Man Rapes Would-Be (female) Thief and nobody's laughing. Anyone remember that lady that raped a would-be male thief? It got over 1000 points in /r/funny

[–]Demonspawn 56 points57 points58 points 14 years ago* (81 children) | Copy Link

[–]jelliedbabies 30 points31 points32 points 14 years ago (30 children) | Copy Link

One word "Duress".

From a strictly legal standpoint he was in the wrong for making such an offer in the first place but it equally falls under the definition of soliciting as it does so for rape. Prostitution is defined as sex for payment, that payment need not be of cash or material goods, simply a transfer of wealth (under it's many definitions).

I was going to ask you to imagine this as a police officer making such a proposition but realised we don't agree to such standards of honour and integrity as they. She made a decision millions make, "should I perform a sex act on any grounds other than pure lust and attraction" and although this response might indicate to the contrary (it was a chance to think it over in more depth) my thoughts on both their situation are simply "tough".

There better be arrests for attempted theft and destruction of property though. Although we all know there wont be.

[–]ZeroNihilist 9 points10 points11 points 14 years ago (14 children) | Copy Link

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[–]Insanitarium 5 points6 points7 points 14 years ago (11 children) | Copy Link

There are two questions here, though. The first has to do with her culpability: she probably committed a crime, and (if she did) should be punished. It would be a miscarriage of justice if she wasn't held accountable for her crime as a result of his crime.

But the second question has to do with his culpability. And, although it sometimes seems counterintuitive, it is always a crime to use the threat of criminal charges to coerce or manipulate someone. If you believe someone has committed a criminal act, you have exactly two choices: you can report them, or you can not report them. Criminal law is not intended to be used as leverage, which is why blackmail is illegal, and which is why accepting any sort of bribe to not report a crime makes you an accessory to that crime. The police and courts are not your personal underworld enforcers, so misusing them as such is fundamentally criminal.

Now, in a situation like this story, common sense can lead you to the wrong (from a legal standpoint) conclusion: in a sense, it looks like she was victimizing him, so having him offer to ignore her crime in return for sex might sound kinda like turnabout/fair play. But he was never a victim (she was stealing from his employer), and even if he had been, he was still using a threat to get sex from her, which is by any reasonable definition rape.

To use a similar analogy to one I employed elsewhere in the thread: if he'd pointed a gun at her and told her to give him a blowjob, he wouldn't have been literally "forcing" her either; he'd just have been using her reasonable fear of injury to get sex. In this case, he was using her reasonable fear of being arrested and locked up to get sex. There's very little difference between the two acts, regardless of how sympathetic you find her as a victim.

[–]fondueguy 1 point2 points3 points 14 years ago* (2 children) | Copy Link

First off, thanks for explaining to me.

If she was stealing from his employer and not victimizing him, then that changes things quite a bit. He is sort of taking a hush hush bribe for a crime against someone else and like you said that makes him culpable... For profiting off of a crime against someone else.

As for her, isn't she just commiting a crime and bribing someone into silence (creating a semi accomplice)? Personally I define something as a bribe when the person uses it to keep doing something bad, such as not taking responsibility. It's a sad predicament bit I don't see her as a victim. In fact criminals tend to do that to themselves.

As an aside...

The police and courts are not your personal underworld enforcers, so misusing them as such is fundamentally criminal.

That's the thing though, you can't know or control my intentions when I deal with the police. I could report a person's crime simply because I don't like that person and I want them to rot in jail. But does that really change anything? Also I could choose not to report a crime became I know that person and I like them. So of course personal prerogatives will come into play when using valuable information.

Id say he was taking a bribe, but it is hard to draw the line of what a bribe is.

[–]Insanitarium 4 points5 points6 points 14 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

If she offered him a blowjob if he'd let her go, she'd be bribing him. If he told her she'd need to give him a blowjob or he wouldn't let her go, he's blackmailing her. The news story may be wrong (it's entirely possible that she got caught, offered him a BJ, and then made a false police report), but according to the facts as presented in the article, this is blackmail, not bribery. And while accepting a bribe is often a criminal act, being successfully blackmailed isn't, unless the act the blackmailer demands of you is itself criminal.

