rarely get involved in this particular type of crime. And it is new. We don’t even have specific laws against it. Yet. Of course people get heated about sexual violence. They get even more heated against grooming. It is just that when White people do it they don’t get accused of being racist – which is pretty much what this article is trying to imply isn’t it?

Why not call for legislation to deal with domestic violence, rape, grooming and molestation? Why do these people suddenly find their morality when Asian men are involved, and focus just on those kinds of sex crimes?

Last I checked we have specific legislation that deals with domestic violence, rape and molestation. We are moving that way with grooming too. At least on line. Alas. This is a new crime and it needs new laws.

Accusation 4: Liberals have said nothing for years
Like night follows day, almost every incident is used by right-wing political commentators to score points.

Yeah and of course the Left never does that.

In 2006 a group of Muslims clerics even issued a warning that children were being abused in Muslim schools and set out to reform institutions.

Which is a completely different crime committed against a completely different set of children. What you are claiming is that they were concerned when their own children were being molested. Frankly I don’t believe they were unconcerned when White children were, but given you have not found an instance in 2006 or any other year when they condemned it, you seem to be implying they were.

Furthermore – feminists have been saying for years that sexual violence is endemic and authorities have ignored it (in all areas, not just gang-grooming).

Saying all men are to blame is the same as saying none are.

Commentators who routinely dismissed feminists in the past regarding rape culture now have the temerity to accuse them of being quiet.

About this specific sort of sexual abuse? Sure they were. Like the rest of the Left. And why were the police afraid they would be accused of being racist? Not because of the Right. As this article so thinly hides such accusations they were probably right to be afraid.

It goes without saying: we need stronger legislation to deal with this problem; the police need to be more pro-active; some people need to stop blaming the girls.

Sorry but why would anyone be blaming the girls? Who in particular would be doing that blaming? Would they, by chance, be of Pakistani origin? Nothing cultural there at all.

I’m not sure ‘Asian men rape Asian women too’ is the best defence of their culture.

Regarding point 1, I agree that first and foremost these men are misogynist. But misogynists, and men who hurt women, often have a ‘good girl / bad girl’ thing going on, and what makes a girl ‘bad’ is usually something to do with sexual morality, e.g. she is perceived as promiscuous, or doesn’t behave in a ‘proper’ enough manner, etc. ‘Bad’ girls are then seen as fair game for abuse because they want/deserve it. See pagar’s victim-blaming comment above for a perfect example of this.

Furthermore our society condones this by grilling women about their sexual histories in rape cases.

It’s not a massive leap then to consider how religious/cultural norms in terms of female modesty and behaviour might have contributed to this particular case. In the same way as many white Christian colonialists viewed dark-skinned women as more sexual and therefore more rapeable than their modest and proper white wives.

That’s not to say that if you are a ‘good’ girl and play by certain patriarchal/religious/cultural rules you have nothing to fear. Far from it, but I think there is a particular kind of anger whipped up in misogynists by women/girls who are perceived not to follow those rules.

Actually it is probably true that British Pakistani women don’t get raped by anyone.

Sorry but a “most” dropped out of that sentence somehow.

If 47 girls from Pakistan (living in Rochdale) had been subject to serial abuse by 9 white men it would say something, but I’m not quite sure what?

When unusual crimes are committed a good starting point would be to ask those involved why they did what they did (both perpetrators and victims).

Judging purely by their actions the men involved in this case had a terribly debased view of women, especially white women, and seemed to lack any form of empathy.
Perhaps in some people’s minds these crimes are in some way akin to human trafficking which may predispose certain men to act on precedents that already exist?
http://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/issues_doc/labour/Forced_labour/HUMAN_TRAFFICKING_-_THE_FACTS_-_final.pdf

At the same times the young women presumably had such limited life options that hanging out with a motley collection of taxi drivers and failed asylum seekers seemed like a good idea – a world with such depressing dynamics is far more worrying than how far a minority of muslim men regard white women.

In which case, is Irish culture in general to blame for what happened in the churches?

The culture of clerical supremacy was, in part, to blame for the extent to which men like Smyth and Green were accountable for their abuses, yes.

Is Judaism to blame for ultra-Orthodox Jews suppressing sexual abuse of kids?

Those ultra-Orthodox interpretations of Judaism are to blame, yes. And, you know what, I’m not sure people would generally be cautious about criticising the Irish church or Hasidism in other circumstances.

…sexual violence in the UK is rife. Lots of white men do it too – just in different contexts. So why do the same people not get heated about that?

British people are, of course, notorious for their dispassionate view of other forms of child abuse. Who could forget the legendarily indifferent reaction to the death of Sarah Payne. Or Brass Eye – Chris Morris’ incisive satire on British nonchalance in the face of paedophilia.

@ 11 Violet

“Furthermore our society condones this by grilling women about their sexual histories in rape cases.”

It stuns me that judges allow this. Still worse the trick where you pull a lewd picture of the victim off Facebook and pretend it’s in any way relevant to anything (“Look, she’s wearing a boob tube and pretending to give a blowjob to a WKD bottle. Therefore she must like being raped.”) Given that rape is not excused by the victim being promiscious, or flirting, or being scantily clad, I have no idea what excuse could be used to justify this kind of character assassination.

@ Violet

what makes a girl ‘bad’ is usually something to do with sexual morality, e.g. she is perceived as promiscuous

From the evidence we have, the girls in this case were not only perceived as promiscuous- they were promiscuous.

As A&E points out, it is tragic that in an affluent Western society we can raise children to have so little self-esteem and perception of their future potential that they are prepared to have sex with the kind of scum unearthed in this case for the price of a kebab.

.

[11] “See pagar’s victim-blaming comment above for a perfect example of this” – I think the young women’s reason(s) for engaging with such an unsavoury bunch is an important question, as is the fact the predatory instincts of the perpetrators led them to a certain social milieu.

I realise we have to very careful when asking such questions so as to make a distinction between this line of inquiry as opposed to victim blaming – I certainly don’t think we can blame the victims but maybe we can blame the shitty environment they were exposed to, and brought up in?

@ 8. john b

“*sigh*

Whataboutery is when you deflect criticism of somebody’s actions by pointing at something that someone else has done, which is irrelevant to the point your interlocutor is trying to make.

This isn’t that.”

I apologise if I’m working under a different (perhaps wrong) understanding of ‘whataboutery’ than you are. I was under the impression that it was a deflection technique along the lines of ‘but what about them, there?’. I’m not aware that it has to be wholly “irrelevant”, just a deflection technique.

“You’re claiming there’s something specific to the (Pakistani/Muslim/Asian/whatever) group that makes the men in it BAD NASTY RAPISTS, unlike other men in society who are DECENT and CIVILISED. You might be dressing it up in nicer language, but that’s what you’re doing.”

We’re responding to that by citing well-documented cases of abuse of an identical nature (in the sense of “organised rings of middle-aged men picking up girls from bad family backgrounds, who they view as barely human, and then grooming them with money and drugs to be gang-raped”, which is pretty fucking identical in my book) that has been carried out in the very recent past by white British men.

That isn’t ‘whataboutery’. It’s “pointing out that your entire argument is stupid”.

Nope, I’m not just using “nicer language” at all. I’m making the point that not all crimes are the same, even if they fall into the same general category. Not everyone who commits a particular type of crime does so for the same reason and there’s always different circumstances behind it. Not all rapes are “identical” (even if they’re all fucking vile), not all murders are the same and so on. Yes, there should be universal revulsion to all of them but it’s ridiculous not to be examining the differences in between cases because the general gist of a crime is similar.

I’m not trying to equate Pakistani/Muslim/Asian with “BAD NASTY RAPISTS” at all. I’m interested in why *these* particular Pakistani/Muslim/Asian men are “BAD NASTY RAPISTS”. Again *these* particular men.

My general point is that it’s not as clear cut as people are making out and all potential factors have to be included, if only to be eliminated at a later date. This isn’t a ‘white would-be racist’ argument (which it’s beginning to look like you’re trying to suggest it is – which is fucking laughable), it’s an argument that’s also being made by members of the same demographic/community/whatever who are pointing out cultural differences can’t be dismissed so readily.

Look: most rape is committed by men. Fact. No way of getting round this. However, not all men are rapists. So what is it about some men’s backgrounds, attitudes and so on that is so messed-up that rape is acceptable to them. This is no different from the line of thinking I’m using with this current case.

@ 18 Oliver

“Look: most rape is committed by men. Fact. No way of getting round this. However, not all men are rapists. So what is it about some men’s backgrounds, attitudes and so on that is so messed-up that rape is acceptable to them. ”

According to recent news, it may be due to a physical brain defect in many cases: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/898380-criminal-psychopaths-are-born-to-be-bad-according-to-new-study .

It wouldn’t exactly surprise me to discover than a high number of rapists are psychopaths in the medical sense.

19

It is an interesting article but what can we do with this information?
My interpretation of what is being said (not seen the original research) is that somehow criminality/rape is determined by a particular physical pre-condition, but such behaviour is socially unacceptable and also criminal.

In the absence of such a pre-conditon being observed until the behaviour is manifest, deterrence appears to be the only course of action. Also, not all psychopaths or those with personality disorders are rapists or criminals.

@Chaise #15:

“Furthermore our society condones this by grilling women about their sexual histories in rape cases.”

It stuns me that judges allow this.

It would stun me, too, if it still happens; since s41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 prevents leave being given for such cross examination unless the questioning is directly relevant to an issue in the case – and trying to establish that “she’s a slut, so she consented” won’t wash.

And that Act wasn’t the first; our society has over the years been steadily more restrictive of the accused’s rights of cross-examination of the victim in rape cases.

@16 pagar and 17 a&e charge nurse: The girls in this case may have actually been promiscuous, but my point was that in the minds of misogynists, real or perceived promiscuity (in women – it’s often approved of in men) makes girls bad, or damaged goods, or unrapeable, or any number of unpleasant things, thus excusing the abuse.

Whereas promiscuity isn’t necessarily bad or immoral, and it certainly doesn’t make a person deserve abuse.

Sometimes promiscuity in teenage girls is a sign of emotional difficulties or earlier sexual abuse (I note that a lot of the girls had been in care) – these girls often want love and attention, and attempt to get this with sex. It makes them very vulnerable to grooming, and they may end up being used and abused by many different men. And yet they simply get seen as ‘promiscuous’ therefore bad, by the perpetrators if not also by some members of the public.

Either way – whether promiscuity is real or imagined, is a wanted and chosen thing or an acting-out of mental health problems – in no way to these girls deserve blame and in no way to the perpetrators deserve any sympathy.

@ 21 Robin

“It would stun me, too, if it still happens; since s41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 prevents leave being given for such cross examination unless the questioning is directly relevant to an issue in the case”

Huh. This confuses me, because I’m sure I’ve heard of stuff like this being used more recently than that. Perhaps I’m getting confused with US news. Or maybe lawyers are good at finding an excuse to sneak it in, any idea? It’s worth noting that showing the court salacious Facebook photos presumably wouldn’t qualify as cross-examination.

