Anonymous UK 'leader' fined for revealing ID of rape complainant The leader of notorious 'hacktivist' group Anonymous UK has been fined £400 for identifying the woman who accused him of rape. Malcolm Blackman, 48, was accused of twice attacking the woman at the Occupy London protest camp outside St Paul's Cathedral in January 2013. He stood trial at the Old Bailey later that year but was …
I think there should be anonymity towards suspects unless found guilty.
All accused have to face a lifetime of "Did he do it?"
They need the same protection as the accusers.
But then I think there needs to be different levels of rape as masked at knifepoint is not the same as two pissed out of their mind people.
This has to be discussed as open minded adults and not gut reactions.
>I think there should be anonymity towards suspects unless found guilty.
Only seems fair. If someone can concoct a malicious but vaguely-plausible-enough-to-get-the-wheels-turning allegation and then be protected for life even if the case collapses, then Shirley the victim in such circumstances deserves some protection from acquiring the quite probably life wrecking rapist epithet?
Not meaning to imply that the specific case in the article was malicious. Sounds like that particular accused fucktard probably did it. Malcolm Blackman, born 1966-67 of Nottingham, wasn't it?
The law's still a ass
Fitting icon --->
Given the woman admits to being in a relationship at the time, and given that she apparently was so blind drunk she didn't even know about it until he claimed it did, it is impossible to speculate as to the accuracy of the charges. In fact I am surprised he didn't counter with a charge of false accusation.
Given the information provided in this article, I find the whole thing to be an abuse of the legal process.
"But then I think there needs to be different levels of rape as masked at knifepoint is not the same as two pissed out of their mind people."
Most rapes are committed by someone known to the victim, very few are actually the knifepoint, dragged into the bushes types.
"Two people, both pissed out of their mind[s]" having sex is either (my preference) not rape, or they are both raping each other. Unless you're being astoundingly heteronormative and sexist.
I would also suggest that there are differing levels of intoxication and they are not all equal in terms of consent. If someone is capable of affirming consent then their level of intoxication should not be an issue. Currently there seems to be a push towards only a stone cold sober person (woman!) being able to consent, this is patently untrue as women enter into legally binding contracts while intoxicated all the time (e.g. buying more alcohol while drunk, taking a taxi home etc.)
In fact, that would be a great case - refuse to pay for a taxi because you were clearly too drunk to enter into a legal contract with the driver and (s)he should have known it. Let's see how far you get with that argument.
If we push further down this road the already embarrassingly low level of rape convictions will get even worse as we start calling normal sexual encounters rape and juries throw them out for the nonsense they are - making genuine cases all the harder to prosecute and ultimately less likely to be prosecuted. And when rape is less likely to be prosecuted then people with a predilection for it will be more likely to do it. That good old law of unintended consequences again...
"I think there should be anonymity towards suspects unless found guilty.
All accused have to face a lifetime of "Did he do it?"
They need the same protection as the accusers."
We used to have it! The Sexual Offences Act 1970 introduced anonymity for the accused. This was repealed in 1988 as it was felt it was discouraging victims from coming forward.
The Sexual Offences Act 2003 then took us to the other end of the spectrum by offering lifetime anonymity for the accuser. The first case of an individual being convicted, sent to jail and then having all charges squashed on appeal occurred in 2006.
Clearly, what is needed is anonymity for both parties until an actual verdict is reached.
@AC
"No, it's always useful fo be a leader, especially when the status allows you to sleep with as many women as you like...."
Not so good an idea unless you have a signed consent form (possibly from the parents too) recorded on video in a well lit room to prove that she was willing at the time. Otherwise you get publicly shamed and branded if she regrets it in the morning.
"Or decides to regret it after she finds out you're a two timing SOaB and that your celebrity status has also enabled you to sleep with other women."
For various definitions of "celebrity". Whether he did it or not, the man comes across as a witless self serving moron and yet people like him seem to think they have some higher moral calling to speak and act for the rest of us? Give me a feckin break. He can't even control his own penis.
