Local prosecutors support 'yes means yes' standard to boost victims' rights

Submitted by Mastodon on Thu, 2018-02-08 22:59

Article here. Excerpt:

'Platte and Colfax county prosecutors are on board with a measure to bring more clarity to the state’s standard for prosecuting criminal sexual assault cases if progress continues on boosting victims’ rights.

“As long as we’re not blaming the victims of sexual assault. We don’t want to do that, ever,” said Platte County Attorney Carl Hart while discussing a bill that would adopt affirmative consent as the guide prosecutors use to take sex assault cases to court.

“We’ve really evolved on victims’ issues in the last 40 years,” Hart said. “It’s been a necessary cultural shift.”
...
Currently, state law says a victim must express a lack of consent through words or conduct as the standard for criminal sexual assault cases.

With the newly introduced bill, consent means words or overt actions that indicate a knowing and voluntary agreement, freely given, to engage in sexual contact or intercourse. A person could also still withdraw consent with words or conduct.'

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Comments

... is also fine with the Napoleonic standard of guilty til proven innocent, too.

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2018-02-09 14:25

The affirmative consent model assumes all sex is rape unless the accused can prove otherwise. No doubt, this will result in more convictions--because few parties in a sexual encounter are prepared to prove they had consent. AS Matt says, this is guilt until proven innocent.

Imagine being a married to a woman for ten years who then divorces you and accuses you of raping her. Could a man go back over ten years and prove that every time he had sex with his wife he had "affirmative consent"? If not, then off with his head.

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Submitted by el cid on Sun, 2018-02-11 15:08

... we have a burden of proof on the accuser standard. At least, for now, anyway.

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Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2018-02-11 22:02