The police didn’t exactly show these girls much respect. When it was brought to their attention by one of the girls, the police or was it CPS said that the girl wasn’t a reliable witness.

@ 20 steveb

“It is an interesting article but what can we do with this information?
My interpretation of what is being said (not seen the original research) is that somehow criminality/rape is determined by a particular physical pre-condition, but such behaviour is socially unacceptable and also criminal.

In the absence of such a pre-conditon being observed until the behaviour is manifest, deterrence appears to be the only course of action.”

Basically, IF it turns out that most rapists are psychopaths (and I don’t know that, just floating the possibility), that devalues any attempts at deterrence by educating people about rape being wrong. It suggests that you’d be better off telling people how much trouble they’ll be in if they’re caught.

“Also, not all psychopaths or those with personality disorders are rapists or criminals.”

Of course not, and don’t think for a minute I’m proposing some solution where we persecute people with the condition.

[22] I understand where you are coming from with regard to male perceptions about promiscuity but weren’t some of the girls abused as young as 12 (so not teenagers, yet) – in other words too young to fit this sort of stereotype?

@26: remember, we’re not exactly dealing with people who have made a detailed examination of the female psyche and motivations here. If the girls who were 12-13 happened to looked older and dress in a way that the rapists perceived as ‘slutty’, I image the rapists didn’t even care enough to find out that they still slept with teddies.

25

I think you are correct, but I would go further and suggest that for the crime of rape there is a far more serious sentencing policy.

It has been pointed-out by other posters that women who complain of rape end up being humiliated in court and defence solicitors are still being allowed to question them about their life-style.m This no doubt meets with the approval of @27

Also, I believe that pathologizing rape/criminality does tend to reinforce the negative responses to people who do have a mental illness.

SteveB: what the *fuck* are you talking about? Idiot.

@ 28 Steve B

“I think you are correct, but I would go further and suggest that for the crime of rape there is a far more serious sentencing policy.”

Sure, that too.

“It has been pointed-out by other posters that women who complain of rape end up being humiliated in court and defence solicitors are still being allowed to question them about their life-style.m This no doubt meets with the approval of @27″

I think john b is on your side, actually. He’s attacking the rapists, not the victims.

“Also, I believe that pathologizing rape/criminality does tend to reinforce the negative responses to people who do have a mental illness.”

Maybe so, but what do you want to do about that? Pretend that psychopathy isn’t a thing? I’m aware of the stigma around mental health and sympathetic to those who suffer as a result, but rejecting reality is rarely a good idea. Also bear in mind that, in cases where the rapist IS mentally ill, denying that fact would mean removing the label “unwell” and replacing it with the label “evil”, which isn’t exactly a great attitude to mental health either.

29

Look at your comment again, ‘if the girls were 12-13 happened to look older and dress in a way..’

Are you really saying that if the girls were older and dressed in a particular way then that would somehow either rationally explain or justify. Because this is the sort of comment that is employed by defence solicitors when questioning young girls who have been raped.

Also, rape is rape whether the victim is twelve or eighty, that should be the focus. or we get into the popular victim-blaming arena.

30

The problem with associating. psychothapy with criminality or rape is actually like making an association with Asians/whites/working class etc.
The fact is, most people with a psychopathic personality do not commit crime and are not engaged with mental health services and are employed and live somewhere near you. And of those who are engaging with mental health services, the majority have not committed a crime.

We could (accurately) state that most child killers in the UK are white males, but this would not really have an impact because being white and male doesn’t really have any negative preconceptions, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be pre-judged as a potential child killer because you are white and male (making assumption here)

And just to throw another factor into the mix, because someone has a mental health problem and commits a crime, it isn’t necessarily associated with their illness.

@Chaise #23:

Huh. This confuses me, because I’m sure I’ve heard of stuff like this being used more recently than that.

True – Violet just referred to it. And yet the law is there, it is very restrictive of victim cross-examination about previous sexual history, and it is enforced. Maybe Violet should tell us about recent occasions of “grilling [of] women about their sexual histories in rape cases”, so we can see what she means?

Steve: seriously, learn to read before you start throwing fucking offensive allegations about.

As Chaise highlights, that comment was directly in response to a suggestion that, because some of the girls were only 12-13, the rapists might not have held the “she’s a slut so she’s fair game” view.

I was pointing out that, in a rapist’s eyes, the fact that a girl is only 12 is irrelevant. There are a dozen ‘grass on the wicket’-type jokes that we’re all well aware of which follow the same meme (but, y’know, raping young girls is just down to ropey Pakistani villagers and definitely not connected to any threads that run through British society).

Perhaps you could apologise and/or fuck off.

@ 32 steveb

I agree with all this, but I need to repeat my question: assuming that it turns out that many rapists are, in fact, psychopaths, are you saying we should actually *pretend that isn’t true*? Lie either to ourselves or to the public? Make policy based on facts we know to be false?

Also, how does this tie into people who commit crimes and receive an insanity verdict? Following the logic through you’d have to declare their sanity irrelevant – so as not to connect crime and mental health issues – and presumably throw them into normal jail.

You seem to be horribly misrepresting johnb, BTW. He hasn’t breathed a word of victim-blaming. He sought to explain the crime, not justify it. All events have explanations, admitting that isn’t the same as letting the perpetrators off the hook.

34

I am prepared to apologise but I have re-read your post, and it still appears to me that it is infering that somehow the girl did/wore something which gave the rapist/s a signal that such behaviour was OK.

Now I am not suggesting that you think the behaviour was OK, if this is how you interpret my comment, I was referring to the questioning of defence solicitors in rape trials. But don’t you see that those assumptions follow a similar pre-conception to the comment in your post?

@ 33 Robin

To be fair, I think Violet said they were grilled by “society”. From context she seemed to be talking about court cases, but I might have put those words in her mouth.

IMPORTANT: this post focuses on how the CPS decided the victim was not “credible enough”. http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2012/05/rochdale_rape_r

It’s not “political correctness” but rather old fashioned misogyny, of the kind that says teenage girls with “chaotic” backgrounds were probably “asking for it” or don’t deserve to be taken seriously/

@ 38 Mary

It’s all a bit up in the air unless we know the reasons for saying she wasn’t credible (not the conjecture in the post).

@ 36 steveb

“Now I am not suggesting that you think the behaviour was OK, if this is how you interpret my comment,”

What you said was that questioning victims about their lifestyle “no doubt meets the approval” of John. Based on…?

“I was referring to the questioning of defence solicitors in rape trials. But don’t you see that those assumptions follow a similar pre-conception to the comment in your post?”

Sorry, but this makes no sense. John is simply hypothesising that some people see the world in a certain way. This does not mean that he sees the world in that way, or makes similar assumptions to them. To be honest, I think you misread John and are now backpedalling when you should be apologising for what you said – I’d have been outraged if I was on the receiving end of your attack on him.

[38] The Code for Crown Prosecutors is a public document, issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions that sets out the general principles Crown Prosecutors should follow when they make decisions on cases.

There are essentially two questions
[1] Is there enough evidence against the defendant?
When deciding whether there is enough evidence to charge, Crown Prosecutors must consider whether evidence can be used in court and is reliable. Crown Prosecutors must be satisfied there is enough evidence to provide a “realistic prospect of conviction” against each defendant.

Once condition [1] has been satisfied the CPS must then consider if it is in the public interest to bring the case to court” (obviously yes, in this case).
http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/code_for_crown_prosecutors/index.html

Are you saying that the code is wrong, or that it is being used ineptly, or incorrectly by the authorities when it comes to crimes against women involving sexual violence or exploitation?

It’s not “political correctness” but rather old fashioned misogyny, of the kind that says teenage girls with “chaotic” backgrounds were probably “asking for it” or don’t deserve to be taken seriously

This is straight up wrong. It’s about whether there’s a sufficiency of evidence to make prosecution viable. If there isn’t enough evidence and the case is certain to end in acquittal, it’s not in the victim’s or the public’s interest to pursue a prosecution. That’s the decision that has to be made, and I’m glad I’ll never have to make one like it.

It’d be stupid to hypothesise about this particular case, so let me generalise on others I’ve seen that have ended in similar decisions. The usual scenario is a complaint of rape or sexual abuse, having occurred some weeks or months previously. There’s usually no physical evidence and no third-party witnesses who are able or willing to testify. The victim’s recollections may be (understandably) hazy or self-contradictory – you can bring in all the psychological experts in the world to explain that this is normal in such cases, and it won’t do any good. It’s apparent that a) a defence solicitor will be able to undermine her story effortlessly and that b) a jury, made up as it is of members of the public with the usual prejudices about women’s behaviour, are unlikely to believe her, or at least not enough to jail a man solely on the strength of her testimony.

There are all kinds of issues here about changing public attitudes to sexual offences etc. but even if you get the most enlightened jury in the world, you’re still dealing with a case with no evidence beyond what the victim says happened. For the prosecutor, this is the whole situation, and it can’t be changed by appealing to the judge to trust the victim’s story, even if it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, or by commanding the jury not to be such judgemental pricks.

So the decision for a prosecutor here is – take the case to trial, with all the distress that will cause the victim and her family and the expense to the public purse, in the full knowledge that it has no chance of success whatsoever, or decide not to prosecute. For the person charged with making the decision, there is no option of Well, we should change the law in these specific ways to secure convictions. That’s for politicians and commenters on blogs to argue over.

This happens all the time. It’s a terrible situation but it’s one where a single person has to sit down and make a difficult, no-win decision. Both outcomes are going to result in a huge injustice. Would it be better to take this case to court and lose, on principle?

“And yes, sometimes it is political correctness gone mad when the police and social services ignore cries of help for risk of looking racist (which they clearly did).”

These men felt empowered enough by “progressive” ideology to tell both the police and court that they were being victimized and their investigation/prosecution amounted to “racism”. I noticed in The Guardian that there is only one Comment is Free article appearing on the story. The politicians and journalists who informed these men and regularly cow institutions like the CPS have gone shy.

[42] “Would it be better to take this case to court and lose, on principle?” – such a position is nonsensical – more convictions night be secured if the threshold was REDUCED from ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ to ‘balance of probabilities’ but this might open the door to another set of injustices?

Having said all of that it is very difficult to understand why a 15 year old girl who was being serially raped by a gang of older men was still deemed to be an unreliable witness by the CPS.

@pagar

Maybe you should read about how these girls were groomed before trying to say they were promiscuous or easy meat ( even if that justifies gang raping 12-15 old children as you appear to think) Try this for some education

Jane’s daughter Sophie (not their real names) was a happy, ordinary 12-year-old until she met a group of adult males who would control every aspect of her life. Before she escaped, a year later, Sophie had been raped by the gang members as a way of “breaking her in” and then passed around various other men for sex.

The methods used by the pimps are sophisticated and sinister. First, the girls are identified in locations, such as parks, schools, leisure facilities and shopping malls after which boys of their age are sent to befriend them. After a friendship is established, the boys introduce their contacts to young men whom they often describe as cousins.