In either case, I won't argue about whether she's a victim. An underage girl got caught in the act of an almost laughably-minor crime (I'm assuming she was carrying the scrap metal, as opposed to loading it in bulk into a UHaul or something, and that therefore we're talking about the pettiest of larcenies) and an middle-aged guy manipulated her into thinking that her only way to avoid the various consequences of being caught stealing (jail time, public humiliation, a criminal record, and trouble with her parents) was to suck him off? I have a very hard time not seeing her as a victim here, whatever other personal failings she might have.

But as far as your last question: you are completely in your rights to make a decision about reporting a crime in any case where you are the victim (if someone else is the victim, you may be legally obligated to report it). You can base this decision on a number of factors, including the nature of the crime, your relationship to the perpetrator, your knowledge of the circumstances of the crime or of mitigating factors. The only thing you can't do it make your decision contingent on the perpetrator doing something for you. That's the basic definition of blackmail, which if you do it to get money is also called extortion, and which if you do it to get sex is also called rape. That being said, the legal system is likely to look the other way if you're reasonable (if you extort the value of the damages, or if you blackmail someone into cleaning up their mess or repairing the damage) but not so much when you're demanding that a sex act over a petty larceny.

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As several have already pointed out, rape is where duress compromises consent. Consider the "Trainspotting" scenario, where a man is pressured into continuing a relationship with a girl he discovers is a minor by the threat of going to the police. Yes, it's blackmail, but it's also using a position of power to force someone to put out, hence rape. Or consider a situation where a drug dealer trades drugs to a "rattling" addict for sex. The user's state ensures duress on the decision to give or withhold consent.

That's my moral position - it's wrong if you're using a position of power to encourage someone to shag/fellate/allow you to touch them up etc when they wouldn't do it under any other circumstances.

Remember Kenneth Clarke (UK - Justice Minister) famously made a distinction between "date rape" and "proper rape" (i.e. stranger drags a random girl into an alley. He was rightly castigated. The truth is that there is rape, then there is rape plus violence. Just because there is no violence involved in the sex, if you are pressured to consent then it is still rape.

All of that said, in legal terms, the crux of the issue is who suggested it. If it is believed the attempted thief offered, the case will not hold up. I'm inclined to believe that is slightly less likely than the alternative explanation, but as no one else was there, it's ultimately going to come down to an appeal to ethos in the courtroom.

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[–]Insanitarium 0 points1 point2 points 14 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

I just gave you the federal code of the crime involved, and you say "the threat itself is not illegal"?

Since this seems to be your point of confusion here, though, it's the threat that defines it as rape, not the thing that's being threatened. By that logic, if I threatened to shoot you if you didn't have sex with me, and then when you complied I didn't shoot you, it wouldn't be rape.

You're inventing an entire idiosyncratic legal system of your own, where the rules are entirely different, and then getting disappointed when existing legal systems in the real world don't line up with your fantasy. "It's only duress if I'm threatening something that's an illegal act in and of itself!" "If it wouldn't be rape if she offered sex, then it can't be rape if he demanded it!" "Not letting someone borrow your car is duress!" These are all just plain wrong, in every sense of the word, and asserting them loudly doesn't make them right, in any sense of the word.

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I've been posting a lot in this thread just because it blows my mind that anyone could seriously believe half of the shit that's being said.

What you have to keep in mind, though, is that a lot of the stupidity that gets unleashed in cases like this is basically just an untempered overreaction to real problems related to MR. It is insane that, in cases of statutory rape, adult men are typically treated much worse by the courts and public opinion than adult women. It is insane that, in cases of underage consensual sex, it's routine for the guy to be punished and the girl to be viewed as a "victim." It is insane that, in cases of domestic violence, our legal system is entirely slanted in favor of the woman, regardless of who the perpetrator is.

So when you see a story like this, keep in mind that there are a lot of people here who are still boiling over with rage at other injustices, and that's just primed them to say idiotic things about a middle-aged man coercing an underage girl into sex with unlawful threats.

At least, that's what I keep hoping.

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In the state of Ohio, where this happened, statute 2907.03 defines Sexual battery.

(9) The other person is a minor, and the offender is the other person’s athletic or other type of coach, is the other person’s instructor, is the leader of a scouting troop of which the other person is a member, or is a person with temporary or occasional disciplinary control over the other person.

I think that there is a fair argument that he was attempting to have temporary disciplinary control over her. So, while she is of the age of consent in Ohio, they have rules that basically say that minors (16-17) cannot consent to sexual activity with people who have authority over them. This seems pretty reasonable, and could be used to protect boys from predatory teachers (where there can be obvious rape without the use of physical force).

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