"I thought by definition Anon had no leaders?....." I suspect it's a legal strategy. When one of their "non-leader" leaders gets caught they can deny responsibility for the actions of the group by claiming "we have no leaders". Rather useful if you are facing the legal damages from a DDoS on someone like Sony.
if the accused is cleared and proved innocent then the accusations are either false, erroneous, wrong or malicious. (immoral and expensive lawyers aside)
Being a victim of rape is nothing to be ashamed of, being a convicted rapist is. An accused rapist is on some strange middle ground where many will think... no smoke without fire. Simply being accused of rape can seriously fuck up ones life.
"As a complainant in a rape case she is entitled to automatic lifetime anonymity under law, which remains in place despite the not guilty verdicts"
So a potentially lying victim who concocted a story out of malice is protected from exposure whilst the accused is deemed a sex offender before a trail has even taken place.
If it can be proved that the victim is lying, either to protect their image or as malicious intent to the accused, then they should face a trial for perverting the course of justice. And it should be made just as public as the initial arrest and naming of the accused.
Whilst rape is seen as a particularly heinous crime, it seems false accusations are not seen in such a light. It's about time they were.
Just, in cases like this is very, very difficult to demonstrate if the accusation is concocted or it is true, unless clear evidences emerge, just like it's very, very difficult to demonstrate the rape.
Thereby, better to clear a guilty one than jail an innocent, but unless there's evidences of a malicious accuasation - which would trigger its own trial - also the law protecting the alleged victim should stand, for the very same reason, better to protect a guilty one than put shame on an innocent.
>which would trigger its own trial
Only if there was sufficient evidence for such a trial to stand a reasonable chance of offering value for money. Very, very, very unlikely if the original rape allegation was deemed strong enough to prosecute after requisite investigation in the first place.
>also the law protecting the alleged victim should stand, for the very same reason, better to protect a guilty one than put shame on an innocent.
In this situation the accused is the innocent and the "victim" is the guilty - so the law must be changed if it's "better to protect a guilty one than put shame on an innocent."
Being a victim of rape is to be an innocent party, and so one should not be ashamed. But in practice, historically, women were abjectly dependent on men in an economic sense, and if a woman wasn't an intact virgin, she would not be able to get married. While it's true there has been social progress in the status of women, traditional attitudes towards women and sex dating back to the earliest agricultural civilizations still pervade our society.
If the accused is cleared and proved innocent then the accusations are either false, erroneous, wrong or malicious.
This is incorrect. You've missed out, impossible for the court to say.
And that's very important, as people are innocent unless proven guilty.
I've been on several juries, and you have to deal with multiple lots of conflicing testimony. With the knowledge that if you get it wrong, then you're either sending an innocent person to prison or letting a guilty one off. Neither is a nice feeling, and I'd say the unhappiest jury I was on were the one letting someone off they mostly thought was guilty. But the evidence wasn't up to the job.
In most rape cases you've only got 2 people who were there, and that makes it even harder. And the same is going to be true of a false accusation of rape, where you have to prove intent beyond all reasonable doubt, which is very hard to convince a jury of. I'm glad I never got a rape case.
It's why the rape conviction rate is always going to be low. Unless we all start wearing video cameras that upload to t'internet at all times.
If the accused is cleared and proved innocent then the accusations are either false, erroneous, wrong or malicious.
Meanwhile, in the real world, rape cases fail to get convictions for very different reasons, like insufficient evidence, or the victim not turning up to give evidence at the court case because of re-victimisation, or the fact that they live in what can often be a complex environment of family and domestic abuse.
Full disclosure - my partner works with victims of crime, including victims of domestic abuse and rape, so I may have more knowledge of these sorts of matter than the average member of the public. Sadly rape and domestic violence are FAR more common that most people think.
I thought I'd add the following to my previous comment:
As the law stands, at the moment, it is (rightly) a crime to disclose the identity of a victim or complainant, even after the case has closed; after all, as mentioned above a 'not guilty' verdict is NOT necessarily the same as innocent.
However, the same does not go for the accused; their identity can be disclosed, even if found not guilty, and I do not believe this to be in the best interests of justice.