Then the grooming process gets really under way. The young man will take the girl out in his car, give her vodka, cigarette and cannabis, and take her to venues she would not normally experience until older. Often giving the girl a mobile telephone as a “gift”, the pimp is then able to track her every move by calls and texting, which eventually will be used by him to send instructions as to details of arrangements with punters. The men sell the girls on to contacts for around £200 a time or as currency for a business deal.

it is very difficult to understand why a 15 year old girl who was being serially raped by a gang of older men was still deemed to be an unreliable witness by the CPS.

There are many, many reasons why this is the case, but the bottom line is that the general public harbour a large number of prejudices about young women’s behaviour. That makes jury trials for sexual offences a nightmare to prosecute and, given the social stigma attached to rape convictions, juries are very often unwilling to convict men without very strong evidence.

One person, making an unsupported allegation that may not even be internally coherent, is not going to convince most of these people to the point of “beyond reasonable doubt”. Like I say, it’s a terrible situation, but that’s what prosecutors have to work with, for now.

@ FR

There’s usually no physical evidence and no third-party witnesses who are able or willing to testify.

Yes, but that wasn’t the situation in this case

This decision was taken despite police having DNA from the 59-year-old, collected from three separate pairs of the victim’s underwear.

Sounds to me like a prosecution would have had an excellent chance of success.

Why did it not happen?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rochdale-grooming-gang-victim-complained-824138

35

I am not suggesting that we lie about anything but I am making the point that trying to make an association with rape/criminality and mental illness/psychopthy is a false dichotomy because most rapists and/or criminals are not psychopaths/mentally ill. And even if a person with a mental illness commits a crime, the mental illness isn’t always the cause-

For example, last year I had a young man referred to the service I work for, he had a diagnosed mental illness but he also had a drug problem. He had, with a mate, broken into a house and stole items to feed his habit, this act had nothing to do with his mental illness and everything to do with the fact that he needed the money to buy heroin. The mate did not have a mental illness, and both were found guilty (correctly) of theft and received the same sentence. There are also instances, as you correctly observe, where there is a direct causality between the mental illness and the crime.

I also see another client, who has a diagnosis of mental illness, and has just been found guilty of driving without insurance, he actually didn’t have enough money to pay, he took a calculated risk that he wouldn’t be stopped when he needed to attend an appointment.

Mental illness/psychopathy is not a reason to escape justice but neither is mental illness/psychopathy any indicater that they will engage in any particular behaviours including criminality, anymore than class, age or ethnicity is.

Why did it not happen?

Hmm, based on the content of the article, I’d expect them to prosecute in that case. Somewhere, a lawyer is going to struggle to explain that decision.

With the condition that obviously, there’s going to be more to the story than that conveys, I apologise to everyone for subjecting you to that ramble earlier – I was trying to get across the point that decisions in these cases are rarely easy or clear-cut.

And yes, sometimes it is political correctness gone mad when the police and social services ignore cries of help for risk of looking racist (which they clearly did).

Hmm

Furthermore – feminists have been saying for years that sexual violence is endemic and authorities have ignored it (in all areas, not just gang-grooming). Commentators who routinely dismissed feminists in the past regarding rape culture now have the temerity to accuse them of being quiet.

Er, are we entirely sure that the Police are not using ‘political correctness gone mad’ as a crafty excuse for doing what they normally do when confronted with a girl from the underclass claiming to have been raped?

@pagar #47L:

This decision was taken despite police having DNA from the 59-year-old, collected from three separate pairs of the victim’s underwear.

Sounds to me like a prosecution would have had an excellent chance of success.

Why did it not happen?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rochdale-grooming-gang-victim-complained-824138

When the Mirror develops a reputation for including all relevant facts in stories, to enable one to form a balanced view, it might be possible to answer the question. As it is, we can take from the story that the CPS prosecutor concerned took the view, with which his successor disagreed, that the victim would not be believed. Why that view was taken despite the existence of the DNA evidence – if indeed it was (was it available at the time?) – we have no idea.

More generally, it is important to note that you get one shot at getting a conviction, as the Lawrences found out. Having failed with that shot (by private prosecution), they then needed a change in the law before the police could have another go. That change in the law, however, only helps in exceptional circumstances; you need new, compelling, evidence not available (with due diligence) at the original trial.

[47] “Sounds to me like a prosecution would have had an excellent chance of success – Why did it not happen?” – institutional sexism, if we accept the feminist narrative.
Mind you, if we can apply this form of prejudice to one large group, can we apply it to other sectors of society – like sex offenders from certain parts of the world, for example?

[51] “Why that view was taken despite the existence of the DNA evidence – if indeed it was (was it available at the time?) – we have no idea” – in time honoured tradition I’m sure a pointless enquiry will be underway so that “lessons can be learned”?

@ 48 steveb

“I am not suggesting that we lie about anything but I am making the point that trying to make an association with rape/criminality and mental illness/psychopthy is a false dichotomy because most rapists and/or criminals are not psychopaths/mentally ill.

How is that a false dichotomy? A false dichotomy is when you craft your argument to create the impression that someone has to choose between two options (“you’re either with us or against us”, for example) when in reality those options are not mutually exclusive and/or there are other options available. I haven’t done that.

Basically, your rubuttal is a non sequitur to what I said. Say, for sake of argument, that it turned out a psychopath was twice as likely to commit rape as a non-psychopath, controlling for other variables. That would mean there was an association between the two. But it would not mean that all/most psychopaths were rapists or that all/most rapists were psychopaths. You’re arguing with an argument I never made.

Also, you say you’re not in favour of lying, but your response suggests to me that you’d reject the data if it came out a way you didn’t like, which means you would lie.

“And even if a person with a mental illness commits a crime, the mental illness isn’t always the cause”

Agreed.

“Mental illness/psychopathy is not a reason to escape justice but neither is mental illness/psychopathy any indicater that they will engage in any particular behaviours including criminality, anymore than class, age or ethnicity is.”

Firstly, those things are indicators. Secondly: yes it is, in many cases. Who is more likely to commit suicide, a manic depressive or a mentally “well-balanced” person? You’re making it out as if mental conditions are symptomless. It’s nonsense. I see what you’re trying to do, and sympathise. But you’re going too far in the other direction. To counter people who exaggerate the effects of mental illness and create the stigma, you’re denying that mental illness can have any negative effects ever.

@ 52 Robin

“That change in the law, however, only helps in exceptional circumstances; you need new, compelling, evidence not available (with due diligence) at the original trial.”

Once again using you to brush up on my knowledge of the legal system, sorry. Does the bit in brackets mean it has to be evidence that the police could not have been reasonably expected to find? So you can try someone again if you find DNA evidence, if DNA evidence was an unknown thing when they were first tried, but if the police just didn’t bother to check something basic then the trial can’t go ahead?

55

What data do you think that I am rejecting?
The problem is that correlation is being used to infer causality, that’s why I used the example of ‘most child murderers are white males’ because that is a correlation.

My original post on this subject was in response to an article that you referred to, suggesting that there was an association between psychopathy and crime, I was not arguing with you but questioning its usefulness. Of coure, like most debates it has progressed.

People who have bi-polar (manic depression) are actually less likely to commit suicide because they will be engaging with the mental health services and receiving the appropriate treatment.
Unfortunately, the highest risk group of suicide are young, unemployed males who do not have a mental health diagnosis until after they have committed suicide.
Similarly, prisoners have high rates of depression but a high percentage of this is thought to be as a consequence of their imprisonment rather than any precondition
A large percentage of prisoners receive a diagnosis of antisocial personality but being in prison is, in itself, because of anti-social behaviour.
Violence is not a common symptom of psychopathy.

Mental illness has extremely negative effects on the individual, their family and also the general society, how do you interpret that I am trying to say otherwise.
The symptoms of serious mental health problems are very distressing for the sufferer, but symptoms are not the same as behaviours.

The greatest risk to people with mental illness is stigma and discrimination which then leads to unemployment and social isolation, this creates depression/an increase in depression and often this then leads to suicide. But as you can see, there is a complex interaction between clincal symptoms and environmental stressors.

Certainly people with mental illness have committed serious crimes as well as petty crimes but we could say that about people of any class, age, or ethnic background. But it’s the association between mental illness and violence which the media uses to dramatise and add to a story, reinforcing the stigma and discrimination. And it’s the way many of us often explain terrible acts because the person ‘couldn’t really be a normal human like me.’

“And yes, sometimes it is political correctness gone mad when the police and social services ignore cries of help for risk of looking racist (which they clearly did).”

Um, no, get a grip.

Listen, there is no such thing as political correctness and if you think otherwise you might as well join the Tory party.

If you believe in the concept of political correctness you cannot be on the left.

That’s all that needs to be said about this story.

[58] “there is no such thing as political correctness” – yet according to wiki “Political correctness (adjectivally, politically correct; both forms commonly abbreviated to PC) is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts, and, as purported by the term, doing so to an excessive extent”.

Take LC’s comments policy, it says;
We believe in free speech (sic) but not your right to abuse our space.
Abusive, sarcastic or silly comments may be deleted.
Misogynist, racist, homophobic and xenophobic comments will be deleted.

There is a small example right there of PC in action – an approved view of the world that over rides free speech (with all of the dangers that freedom of expression entails).

Following on from @57

Because I haven’t really explained how my post connects with the OP.

It would be a travesty to explain the behaviours of this gang in terms of them suffering from some pre-condition which influenced/determined their actions.
The only phenomenon which might come into play is ‘deindividuation’ which occurs within a group situation, but this is in response to the circumstance and is not present before.

@ Cylux

are we entirely sure that the Police are not using ‘political correctness gone mad’ as a crafty excuse for doing what they normally do when confronted with a girl from the underclass claiming to have been raped?

No. We are not.

@Robin

it is important to note that you get one shot at getting a conviction

Just a minute.

According to the article, the girl who had made the complaint and had given the police the DNA evidence to back up an obvious case of statutory rape (if nothing worse) continued to suffer abuse thereafter.

How can you defend the police, the CPS and our legal system when such circumstances represent such an obvious affront to justice?

@59. the a&e charge nurse responds to Chris @58 “there is no such thing as political correctness”

a&e : “yet according to wiki “Political correctness (adjectivally, politically correct; both forms commonly abbreviated to PC) is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense…”

I reckon that they are both wrong. If Chris had argued “there is no agreed definition of political correctness” he would probably have won all arguments on the subject.

What does the data say? In some cases data is conclusive and in others data are inconclusive. The Guardian Style Guide says: “takes a singular verb (like agenda), though strictly a plural; no one ever uses “agendum” or “datum”". Other periodicals disagree.

In its original definition, political correctness had a specific meaning in the same way that data was the plural form of datum. But that is not the way that the expression is used today by everybody. Nobody owns words or expressions, and their meanings are apt to change. “Political correctness” as an abbreviation is meaningless.

When Michael Young coined the word “meritocracy”, he would have been astonished by how it is used. Ditto for those who proffered the expression “political correctness”.

Can I just say I think this is a post by Sunny that reminds me of just how good he can be when he is at tearing apart comfortably held beliefs. Which is what he is good at.

