The Decline Continues

By One Man's Kingdom | Source | August 22, 2008

This posting at Glenn Sacks details 'Federal Rule of Evidence 413'. It's essentially a law in the US that gives men on trial for sexual assault fewer protections than defendants on trial for any other kind of crime. It provides that "in a criminal case in which the defendant is accused of an offense of sexual assault, evidence of the defendant's commission of another offense or offenses of sexual assault is admissible, and may be considered for its bearing on any matter to which it is relevant."
And Rule 413 is not restricted to prior criminal convictions or even arrests of the defendant. A mere accusation of a prior sexual offense would be admissible if the government can prove it occurred by a preponderance of the evidence (which means 51% likely). This is far less than guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. There is also no time limit as to required proximity of the prior bad acts to the charged criminal conduct upon which the trial is based.

What makes this posting timely is that a new law is being proposed here in New Zealand where accused rapists who plan to argue that sex with their victims was consensual may have to prove in court what measures they took to gain consent. In other words, they are guilty unless they can prove otherwise.

There's a common thread to all these new laws that reduce men's legal rights. It's the increasing ease with which women can use the justice system to secure for themselves men's wealth.

Traditionally, a woman got at a man's wealth by marrying one, giving birth to sons and inheriting from fathers.

Now that fathers are disappearing from family life and men are becoming more reluctant to marry, can it really be co-incidence that new laws are coming into play that allow women to make the most ridiculous of claims of any man and be assured that they will win in a courtroom? How long before an automatic guilty verdict for rape translates into financial compensation? Not long at all, if history is any guide. Every law that women have had passed in their favour - read DV, matrimonial property, no-fault divorce, automatic child custody, child support, sexual harassment, work-place discrimination - have all translated into huge wealth transfers from men to women. How very convenient that this should be occurring at exactly the same time as marriage is imploding as an institution.

It isn't apparent that this law would not apply retrospectively, so it's conceivable that it would not only require men to prove that they obtained consent for sex, but that for any charge of rape - not matter how long ago - the same onus of proof is required, or it's off to jail you go. Or not, I suspect, if you can reach an out-of-court financial settlement.

This means every woman you have ever had sex with is now a potential predator and could be supported by the courts in any claim she makes. All she has to do is make the complaint and you're toast. And I suspect running off to foreign lands will be of no assistance at all, unless that country has no extradition treaty with your homeland. The number of countries of this ilk are also decreasing every year. With the spread of communicating computer systems, there will be nowhere to hide.

If you think I'm being alarmist, think again. This is exactly what's happened with the child support system, where a man can be ordered to pay amounts on an ongoing basis that may have absolutely no correspondence with his capacity to pay, and doesn't require that the children he is being ordered to support are his or that he has any contact with them - a recent case here hasn't even established that the mother should demonstrate that the children she receives support for are actually alive.

Laws are now in place to extradite any man from another country if he is breach of these orders and to arrest him at international borders. None of this would have been thinkable a short while ago - it would have been considered such a gross violation of natural justice that no-one would have thought anyone would have tolerated it. But we have. Most don't even know that it's going on.

All of it has that stink of that fool of a man that ordered all the men on a sinking ship to stand to attention at the point of a gun, while all the women and children were loaded onto lifeboats.

Is our ship going down and no-one's saying anything except 'women and children first'?