I will illustrate this with the following case:
Last year, there was a high-profile case where a woman had (falsely) accused her partner of rape. If I recall the details correctly, the woman in question was a law student and was abut to take her bar exams. She had not adequately prepared, so in order to get more time to study, she concocted a tale of sexual violence perpetrated against her by her then partner. Despite having an alibi (again, I'm going from memory, but I believe the accused wasn't even in the same city at the time of the accusation), the man was arrested, bailed, and prosecuted.
Such cases take a long time to bring to court, typically several months, and in the intervening time, the accused lost his job and reputation, and was subject to public vilification and hatred. As the accused, his identity was made public.
He was later exonerated of all the charges, and his accuser was found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice, and jailed. A just punishment, I'm sure all will agree. However, in the process, his life was pretty much ruined, and this was largely because the identities of those accused are made a matter of public record, and reported on in the press.
It is worth remembering that the point of the judicial system is not only to prosecute the guilty, but to protect the innocent.
Of course, this was an extreme case, and such occurrences are, thankfully, rare. Sadly, for every false accusation, there are probably thousands of genuine rape cases, and the conviction rate is low. However, it is better to allow the guilty to go free than it is to imprison the innocent. Either way, whatever the outcome of the case, the identity of the victim shouldn't be a matter of public record, and unless convicted, neither should the identity of the accused.
edit - in case anyone is interested, here is the case in question
"He was later exonerated of all the charges, and his accuser was found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice, and jailed. A just punishment, I'm sure all will agree. However, in the process, his life was pretty much ruined, and this was largely because the identities of those accused are made a matter of public record, and reported on in the press."
There is a good case for victims of such false accusations to be able to go after massive damages claims from the accuser, press and CPS/Police. I see he got £38k, which is a desultory amount for destroying his life using the legal system.
"Meanwhile, in the real world, rape cases fail to get convictions"
Mainly because the victim is known to the assailant and as such won't even get it to the complaint stage in the first instance. Incest levels in particular are probably 100 times higher than commonly reported because even when anonymised people won't admit to it.
That said, this one sounds like a disgruntled groupie - and such cases are extremely damaging to the credibility of _real_ rape victims.
Slightly more complicated.
What you describe is valid only if the alleged victim is _NOT_ found lying. If she is found lying the crown is entitled to raise the standard set of charges from the "perverting the course of justice" set.
That, unfortunately happens only if it has become so bleeding obvious that the "victim" is lying that the crown has no other choice but to do it. It needs to happen more often and the balance should be redressed a little bit. But not a lot.
It also nearly never happens for historic crimes. There the standard of evidence at present is obscenely low. In fact there is none to speak of - it is only the accuser's word vs the defendant's word bringing the whole judiciary to the level of a 16th century holy inquisition court.
"if the accused is cleared and proved innocent"
In England and Wales you are not proven 'innocent', you are found 'not guilty', which just means there was sufficient doubt that the jury could not convict. You'd need to go to Scotland to get an 'innocent' finding.
"then the accusations are either false, erroneous, wrong or malicious."
Or the evidence was simply not enough to secure a conviction. Many rapes are not reported until well after the event and that means there is little evidence to support the accusation.
"Whilst rape is seen as a particularly heinous crime, it seems false accusations are not seen in such a light. It's about time they were."
It's not quite as simple as that, and for quite a few reasons. Perhas the better fix would be to have an 'innocent' finding in English/Welsh courts, so at least the accused can have their name cleared rather than being left with the question of if he got away with it.
If there is a false rape accusation and the accused is found not guilty, then surely he's in a good position to go after the complainant in a civil case.
It's not just the crown who are entitled to prosecute false complainants.
As for the case in question: It does sound suspiciously similar to claims made against someone who's currently residing in a london embassy.
But it is this simple:
A man accused of rape will continue to have a cloud over his head regardless of whether he is guilty, not guilty, or even innocent. While rape is a serious crime, so if the false accusation of same. Until both are treated with equal severity, there is no justice, just one side goring the other.