No-one – apologies if I missed it – seems to have picked up on this bit of the op-ed:

They may be racist too – but I highly doubt that was their motivation for this crime.

Probably not, but the racism makes it easier for them to do what they do. It is the classic demonisation of the other. It allows them to – collectively – objectify the victim. I would imagine that any predatory sex gang would have complete contempt for their victims. I’d assume that they all learn lessons from the plantations in ‘good ole Alabama’. It was, apparently, a bit of an industry over there, for a while.

So, white on brown, brown on white? It is just a convenient way for rapists to excuse themselves, amongst themselves.

It is, of course, despicable when the clear light of day is shone upon it.

Whoah, agar, I haven’t read the rest of the comments, but you just did what you say you haven’t seen anyone do. They were easy meat – well, yes, they were in their early teens. ‘Lacking in any sexual morality’ – so you gotta have sympathy for the men, what were they to do, eh?

Gah.

Great article, Sunny, especially the highlighting of the other sexual abuse and grooming ring, thank you.

15. Chaise Guevara

It stuns me that judges allow this. Still worse the trick where you pull a lewd picture of the victim off Facebook and pretend it’s in any way relevant to anything (“Look, she’s wearing a boob tube and pretending to give a blowjob to a WKD bottle. Therefore she must like being raped.”) Given that rape is not excused by the victim being promiscious, or flirting, or being scantily clad, I have no idea what excuse could be used to justify this kind of character assassination.

Let’s agree that rape is not excused by the victim being promiscuous or whatever. But. First of all, it is a trial. You don’t know if the victims is the accuser or the accused yet. That is what a trial is to establish. How do you establish this? Let’s suppose you pick up a girl in a bar, go back to your place, have sex and the next day she accuses you of rape. If she stands up in Court and says she is a Vestal virgin who would never do any such thing, what are you supposed to do? Rape trials are inevitably “he said, she said”. So her case will inevitably be that she is not that sort of girl and would never agree to that sort of thing. Obviously establishing whether she is that sort of girl and might well do that sort of thing is kind of important don’t you think? It is not saying she would agree to being raped, but if she says she would never *dream* of having a one night stand, how is the fact that she is happy to pose in a tube top giving a simulated blow job to a coke bottle not relevant? Why can’t the jury be trusted to decide if she is that sort of girl and hence the accused’s story is plausible?

Or to take another instance. Suppose a punter refuses to pay a prostitute. I hear it happens to the highest people in the land. She screams rape. How is it not relevant to ask whether she is a prostitute or not?

19. Chaise Guevara

According to recent news, it may be due to a physical brain defect in many cases: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/898380-criminal-psychopaths-are-born-to-be-bad-according-to-new-study .

It wouldn’t exactly surprise me to discover than a high number of rapists are psychopaths in the medical sense.

I love it when medical science moves my way. As I have often said, rehabilitation is a joke, it doesn’t work and it is a waste of time. They are mentally damaged. Not poor likkle victims of an uncaring society. You’ll be thinking Norman Tebbitt was a bit of a wet is no time Chaise.

Although for the specific crime of rape, I expect that the vast majority of cases involve poor communication, alcohol and raging hormones and far from being real psychopaths, most of the accused are absolutely gutted their first ever sexual experience ended in an accusation of rape. But no doubt there is a core of rapists who are at best seriously mentally ill.

24. Lynne

The police didn’t exactly show these girls much respect. When it was brought to their attention by one of the girls, the police or was it CPS said that the girl wasn’t a reliable witness.

Some of these girls at least have been in Care. There is a good chance they have a long string of disciplinary and/or criminal offenses. They seem to have some issues. Some of them at least have been using drugs and alcohol. And they were forced into prostitution.

They did not deserve what came their way, but that is not a lack of respect. It is a simple statement of the obvious. They are not reliable witnesses. It would take a hell of a lot of convincing for any jury to look a respectable-ish young man in the eye and destroy his life over the word of some possibly insane, drug-addled, rule breaking member of the underclass.

It is sad but true. That is the way it is.

52. Robin Levett

That change in the law, however, only helps in exceptional circumstances; you need new, compelling, evidence not available (with due diligence) at the original trial.

Sorry but remind me of what new compelling evidence that was not available at the original trial became available in the Lawrence case? They secretly filmed the young men for months and while they got lots of jury-prejudicing racism, they failed to get anything remotely close to an admission.

These sort of changes are always brought in claiming exceptional circumstances. Once the breach is made they become more and more widely used. You can see this in the Advertising Standards Authority trying to close Archbishop Cramner’s blog for simply running a claim that 70 percent of British people do not want changes to the marriage law. Discrimination laws that were intended for exceptional circumstances are now being used to close down topical political discussions. In the first case of this law the circumstances were exceptional but new compelling evidence there was none. They were probably guilty but that does not change the fact that this trial is one of the great legal abortions of our time.

Er, are we entirely sure that the Police are not using ‘political correctness gone mad’ as a crafty excuse for doing what they normally do when confronted with a girl from the underclass claiming to have been raped?

entirely possible I suppose.

Update: A few have asked what more legislation is required. For a start, there is no criminal offence of ‘on-street grooming’ – though arguably covered by other legislation.

On-street grooming? How are they going to define that I wonder? The problem with hasty and poorly thought out legislation drafted by incompetents at the behest of morons afraid of Tabloid headlines is that it often doesn’t do what you want. I wonder if it will soon be illegal to see a girl on the street and tell her she looks fit and ask if she would like to go for a drink.

Accusation 1: It’s about their ‘culture’

Pakistan has a very different culture to Britain in so many ways.
What amount of that culture (the bad bits) are left behind in Pakistan when they get on a plane and fly to Europe is anybodies guess. A bi-product of their culture in England has them seeking out each other’s company to the near exclusion of the Gora society though, apart from day to day dealings with them for purposes of necessity. Like immigrants everywhere have done throughout time, but not that healthy when you get social segregation amongst communities.

@pagar #61:

How can you defend the police, the CPS and our legal system when such circumstances represent such an obvious affront to justice?

I don’t. Re-read my comment.

@SMFS #66:

Sorry but remind me of what new compelling evidence that was not available at the original trial became available in the Lawrence case?

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2011/1255.html

Knock yourself out.

@Chaise #56:

Once again using you to brush up on my knowledge of the legal system, sorry. Does the bit in brackets mean it has to be evidence that the police could not have been reasonably expected to find?

Pretty much – see para 92 of the Dobson case cited above:

“…As to whether the new evidence could have been adduced in the earlier proceedings, although we accept that there was an absence of diligence or expedition in the earlier part of the investigations, we have explained why and how the new evidence emerged, and are satisfied that even with proper diligence, the evidence which has now become available would not have been appreciated at that time.”

@a&ecn #54:

Add the words “because we can’t trust the Mirror to have given us all the information necessary to make that judgement” if it helps.

So where are we with this?

Most seem to agree with Sunny that this is not a racial issue, and I agree too.

However anyone who feels like denying that there is a cultural element in the case should read this excellent article in the Independent.

This is a Muslim imam blaming sexual conservatism in his own community.

“Many British Pakistani men live in two worlds. The first is encompassed by family, business, mosque. It is a socially conservative culture where there is no toleration of sex outside of marriage, and little emphasis on sexual gratification.

Many of these men do not understand what is appropriate behaviour in wider society and what is not. They are so lacking in social skills – because relationships between men and women in Pakistani culture are characterised by a real formality – that they can misconstrue an ordinary conversation with a white girl in their taxi and think she is indicating that she is open to a sexual advance, when that is not what she means at all.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/asian-grooming-why-we-need-to-talk-about-sex-7734712.html

@Robin Levett:

On the CPS website, there is a section about previous sexual history of the victim, and the law you refer to:

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sexual_offences_rape/#Character_of_victim

It seems the important phrases on that page are ‘with the leave of the court’ and ‘the court considers that it may reach an unsafe conclusion… if such evidence were not to be heard’. This seems to be saying that while the law is there, it is in fact at the court’s/judge’s discretion as to whether a victim’s sexual history can be used as evidence / a subject for cross-examination.

Also I believe part of the law is that the defence can apply to use the victim’s sexual history in the courtroom before the trial begins.

This study by the University of Sussex found that the law you refer to is often not stopping the victim’s sexual history being used in rape cases:

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressrelease/media/media560.html

They found, among other things, that out of those trials where applications were made to use the victim’s sexual history, two thirds were successful. They also found that sexual history was being brought up at trial despite a lack of such an application being made (i.e. the rules were often broken).

I hope that in the light of that it would seem fair enough that I said victims of rape are often grilled about their sexual histories. Because that does seem to be still going on.

@ 57 steveb

“What data do you think that I am rejecting?”

I don’t. I think your attitude is one that would reject the data if it went against what you want to believe. The reason I think this is that most of your responses to me have used a logical fallacy called “appeal to consequences”, where someone tries to support/rebut a factual claim by saying it would be good/bad if it were true.

In this case, your approach seems to be “psychopathy can’t be linked to rape, because if it was, that would lead people to be (more) prejudiced against people with mental illness”. But this is logically silly – whether or not you like something doesn’t affect whether it’s true. If I’m misrepresenting you then please accept that this is my honest take on your position, not a (deliberate) straw man.

“The problem is that correlation is being used to infer causality, that’s why I used the example of ‘most child murderers are white males’ because that is a correlation.”

I agree that the article I posted is far from conclusive, which is why I’m floating the possibility, not claiming it’s definitely true. But it seems likely to me. I mean, wouldn’t a lack of empathy make someone more likely to hurt someone for their own benefit, if they thought they’d get away with it?

“People who have bi-polar (manic depression) are actually less likely to commit suicide because they will be engaging with the mental health services and receiving the appropriate treatment.”

Apparently, this is the opposite of true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder#Mortality . But it doesn’t matter: if people with bipolar were LESS likely to commit suicide, that would still be a connection between suicide and bipolar, just a negative one instead of a positive one.

(I know that “manic depressive” is out and “bipolar” is in, BTW. I actually meant to refer to MDD and got confused mid-sentence.)

“Unfortunately, the highest risk group of suicide are young, unemployed males who do not have a mental health diagnosis until after they have committed suicide.
Similarly, prisoners have high rates of depression but a high percentage of this is thought to be as a consequence of their imprisonment rather than any precondition
A large percentage of prisoners receive a diagnosis of antisocial personality but being in prison is, in itself, because of anti-social behaviour.”

I’m not sure how this connects to the topic at hand.

” Violence is not a common symptom of psychopathy.”

Not common, probably, but it’s associated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Offending

“Mental illness has extremely negative effects on the individual, their family and also the general society, how do you interpret that I am trying to say otherwise.”

Negative behaviours, then. Of course many mental illnesses are associated with behaviours we’d consider negative. As a random example, some forms of autism are associated with aggression and violence, which is thought to be because sufferers find it frustrating trying to get by in a society that uses different “rules” to them.

“The greatest risk to people with mental illness is stigma and discrimination which then leads to unemployment and social isolation, this creates depression/an increase in depression and often this then leads to suicide. But as you can see, there is a complex interaction between clincal symptoms and environmental stressors.”

Again, I agree with this. But you are now admitting that mental illness is assoicated with suicide – something you previously denied.

“Certainly people with mental illness have committed serious crimes as well as petty crimes but we could say that about people of any class, age, or ethnic background. ”

Yes, obviously. Anecdotes are not compelling evidence.

“But it’s the association between mental illness and violence which the media uses to dramatise and add to a story, reinforcing the stigma and discrimination. And it’s the way many of us often explain terrible acts because the person ‘couldn’t really be a normal human like me.’”

Agreed, but this swings both ways. Reading responses to my original article, I saw people claiming the findings couldn’t be true because it would let criminals or their parents off the hook. That’s another appeal to consequences, but in the other direction: “I don’t want to believe in mental illness as a causative factor because then I can’t get properly outraged about the crime”.

So people do try to pass off evil (pick a word) as mental illness, but people also try to pass off mental illness as evil. Neither is rational, and neither is fair.

@ steveb 60

“It would be a travesty to explain the behaviours of this gang in terms of them suffering from some pre-condition which influenced/determined their actions.”

See, this is the sort of thing that tells me you would reject data you didn’t like. Your response to a factual claim is not to provide contradicting evidence, but to denounce it as a “travesty”. It’s an anti-rational attitude where you not only ignore evidence you don’t like, but actually condemn rational people who DO treat evidence honestly. And that’s why I’m arguing with you – it’s this I object to, not your position on mental illness.

@ 65 SMFS

“Let’s agree that rape is not excused by the victim being promiscuous or whatever. But. First of all, it is a trial. You don’t know if the victims is the accuser or the accused yet.”

Yeah, agreed, and I knew I was being lazy when I used “victim” above. Wouldn’t have done it if I were talking about an existing, ongoing trial.

“Why can’t the jury be trusted to decide if she is that sort of girl and hence the accused’s story is plausible?”

I never said it couldn’t. Obviously if the accuser is using her personal history as (rather weak) evidence, and you can prove she’s lying about her personal history, that’s massively relevant, it undermines the entire case.

“Suppose a punter refuses to pay a prostitute. I hear it happens to the highest people in the land. She screams rape. How is it not relevant to ask whether she is a prostitute or not?”

Likewise.

BUT, if the prosecution isn’t referring to the woman’s sexual preferences or profession, I don’t see how it’s relevant. At that point it becomes a character smear.

“I love it when medical science moves my way. As I have often said, rehabilitation is a joke, it doesn’t work and it is a waste of time. They are mentally damaged. Not poor likkle victims of an uncaring society. You’ll be thinking Norman Tebbitt was a bit of a wet is no time Chaise.”

No, because I don’t leap from “one mental illness is probably caused by physical defects” to “ALL mental illnesses are entirely physical” to “rehab doesn’t work”. Two huge leaps of logic there, especially the first one.

But you SHOULD adapt policy to evidence. So, as I said somewhere above, if it turned out that most serial rapists were psychopaths, it might be wise to pull back on “rape is evil” campaigns and replace them with “rape will put you in jail” campaigns. Different strokes for different folks.

“Although for the specific crime of rape, I expect that the vast majority of cases involve poor communication, alcohol and raging hormones and far from being real psychopaths, most of the accused are absolutely gutted their first ever sexual experience ended in an accusation of rape.”

I don’t know about “vast majority”, but this sort of thing probably accounts for a lot of rape cases and seems less likely to be linked to psychopathy – more just a bad combination of immaturity, ignorance, and/or drunkeness, and the perpetrator probably never imagined they’d committed rape till the police arrived at their door. That’s why I (at some point, probably lost in the thread now) specifically referred to serial rapists – I was trying to exclude this group.

@ 46 flyingrodent

“One person, making an unsupported allegation that may not even be internally coherent, is not going to convince most of these people to the point of “beyond reasonable doubt”. Like I say, it’s a terrible situation, but that’s what prosecutors have to work with, for now.”

Thanks for pointing this out. There seems to be a hell of a lot of 20:20 hindsight going on: it turns out the girl was telling the truth, therefore the police must have known she was telling the truth but didn’t care. Plus of course people are missing the distinction between “I believe you” and “I think your case will stand up in court”. Not to say the police acted rightly here, but “they didn’t push forward with a case that turned out to be real” is not a smoking gun.

Saturday news update:

Police who smashed the Rochdale child sex ring believe they have uncovered a SECOND grooming scandal in the town.
http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1493585_exclusive-men-arrested-as-police-launch-new-child-sex-probe-in-rochdale

@74. The whole of that article deserves a read. The bit you quote (and indeed the implication does run through the whole of the interview with Karmani) has a subtext that sexual conservatism in the Asian community isn’t to blame at all, but that it’s all the fault of the nasty sexualised English culture and misogynistic rap music “making” Pakistani men so confused or lacking in social skills that they form paedophilic rape gangs instead, and nothing to do with the ghettoisation of multiculturalism or the Islamic sense of cultural supremacy that has been allowed to take root in the UK.

More arrests, another gang in Rochdale.

@SMFS #65:

I love it when medical science moves my way. As I have often said, rehabilitation is a joke, it doesn’t work and it is a waste of time.

Really? Explain the Norwegian experience; or is it just that our criminals are more hardcore than those wussy Norwegians?

Does the practice of FGM relate to the practice of grooming girls for sexual abuse?

British girls undergo horror of genital mutilation despite tough laws

Female circumcision will be inflicted on up to 2,000 British schoolgirls during the summer holidays – leaving brutal physical and emotional scars. Yet there have been no prosecutions against the practice
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jul/25/female-circumcision-children-british-law

One of the reasons certain commentators are fighting so hard to minimise the racial aspect in these crimes is that it would (and should) put issues which organisations such as Runneymede trust and the IRR have highlighted, such as stop and search, in the shade.

some people need to stop blaming the girls.

What a disingenuous statement to make when you and others have created the climate where it far easier for people to criticise the culture of the victims than the culture of the assailants, evinced by QT this, the Guardian’s editorial and this thread on the issue.

Sunny

Given you have been vociferously firefighting charges of racism against grooming gangs, do regret getting so angry over the CBB episode with Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty and towards the Tram Lady, trivial episodes in comparison.

75

I used the word ‘travesty’ because there is NO EVIDENCE to suggest that gang rape is associated with psychopathy or any other neurological condition, indeed psychopaths are normally loners.

You have accused me of ignoring evidence/data but what have I ignored?

The article which Pagar@74 refers to is a well rounded analysis of the complex interaction between cultural, social and religious beliefs and shys away from the easy cause and effect explainations.

79

So you have never read about how white imperialists sexually abused the natives or the horrors of the Vietnam war, thought not. How about the British sex tourism in Thailand – no?

@ 85 steveb

“I used the word ‘travesty’ because there is NO EVIDENCE to suggest that gang rape is associated with psychopathy or any other neurological condition, indeed psychopaths are normally loners.”

Fair enough. But if someone suffers from a mental health problem associated with a certain sort of crime, and then commits that crime, would you approve of the condition being considered as a possible causative factor?

“You have accused me of ignoring evidence/data but what have I ignored?”

Given that I haven’t accused you of ignoring data and, in my second-to-last post to you, flat out said I wasn’t accusing you of ignoring data, I find you repeating this straw man attack to be incredibly childish. Why ask questions if you’re going to ignore what I say in response? FFS.

you and others have created the climate where it far easier for people to criticise the culture of the victims than the culture of the assailants

You know, after a long day of creating a climate where it is far easier for people to criticise the culture of the victims than the culture of the assailants, I like to kick back and relax with a nice, cold Pepsi.

Drink Pepsi – the choice of a new generation that’s striving to create a climate where it far easier for people to criticise the culture of the victims than the culture of the assailants

Also, the internet – encouraging fannies to make idiotic assertions since 1999.

85

@55
‘But your response to me suggests you would ignore the data’

@75
‘This response tells me you would reject the data.

There is no data or evidence to reject either real or imagined, if you provide any I will give you a reasoned response.

There really is no crime associated with a mental illness unless you label ‘self-harm’ as a crime against oneself.

I have already explained that there are some crimes where the mental illness could be directly responsible and where the mental illness had nothing to do with the crime. There really is no particular areas of crime associated with any particular mental illnesses, no really.

FlyingRodent

http://blogs.news.sky.com/familyaffairs/Post:c6f2e78c-e7b8-4752-b56c-f140370eea9e

Ann had taken up the cause of young white girls systematically courted by young Asian men who would use drink, drugs and gifts to entice and then ensnare girls in their early teens.

She told me about the opposition she had faced from leading figures within her own party, not least from the former Labour leadership contender Diane Abbott.

That conversation with Ann Cryer took place in her home, not far from the part of Bradford where I grew up and from where whispers about this vile abuse have grown increasingly audible.

@ 88 SteveB

“‘But your response to me suggests you would ignore the data’

@75
‘This response tells me you would reject the data.”

Look up “would”. It does not mean “did”.

“There really is no crime associated with a mental illness unless you label ‘self-harm’ as a crime against oneself.”

I posted this already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Offending . Not only is psychopathy associated with a higher crime rate, it’s associated with particular types of crime.

Mental illnesses affect the way people behave. It would be downright weird if some of them didn’t increase or decrease the sufferer’s chance of committing crime.

“I have already explained that there are some crimes where the mental illness could be directly responsible and where the mental illness had nothing to do with the crime. There really is no particular areas of crime associated with any particular mental illnesses, no really.”

You’re contradicting yourself. Are some mental illnesses associated with crime or not? Make your mind up.

Ann had taken up the cause of young white girls systematically courted by young Asian men…

Ach, old Ann. I remember back when she thought that drug-related violence was a Pakistani problem too, and commanded her Asian constituents to sort it out. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/breakfast/2108850.stm

To recap – white kids killing each other over drugs = national problem. Asian kids killing each other over drugs = Pakistani problem.

Now, I’m not saying she’s wrong – I’m not from the area, so I don’t know. It just seems to me that it’s possible that Ann Cryer has persistently fallen for this common fallacy. http://xkcd.com/385/

Also note in that Sky article – person whose views are being reported in the top-ranked media outlets in the land expressing her opinion in blunt terms to an audience of millions, says “I will not be silenced”.

Number of people trying to silence her – zero.

89

So you are actually suggesting that I am not ignoring data but I would if it were there. At best this is crystal ball gazing at worst you are making totally unfounded judgements about someone you do not know.

As for your link, let me just give a couple of quotes from it:-

‘The personality of people who engage in criminal behaviour are varied and psychopathy cannot be said to be the underlying type’

‘Some clinician’s assessment of the construct of psychopathy does not necessarily add value to violence risk assessment’

People with mental illness and personality disorders,including psychopathy, engage in the full range of criminal behaviours as the normal population.
There is no particular crime which is associated with any particular mental illness.
There are some crimes where it is found that there is a direct link between the mental illness and the crime.
There are crimes where there is no direct link between the crime and the mental illness.