> Whilst rape is seen as a particularly heinous crime, it seems false accusations are not seen in such a light. It's about time they were.
One objection to giving anonymity to people accused of rape is that it makes it much harder to build a case against them. If you take a few recent high profile cases as examples Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris and Max Clifford. In these cases the perps appeared to have been getting away with it for years and the victims were afraid to come forward as they thought no one would take them seriously. Individually there wasn't enough evidence for a conviction. It was only when a few accusations were made public that other victims came forward and there was enough correlation in their claims that the police could build a case against them. If these people were allowed to remain anonymous then they would never have been convicted (or to have been vilified posthumously).
So this isn't a simple situation.
One accusation of rape is hard to prove.
Twenty accusations where there is a high degree of similarity between the attacks is easier to prove.
Of course once you've publicised a complain you leave things open to copy cat claims. Who'd want to be a retired politician at the moment? No matter how innocent you might have been (other than being guilty of being a politician) you must fear the door being hammered on by the police with all the TV cameras in tow at 6 in the morning.
I don't know what is the right thing to do here.
If victims were more inclined to come forward in the first place then there wouldn't be a need for publicity to build cases. This would be the best situation. Here the accused should have anonymity, no question.
But while this isn't the case it is a harder case to call.
Perhaps there should be some discretion here. Perhaps the court should have to look at the case and decide whether there is a chance of there being more victims to might come forward, and only then make the decision to publicise the name of the accused.
The current rules don't actually do what they are intended too anyway. Most sex crimes are perpetrated by people known to the victim, so in a lot of cases the name of the criminal is published, possibly after the guilty verdict, but anyone who knows the attacked will be immediately be able to identify the victim. There should at least be a step in the process whereby the victim is consulted about whether their assailant should be named. But then the legal system (in my experience and sadly I have experience here) doesn't give a shit about the victim. The police will try and arrange trials at locations remote from the victim location and the court system or the prosecution service will decide it is easier to progress the case in the court in spitting distance of where the victim lives so they end up feeling too scared to ever go home. Then when the case gets to court the prosecution service won't have done their homework and more or less stand up in court and say "Sorry your honour the dog ate my home work". I had to make the defence barrister write the case papers so that a guilty plea could be entered. Believe me real victims are in for a shit time.
"One objection to giving anonymity to people accused of rape is that it makes it much harder to build a case against them. "
Anonymity is the norm in New Zealand and the problems described are exactly those which occur (although in the cases of Clifford, Harris et al, New Zealand courts would have granted permanent name suppression to the convicted person too)
The thing is, with the advent of t'internet it's harder and harder for gagging orders to stay effective - and after having to defend a rape accusation (even when not guilty) the expense is such that an extra £400 might well be seen as worthwhile paying to get his accuser's name out in the open.
The problem with the idea that publicising the name of the accused makes it easier to establish a pattern of behaviour is that it potentially creates a pattern of behaviour that isn't there. This is a paticular danger with famous people. The issue is that if someone's potential guilt is publicised to tens of millions and if the rate of false memories/accusations is quite low say one in a million then there will still be tens of false accusations. The police will probably only select those they consider plausable which will naturally be similar as this will be the selection criteria.
A pattern of similar accusations when there is no publicity is compelling, a pattern with publicity is to be expected and means nothing.
"Individually there wasn't enough evidence for a conviction. It was only when a few accusations were made public that other victims came forward and there was enough correlation in their claims that the police could build a case against them. If these people were allowed to remain anonymous then they would never have been convicted (or to have been vilified posthumously).
So this isn't a simple situation."
Whilst this is true, it doesn't mean there can't be an automatic presumption of anonymity with provision for a judge to dismiss it if they think it necessary in that case.
You can't go the other way and grant anonymity once someone's name is out.
Having been raped unconsciously once, why would she continue to put herself in danger by remaining in the presence of this man?
I am somewhat saddened by the number of up-votes this comment has received. We don't know all the details - who is to say that she was able to get away from this man, or that he didn't seek her out?