Peter Sutcliffe – detained under the mental health act for killing 13 women, he has been diagnosed with a psychotic illness (possibly paranoid schizophrenia)

Ian Brady – detained under the mental health act for killing 5 children – severe anti-social personality disorder.
Myra Hindley – found guilty of three murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Rosemary West – found guilty of collaborating in the torture and murder of at least 10 young women – life imprisonment.

You will see that none of these criminals are psychopathic, Brady has a anti-social personality disorder. Sutcliffe (a psychotic diagnosis), Hindley and West were culpable ie they freely chose to engage in the acts.
But I can understand how the lay person would label them all as psychopaths

However, if we do not challenge such labelling and misunderstandings, people with mental illness will always be associated with such extreme crimes.

@ 91 steveb

“So you are actually suggesting that I am not ignoring data but I would if it were there. At best this is crystal ball gazing at worst you are making totally unfounded judgements about someone you do not know.”

Totally unfounded? I laid my reasoning out for you, in detail, at 75. You ignored it. Same place you ignored the data suggesting that your “bipolar people are less likely to commit suicide” was completely out. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do under these circumstances: if you don’t have a response to something I can only assume you have no argument against it.

“As for your link, let me just give a couple of quotes from it:-”

Neither of the quotes contradict the idea that psychopathy can be a causative factor in certain types of crime. So why quote them here? You’ve grabbed two irrelevant quotes and skipped over ones that don’t suit your suppositions, like “Rapists, especially sadistic rapists, and sexual homicide offenders have a high rate of psychopathy.” You’re cherry-picking.

” There are some crimes where it is found that there is a direct link between the mental illness and the crime.”

So why the fuck are you arguing with me?

“There are crimes where there is no direct link between the crime and the mental illness.”

Yes, once AGAIN, nobody’s arguing against this.

“You will see that none of these criminals are psychopathic, Brady has a anti-social personality disorder. Sutcliffe (a psychotic diagnosis), Hindley and West were culpable ie they freely chose to engage in the acts.”

Firstly, this is irrelevant, AS I AM NOT SAYING ALL SERIOUS CRIMINALS ARE PSYCHOPATHS. Please get that into your skull.

Secondly, showing they had other mental health conditions doesn’t demonstrate they weren’t psychopaths. I’m not a doctor but I’m pretty sure you can have antisocial personality disorder and still qualify as a psychopath.

Third, psychopaths are culpable and have no less free will than you or I, so I don’t get what the point is of that last sentence.

“But I can understand how the lay person would label them all as psychopaths

However, if we do not challenge such labelling and misunderstandings, people with mental illness will always be associated with such extreme crimes.”

The problem here is that “psychopath” basically has two meanings: the medical one and the colloquial one, which just means something like “dangerous crazy person” and tends to be used to describe hot-headed, out-of-control people who are nothing like actual psychopaths. So when you say “psychopath” to the layman he hears “guy going wild with a breadknife”.

Steveb

@90: “You will see that none of these criminals are psychopathic”

Compare the history of the serial killer Graham Young (1947-90), who was reportedly rational to all apprearances and not delusional but had such an enduring obsessive fascination with how cumulative poisons work that he would test poisons out on people he knew over long period and carefully document the effects on his victims:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Young

He confessed to the attempted murder of his father, sister and friend and he probably killed his stepmother. He was committed to Broadmoor under the Mental Health Act and treated there for nine years and then released on being deemed “fully recovered”. He found new employment although his employers were not fully informed of his past and Young resumed his interest in poisons by experimenting on dozens of work colleagues. By accounts, he was knowledgeable about poisons so his actions cannot be classed as due to ignorance of the likely consequences of admistering a variety of poisons.

As best I can tell – and I’ve no special personal knowledge about psychiatry – the only major category of psychosis into which Young fits is psychopathology.

92

Psychosis and psychopathy are two different things altogether, psychopathy is a type of personality disorder and psychosis is a particular set of symptoms associated with disorders such as schizophrenia. Delusions, hallucinations and paranoid thoughts are the most significant symptoms.

Graham Young may well have suffered from psychosis, certainly it can be temporary, it can be caused by sleep depravation, dehydration, inhaling chemicals, taking certain hallucinogenic drugs alcohol, extreme anxiety and so on. A psychopathic personality disorder is incurable.
Ted Bundy is probably the most infamous serial killer with a diagnosis of psychopathy. But all serial killers are not psychopaths and all psychopaths are not killers or any other category of criminal.

91
@75 you stated ‘see, this is the sort of thing that tells me you would reject data you didn’t like’

This is either crystal ball gazing or you are making totally unfounded judgements on someone you do not know.

You then give me a reference which is suppose to contradict what I have stated about psychopathy and when I quote from that reference, you reject it. I have to say that’s a first for me.

The concept of free-will is a massive debate in itself, but psychopaths and people with mental illness who commit a serious crime (and where it is found that the crime is directly linked to the mental illness) are treated differently to those people with no diagnosis. The former remain in a forensic setting, usually a secure hospital such as Broadmoor or a medium secure hospital, where they receive treatment. The latter eg Rose West, go to prison, which is considered to be, in part, punishment and deterrence.

I was under the impression that high finance and the boardroom are the environments one is most likely to encounter a psychopath in. Rather than the prison system.

71. Robin Levett

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2011/1255.html

Knock yourself out.

So we are now agreed there was none.

Chaise Guevara

I never said it couldn’t. Obviously if the accuser is using her personal history as (rather weak) evidence, and you can prove she’s lying about her personal history, that’s massively relevant, it undermines the entire case.

You’re objecting to the defence raising the issue before the jury. That looks like you are. Obviously in nearly every rape case the accuser is using her personal history as evidence. She says she is not the sort of girl who would do whatever it is the accused is said she did. Meanwhile the accused is using his personal history as evidence as well. He is saying that he is not the sort of person who would do whatever it is the accuser says he did. The changes to the law seem designed to make sure she can say what she likes about him and his behaviour, but he cannot defend himself. It is nearly always relevant. Because there is likely to be nothing either side can say except they are not that sort of person and the jury has to decide which is true. Is it more likely that the accused got a girl drunk with the intention of raping her, or is it more likely that they both got a little drunk and there was poor communication?

Likewise.

Yes but it is kind of hard to ask someone if they are a prostitute or not and they are likely to lie. So is it reasonable to ask how many men she had sex with that night? Or what she was wearing given the special clothes prostitutes often wear?

BUT, if the prosecution isn’t referring to the woman’s sexual preferences or profession, I don’t see how it’s relevant. At that point it becomes a character smear.

Sure but how does the Court know which is which? The law reforms tend to go for the blanket ban. Most calls here are for a blanket ban. Which means they should not be raised at all.

No, because I don’t leap from “one mental illness is probably caused by physical defects” to “ALL mental illnesses are entirely physical” to “rehab doesn’t work”. Two huge leaps of logic there, especially the first one.

Yet.

But you SHOULD adapt policy to evidence. So, as I said somewhere above, if it turned out that most serial rapists were psychopaths, it might be wise to pull back on “rape is evil” campaigns and replace them with “rape will put you in jail” campaigns. Different strokes for different folks.

Except if they are mentally ill, why would they go to jail at all? Rape of the sort people often mean – stranger, serial rape – is clearly a mental illness. Surely they should go to a hospital to be treated, not to a prison?

That’s why I (at some point, probably lost in the thread now) specifically referred to serial rapists – I was trying to exclude this group.

There has been a massive decline in rape across the Western world. Something like 75% in the US since the 1970s. Pornography may have something to do with that. DNA testing may as well. More girls consenting too probably. I would think that serial rapists are rarer and rarer because they will end up in jail – both that they know it and many more are. Which leaves more and more rapists being otherwise normal if immature young men who drank too much.

Robin Levett

Really? Explain the Norwegian experience; or is it just that our criminals are more hardcore than those wussy Norwegians?

You mean Norway’s incredible rape rate which is largely, but I am sure totally co-incidentally, a product of certain immigrant communities? Or do you mean the recent mass shooting case? The shooter being, clearly, a psychopath who is unlikely to be ever successfully rehabilitated? You mean that case?

@94 Cylux: “I was under the impression that high finance and the boardroom are the environments one is most likely to encounter a psychopath in. Rather than the prison system.”

Compare the Wikipedia definition of “a psychopath”:

“Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others and the rules of society. Psychopaths have a lack of empathy and remorse, and have very shallow emotions. They are generally regarded as callous, selfish, dishonest, arrogant, aggressive, impulsive, irresponsible, and hedonistic. Despite this, psychopaths are often superficially charming with an intelligence higher than the average individual.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

94

Absolutely right, I’ve also heard that psychopathy is a pre-requisite for entry into the SAS (probably an urban myth)

95
‘The shooter, being, clearly a psychopath’
Yep, I noticed that he parted his hair on the left-hand side too.

To revert to the thread topic, for the sake of illumination we need to look to cultural correlations and regular cultural associations.

As Sunny aptly remarks, it is absurd to refer to Asian culture as though it is homogeneous. By accounts in the news, Britain has one of the highest incidences of rape in Europe coming second only to Sweden. In Britain, caucasians predominate in online grooming. As best I can tell, FGM and on-street grooming are largely associated in Britain with residents having ethnic Pakistani roots. The top areas for cannabis farming are not Brixton, as many of us might have expected, but in South and West Yorkshire according to this report:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17888762

@ 94 steveb

“You then give me a reference which is suppose to contradict what I have stated about psychopathy and when I quote from that reference, you reject it. I have to say that’s a first for me.”

Is it really the first time you’ve been this dishonest? I doubt it. I pointed out that the couple of sentences you’d cherrypicked weren’t actually relevant to our argument. I notice how you’ve dodged that point (surprise!) in favour of general disingenuous bullcrap. And how you’ve YET AGAIN ignored the bit that contradicted you.

“The concept of free-will is a massive debate in itself, but psychopaths and people with mental illness who commit a serious crime (and where it is found that the crime is directly linked to the mental illness) are treated differently to those people with no diagnosis. The former remain in a forensic setting, usually a secure hospital such as Broadmoor or a medium secure hospital, where they receive treatment. The latter eg Rose West, go to prison, which is considered to be, in part, punishment and deterrence.”

Completely untrue. Most of the studies in that Wikipedia article were of people in prisons, not secure hospitals. Where they found that huge numbers of people were psychopaths, at a level that frankly surprised me. You can whine that reality doesn’t fit your prejudices, but reality won’t change for your convenience.

As for free will, yes it is a huge debate, and whether it exists at all depends on what you mean by “free”. But I see no evidence that psychopaths have less free will than other people, which is why I deliberately framed my statement in those terms.

@ Cylux

“I was under the impression that high finance and the boardroom are the environments one is most likely to encounter a psychopath in. Rather than the prison system.”

Cylux, who’s saying that prison is the environment one is most likely to encounter a psychopath in? Because I didn’t say that, and I suspect your comment was aimed at me.

If psychopathy does what doctors say it does, you’d expect psychopaths to be over-repesented in prisons, and also in positions of success and power. Imagine what you’d do if you had no empathy for other human beings.

@ SMFS

“You’re objecting to the defence raising the issue before the jury.”

No, this is where you’re not getting me. I’m objecting to this only if it’s gratuitous. If the prosecution has already raised the issue then it bloody obviously is reasonable for the defence to address it. Otherwise: Kafka.

“The changes to the law seem designed to make sure she can say what she likes about him and his behaviour, but he cannot defend himself.”

Can you source this? Because if it’s true, I agree with you, but I do need to find out whether it’s true first.

“It is nearly always relevant. Because there is likely to be nothing either side can say except they are not that sort of person and the jury has to decide which is true.”

If that’s the case, it shouldn’t have got to court at all. “He did it cos he’s a bad person” is not conviction beyond reasonable doubt and never can be.

“Is it more likely that the accused got a girl drunk with the intention of raping her, or is it more likely that they both got a little drunk and there was poor communication?”

Not enough information; depends on the specific case. I imagine poor communication and drunkenness often create a tragedy for both people involved.

“Yes but it is kind of hard to ask someone if they are a prostitute or not and they are likely to lie. So is it reasonable to ask how many men she had sex with that night? Or what she was wearing given the special clothes prostitutes often wear?”

We were talking about a case where someone was accused of raping someone they had paid for sex. So her being a prostitute would be part of the basic briefing for the case. You’re deliberately misreading me here, I suspect.

“Sure but how does the Court know which is which? The law reforms tend to go for the blanket ban. Most calls here are for a blanket ban. Which means they should not be raised at all.”

Again, I need a source for the legal changes. And I’m not interested in what other people are calling for. They are not me.

“Yet.”

Whoa, dude, totally compelling argument, my mind is blown.

“Except if they are mentally ill, why would they go to jail at all? Rape of the sort people often mean – stranger, serial rape – is clearly a mental illness. Surely they should go to a hospital to be treated, not to a prison?”

Arguably, but that’s not how the legal system works, is it? IIRC, an insanity plea requires the defendent to be shown not to have known right from wrong at the time of the offense. Mental illness does not demonstrate that in itself.

“There has been a massive decline in rape across the Western world. Something like 75% in the US since the 1970s. Pornography may have something to do with that. DNA testing may as well. More girls consenting too probably. I would think that serial rapists are rarer and rarer because they will end up in jail – both that they know it and many more are. Which leaves more and more rapists being otherwise normal if immature young men who drank too much.”

Agree with all of this. Seems a pretty sensible theory.

94. Cylux

I was under the impression that high finance and the boardroom are the environments one is most likely to encounter a psychopath in. Rather than the prison system.

I am sure it gives you great comfort to think so.

Although Steve Jobs is the only candidate I can think of offhand.

Still, no doubt the Left needs to demonise their opponents, to make those enemies feel less than human, and to justify to themselves their own failures in life. Sad but predictable.

@SMFS #91:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2011/1255.html

Knock yourself out.

So we are now agreed there was none.

Sorry? Did you not read the judgment? Did you not notice the lack of reference to:

“They secretly filmed the young men for months and while they got lots of jury-prejudicing racism, they failed to get anything remotely close to an admission.”

and the reference instead to new scientific evidence?

@SMFS #95 (as was my previous comment):

You mean Norway’s incredible rape rate which is largely, but I am sure totally co-incidentally, a product of certain immigrant communities? Or do you mean the recent mass shooting case? The shooter being, clearly, a psychopath who is unlikely to be ever successfully rehabilitated? You mean that case?

No, I mean Norway’s 20% prison recidivism rate (after two years from release); which compares with the UK and US figure of nearer 50-60%.

I’m not sure what you mean by “Norway’s incredible rape rate”; the UN’s figures have it in 2009 at a little below 20 per 100,000, a little lower than England and Wales (at 24.1).

@105 SMFS: “Although Steve Jobs is the only candidate I can think of offhand.”

According to Bob Diamond, the CEO of Barclays Bank, in an interview with the BBC Today programme on 4 November last year: “the Banks must accept responsibility for what went wrong. “

@SMFS #95:

Here’s the source for the rape statistics cited in my #107:

http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime/CTS12_Sexual_violence.xls

although my comment should refer to 2008, not 2009; the 2009 figures however are even worse for your thesis, with Norway at 20.6 and England & Wales at 27.7 per 100,000.

106. Robin Levett

Sorry? Did you not read the judgment? Did you not notice the lack of reference to:

and the reference instead to new scientific evidence?

This new scientific “evidence” consisting of a microscopic dot of blood and a few hairs – both of which came from clothing that had been kept in police custody for years in unsealed containers and hence are probably the result of contamination.

Yes. I was aware of that. As I said, no “significant” evidence was found. They tried. The bugged the suspects for months. They got nothing. Barry George’s conviction looks strong by way of comparison. Hell, the Birmingham Bombers’ convictions look strong by way of comparison. As I said, one of the great British miscarriages of justice.

@SMFS #110:

I’m unsurprised to see that your expertise in forensic science and the law matches your knowledge of history and climate science. Is there no beginning to your talents?

102

It really is very difficult to remove prejudice against those with a serious mental illness and even psychopaths (SMFS has fixed ideas that will not budge). Most of the diagnosis for people in prisons are made after entry to prison, now I admit that a lot of inmates have a diagnosis of anti-social personality disorder, indeed they are in prison because crime is an anti-social behaviour, they are also in prison (rather than a forensic hospital) because it has been determined that their crime has nothing to do with any diagnosis. Also it is unlikely that they would have received any diagnosis if they hadn’t been imprisoned. However, the crimes that have been committed are varied and often are repeated offending such as car theft. A large number of young people from dysfunctional backgrounds tend to be diagnosed with an anti-social personality.

98/104
Brievik is a good case in point, he will not be pleading insanity, he is quite clear that his actions were rational, but whether SMFS will see Brievik getting the verdict that he (SMFS) would like, we will have to wait.

Certainly it’s difficult to grasp the idea that you could be safer having a psychopath as a neighbour than a person who is considered sane such as John Christie. And giving someone like HItler the label of ‘psychopath’ is probably more palatable than believing that he was sane or ‘normal’

108
Psychopaths are usually quite adept at knowing what is socially acceptable and able to vocalize ideas of morality, that’s why most function quite well in society.

@ 112 steveb

I”Also it is unlikely that they would have received any diagnosis if they hadn’t been imprisoned.”

This is definitely a problem with getting stats on psychopathy – being diagnosed in the first place raises the odds of you already being a criminal. Still, I find it hard to believe that rates of psychopathy in the general population are as incredibly high as they are among violent and sexual offenders.

“Brievik is a good case in point, he will not be pleading insanity, he is quite clear that his actions were rational, but whether SMFS will see Brievik getting the verdict that he (SMFS) would like, we will have to wait.

Certainly it’s difficult to grasp the idea that you could be safer having a psychopath as a neighbour than a person who is considered sane such as John Christie. And giving someone like HItler the label of ‘psychopath’ is probably more palatable than believing that he was sane or ‘normal’”

Hitler almost certainly wasn’t a psychopath, and from what I’ve read I doubt Brievik is either. He seems to have been aware of the horror of his actions and deliberately blocked it out.

And yeah, the psychopath living to your left may be less dangerous than the “sane” person living to your right. For one thing, defining mental illness unavoidably leads into a yes/no distinction – you’re either mentally ill or you’re not – which does not reflect reality, where all you have is different people with various characteristics. And insanity is far from the only cause of dangerous behaviour.

I should add that I do not like the abolition of the double jeopardy rule; there were and are sound reasons of principle for its existence, and the special pleading in relation to certain cases prayed in aid of the abolition don’t in my view invalidate those reasons. I believe that my view is at least dominant in the profession, albeit clearly not universally held.

That being said, so far the safeguards put into place in the legislation as a result of opposition particularly in the Lords have held; the Dobson case shows that. You may be dismissive, on the basis of your tabloid views (exemplified by your continued harping on about issues that played no part in the decision to quash Dobson’s acquittal), of the strength of the new evidence – but new evidence there was. That evidence the Court of Appeal, notwithstanding the criticisms directed at it by persons infinitely better qualified than yourself to do so, considered valid enough to support a conviction, if accepted by a jury; and the jury, after greater criticism, considered it strong enough to consider the two guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Are we to assume that you oppose jury trials where there is contentious forensic evidence?

If psychopathy does what doctors say it does, you’d expect psychopaths to be over-repesented in prisons, and also in positions of success and power. Imagine what you’d do if you had no empathy for other human beings.

What psychopaths lack in empathy they make up in self interest, as such it’s actually very easy for you to get a psychopath to behave as an orderly law-abiding citizen, you just have to couch all your reasons why they should or shouldn’t do something with reference to their self interest. Threats of prison, for example, can actually work with them.

@ 115 Cylux

Agreed – that’s why I was earlier saying that, if it turned out to be true that a lot of rapists were psychopaths, it might be a good idea to advertise the personal costs of commiting rape (ie prison).

111. Robin Levett

I’m unsurprised to see that your expertise in forensic science and the law matches your knowledge of history and climate science. Is there no beginning to your talents?

I am unsurprised by your reliance on the old lawyer’s saw – if you can’t argue the law, argue the facts, if you can’t argue the facts, argue the man. Brilliant.

It would be needless to point out that you have not shown one thing I said is wrong.

steveb

It really is very difficult to remove prejudice against those with a serious mental illness and even psychopaths (SMFS has fixed ideas that will not budge).

How do you know? You would have to try first.

Most of the diagnosis for people in prisons are made after entry to prison

And the majority of “diagnoses” made in prison are things like drinking.

A large number of young people from dysfunctional backgrounds tend to be diagnosed with an anti-social personality.

Because they are probably anti-social. Are you claiming this is a result of The Man and his oppression or because they have anti-social personalities?

Brievik is a good case in point, he will not be pleading insanity, he is quite clear that his actions were rational, but whether SMFS will see Brievik getting the verdict that he (SMFS) would like, we will have to wait.

Well he won’t get the sentence I would like because Norway does not offer it as an option. But his views of his actions are irrelevant to whether he is insane or not. Many seriously ill people think they are perfectly sane.

And giving someone like HItler the label of ‘psychopath’ is probably more palatable than believing that he was sane or ‘normal’

Well normal is not quite perhaps the right word. But I tend to agree otherwise.

Psychopaths are usually quite adept at knowing what is socially acceptable and able to vocalize ideas of morality, that’s why most function quite well in society.

But they usually only vocalise it.

Robin Levett

That being said, so far the safeguards put into place in the legislation as a result of opposition particularly in the Lords have held

No they have not or there would not have been a conviction in the Lawrence case. But I refer you to my original comment which is such changes tend to be slow. You can’t claim, like the man who jumped off the Empire State building, as he was passing the 36th floor, “so far so good” when the pavement is looming. The changes are inevitable. The legal professional can hold on to the vain hope that they are in control and they will only use these news powers on people they really don’t like, but it never works that way. Once the principle is breached, no one has any ability to oppose any further change.

but new evidence there was.

I do not dispute that. There always is. It is just not, as you said it had to be, compelling.