Either way, blaming a rape victim is never the right way to go - just remember, there is only one cause of rape, and that is rapists.
"I am somewhat saddened by the number of up-votes this comment has received. We don't know all the details - who is to say that she was able to get away from this man, or that he didn't seek her out?
Either way, blaming a rape victim is never the right way to go - just remember, there is only one cause of rape, and that is rapists."
This man, of course, has not been found guilty of rape, making your comment quite impressively defamatory.
This man, of course, has not been found guilty of rape, making your comment quite impressively defamatory.
I should clarify my point - in this particular case we don't know the facts of the case, and even if we did, we would not know whether a rape took place, and whether this particular man was responsible. All we know is that he was found not guilty, which means that there was insufficient evidence to secure a prosecution.
All this is incidental to my actual point, which is that saying it is someone's fault that they got raped twice, because they had been raped once before is utterly wrong-headed, and is blaming the victim. Victim blaming is one of the many reasons that rape cases fail to bring a conviction, not because the defendant is innocent, but because the victim is made to feel unable to give evidence in court. The term for this in use by those who know what they are talking about is, "re-victimisation".
So, my point is this - there is only ever one person to blame for a rape, and that is the rapist. The victim could be wearing provocative clothing, acting flirty, or even lying naked in the middle of the street, and it would not change that fact. However, it is also a sad fact that many people do say things like, "she shouldn't have led him on," or "she shouldn't have been that drunk," or "she shouldn't have been anywhere near him if he'd raped her once already."
There's an old saying about that:
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Being a rape victim doesn't invalidate it.
Frankly the guy is an obvious lout. She is either oblivious to this and impossible to protect or attempting to climb the perceived social ladder by sleeping with the leader. Neither are socially desirable behaviors and she ought to be shamed for those.
'Either way, blaming a rape victim is never the right way to go - just remember, there is only one cause of rape, and that is rapists'
At best/worst she is an alleged rape victim. The assumption she is a victim is prejudging the man in this case even after the man was found not guilty. The fact that this is done is a strong argument for anonymity for the accused.
Interestingly and at the risk of provoking a flaming the studies on the prevelance of false rape accusations are all over the place from 3% to 90% of accusations. It is an inherently difficult thing to measure (estimate) but what is undisputed is that the overwhelming majority of those accused are not taken to court and found guilty so on the presumption of innocence there is a massive problem of those accused being unjustly victimised.
The incidents were at Occupy London i.e. a group of tents outside St. Pauls. Tents are not known for being secure, it might even have been the same big tent.
The only thing that stands out is the cable ties - if there was enough detail to know for certain it was only one cable tie and the cable tie wasn't long enough, the evidence is suspect. Of course, the victim could have been stressed or confused under trial, and it could have been achieved with three cable ties instead of one.
If the accuser can be proven to have made a false accusation, she should go to jail, and, of course, not be entitled to anonymity either.
Unfortunately, though, some guilty people don't get convicted of their crimes, so allowing people accused of rape to be anonymous would prevent women from protecting themselves.
"If the accuser can be proven to have made a false accusation, she should go to jail, and, of course, not be entitled to anonymity either."
It's more difficult than that.
It's true that making a false accusation does a wider amount of damage than just to the accused, because it makes life more difficult for every subsequent genuine rape victim.
However, if you inflict severe punishment on false accusers, then genuine rape victims may feel less inclined to report the crime in case things don't go well and the victim finds themselves on the wrong end of an injustice. Proof in law and absolute proof sometimes walk down different sides of the road.
Unfortunately, though, some guilty people don't get convicted of their crimes, so allowing people accused of rape to be anonymous unless convicted would prevent a vanishingly tiny minority of paranoid women from protecting themselves from the innocent but presumed guilty and thus destroyed.
FTFY
"Unfortunately, though, some guilty people don't get convicted of their crimes, so allowing people accused of rape to be anonymous would prevent women from protecting themselves."
You appear to be saying that if someone is found not guilty by the court, they should be treated as guilty by the rest of society for the rest of their life instead. No smoke without fire eh?
You're wrong, incidentally.
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