That evidence the Court of Appeal, notwithstanding the criticisms directed at it by persons infinitely better qualified than yourself to do so, considered valid enough to support a conviction, if accepted by a jury; and the jury, after greater criticism, considered it strong enough to consider the two guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Sure. But after the government run a decade long vilification campaign against the men with the help of pretty much all the newspapers. They released things that were clearly irrelevant but highly prejudicial like their undercover footage which showed them as the nasty thugs they were. You could convict Gandhi after a campaign like that.

Are we to assume that you oppose jury trials where there is contentious forensic evidence?

God no.

Cylux

What psychopaths lack in empathy they make up in self interest, as such it’s actually very easy for you to get a psychopath to behave as an orderly law-abiding citizen, you just have to couch all your reasons why they should or shouldn’t do something with reference to their self interest. Threats of prison, for example, can actually work with them.

Except the law cannot police every little thing we do 24 hours a day. You can threaten someone with prison but it is not going to stop them from being a psychopath. It will just make them avoid the easily-caught crimes. Steve Jobs is a great example. Threats of prison may have worked. But he still went on to lie and cheat and, well, steal really from his partners. He went on to abuse a series of women in relationships with him. He was unpleasant to his daughters. Now none of these rose to the level of criminal offense. But they did not add to the general gaiety of the nation and in many ways made the world a worse place.

All threats of prison will do is keep the abuse of others to a low level the law is not concerned with or the psychopath will find a niche where the chances of being caught are low. We need people to internalise the values of society and hold to them at all times.

@SMFS #117:

I am unsurprised by your reliance on the old lawyer’s saw – if you can’t argue the law, argue the facts, if you can’t argue the facts, argue the man. Brilliant.

…says the man who has said not one word about the evidence that actually founded the quashing of Dobson’s acquittal, and his and Norris’s conviction thereafter.

You have argued from authority – your own – that the evidence put before the Court of Appeal was not sufficient to meet the test for quashing Dobson’s acquittal. Since your argument is from authority, it is perfectly legitimate to question the strength of that authority.

Start arguing the issues and we can talk; dismiss them on the basis of your own authority, and your qualification to do so becomes the issue.

…But after the government run a decade long vilification campaign against the men with the help of pretty much all the newspapers. They released things that were clearly irrelevant but highly prejudicial like their undercover footage which showed them as the nasty thugs they were. You could convict Gandhi after a campaign like that.

Are we to assume that you oppose jury trials where there is contentious forensic evidence?

God no.

Make your mind up; are juries so incompetent that they’ll convict on the Government’s say-so with no relevant, or are they qualified to judge the strength of contentious forensic evidence? You can’t have it both ways.

Do you have a problem with Norris’s conviction, or is it just Dobson’s?

I actually do think that there is a racial element here. I didn’t think so originally, but my mind has changed after considering the evidence, as well as what was said in evidence in court. I think that there is an element of targeting white girls.

Also an interesting article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/asian-grooming-why-we-need-to-talk-about-sex-7734712.html?google_editors_picks=true

117

How I know that you have fixed ideas about mental illness and even psychopaths, certainly over time mental health issues have been debated, and you are quite consistent in offering the same view clearly based on prejudice, despite attempts to show otherwise, hence your ideas are ‘fixed’. Also, when shocking crimes are committed involving murder and violence, the default position of a lot of people who know nothing about psychopathy, is to assert that ‘they are psychopaths’ as @98

Most psychopaths are highly intelligent, they are aware of what socially acceptable behaviour is and know how to vocalize same. For some, the portrayal of psychopaths, in all aspects of art, is a far-fetched Hannibal Lecter type which tends to feed preconceived ideas.

Of course, threats of prison work, even psychopaths do not like pain and that’s how prison works, it acts as a deterrence. There is another debate as to whether sentences should be longer to create a stronger deterrence for all, not just psychopaths.

And as for women abuse, that is so widespread, and if that is an indicator for psychopathy, then we have a nation that is full of undiagnosed psychopaths.

And here is another suprising fact, lack of empathy can make you more vulnerable to exploitation, because it renders the person unable to read someone else’s feelings and intentions.

119

Pagar@74 also directed us to the article, but it doesn’t show that there is a racial element, what is being suggested is that there is a cultural element relating to ‘white culture’, eg it is the perceived cultural values that suggest that ‘white girls are easy’.

Compare this with the Stephen Lawrence case where the only reason for him being singled-out was because of his coulour.

ar@74 also directed us to the article, but it doesn’t show that there is a racial element, what is being suggested is that there is a cultural element relating to ‘white culture’, eg it is the perceived cultural values that suggest that ‘white girls are easy’.

In Jim Crow days white Southern men would not shag white ladies but would try and shag black women, because white ladies were pure and virtuous and black women were wantons. That seems to me as racial as you can get. Similarly, if guys are coming on to these girls because they are white and therefore “easy” that seems racial to me.

Similarly, a white woman travelling in some countries, including Pakistan, will get much hassle as white western women will shag anyone of course. So if someone is identifiable as being part of a culture by their skin colour, how is that not “racial”? If a westernised Pakistani woman travels in Pakistan, does she get the same hassle?

If a westernised Pakistani woman travels in Pakistan, does she get the same hassle?

More, in most cases. Ask any Pakistani-British woman about travelling through Pakistani alone.

I’d have gone with ‘more’ as well, after all, one of the reasons why Asian girls might be considered more ‘pure’ is because they’re already heavily policed by their community.
For evidence of such, just try looking up the various stories about western Asian female TV presenters, and how random Asian guys think it’s acceptable for them to march up and inform them that they’re dressing too immodestly and not behaving as they should etc.

They know that we have given up stoning unchaste damsels as commanded in Deuteronomy 22:20-22 and they haven’t:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/kjv/deu022.htm

There was this Christian Evangelical from Texas on the BBC radio the other day saying the word of the Lord never changes so why have we given up stoning unchaste damsels?

Liberals have said nothing.

I’m not sure this the charge though. I think a more realistic statement would be that some liberals played down the extent of the problem, or ignored any ‘racial’ or ‘cultural’ connections. Like it or not, the far-right were ahead of the curve on this issue. No doubt their motivation for looking into this was born out of prejudice and racism but the fact remains they exploited an issue that went ignored for far too long.

Just look at the Guardian and the most recent edition of BBC Question Time. We had every member of the panel saying ‘culture’ and ‘race’ weren’t factors despite the Judge, senior prosecutor, local MP and ‘senior British-Asian figures’ saying ‘culture’ was indeed a factor, and the girls were clearly racially targetted.

These blindspots aren’t exactly uncommon when it comes to *some* of the liberal-left. You are smart enough to know this and I hardly think it’s a secret anymore.

Didn’t you go to town on Straw when he said all these things a few years ago anyway? He was ‘playing a dangerous game’ I remember the Guardian saying. Liberals went after him like he was the new Enoch.

I certainly remember LC attacked him when he made his comments about the illiberalism of the full veil. Something 90% of people will agree with him in another 5 years, including you imo.

Anyway, is this a change of the editorial line at LC? A couple of years ago you laughed in my face for saying that in some circumstances what you call ‘PC gone mad’ is a real issue that has threatened of the lives and well-being of British citizens. So we now know the police continued young girls to be raped because the flak they would get from the BBC and the Graun for ‘getting serious’ and being ‘culturally insenstive’.

More, in most cases. Ask any Pakistani-British woman about travelling through Pakistani alone.

Is it the “alone” that gets her the hassle or the western clothes? If she was in western clothes with a male companion, would she get hassled? Similarly, if she was wearing the local clobber, but alone, would she get hassled? A friend who was in Pakistan said that the woman tourists would get hassled even if they were accompanied by their boyfriends.

De Tocqueville travelled in the USA in the nineteenth century and one of the many things that struck him is how a solitary woman travelling would be treated respectfully by the men. That would not have happened in the France of his time.

I believe all racism is sexually powered: it’s an incoherent set of moveable beliefs that survives because it is powered by sex. Racism in the deep south was fuelled almost solely by the ‘black men will rape white women if they’re free’ ‘they’re just sexually in head randy animals’ myth. (Also used by white slave owners running brothels of black women slaves.) In Turkey, i learn the physically-painful way what it is to be subject to (our belief not a century back) moral view of sex which sees, not consent versus lack of consent, but women as sluts, free to be raped because ‘available’, or women as virtuous idols because demonstrably pure because always ostentatiously parading a social chastity belt.
I also think that muslims who live here need to ‘get’, preferably endorse, our sexual morality (consent vs. purity). But they’re hardly the only ones. (There are white teenage girls who don’t get it either: the sort who were raped think you should never ask to use a condom or refuse any sexual favour because a man who won’t fuck you proves you are worthless.)

in head. in heat!
Also, considering other comments, my experience in Turkey was while wearing huge, completely covering men’s clothes. In my experience, how you dress has no effect, if your body language is cowed and scared or if you hit everyone who touches you and act aggressive has a total effect: you’re picked on because you’re seen as weak, as well as available.

The very fact these men are being called Pakistani as a description of ethnicity shows how lazy and ill informed people are.
Pakistani is a nationality, not an ethnicity, the ethnic groups of Pakistan include Punjabi (51%), Pakthan, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Balochi, Seraiki, Hazara, etc, etc.
Rather than call them British Pakistani, the press should home in on the specific ethnic group they belong to. I believe they’re mostly Kashmiri (?), with 1 Pakhtan (confirmed).
It is not a Pakistani problem, in Pakistan gang-rapes are disproportionately committed by the Balochi community, as part of their tribal traditions. There is no gang-rape problem in the Kashmiri community in Pakistan, therefore it has clearly manifested here, and must be tackled here.

Regarding my comment 130 “tribal traditions”, that is exactly how a Pakistani Senator from Balochistan described the appaling acts which are the rulings given by tribal courts. I certainly wasn’t trying to justify them as “their way”.

@ 126 tory

Most of that was fair comment, it’s good to see someone going out of their way not to apply broad-brush generalisations. I do take issue with what you said about Straw: the full veil DOES come from illiberal attitudes, but banning it is ALSO illiberal – indeed, even more so, as you’re overriding the personal decision of the person in question. Pretending that the veil is an icon of liberty is silly, but objecting to the government telling people what to wear, and alienating a religious group in the process, is not.

Also, this:

“A couple of years ago you laughed in my face for saying that in some circumstances what you call ‘PC gone mad’ is a real issue that has threatened of the lives and well-being of British citizens. So we now know the police continued young girls to be raped because the flak they would get from the BBC and the Graun for ‘getting serious’ and being ‘culturally insenstive’.”

In short: no we don’t. We know the police CLAIMED that this was the case, but there’s every possibility that this is just their excuse for not doing their job properly. Or that they did do their best but know that the media circus will misrepresent the facts, so they’re running interference. Or even that these police officers simply have a bone to pick with PCism and saw their chance to strike a blow against the enemy.

With respect, you’re committing confirmation bias: accepting a debatable source as gospel because it supports what you want to believe.

In fact, does it sound at all realistic that the Guardian would lay into police officers for stopping rapists?