California Supreme Court says rape begins when woman says stop

Associated Press / SFGate

[RCW2001]

Monday, January 6, 2003
©2003 Associated Press

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/01/06/national2027EST0776.DTL

(01-06) 17:27 PST SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --

The California Supreme Court defined rape Monday as continued sexual intercourse by a man after his female partner demands that it stop.

The 7-0 decision reverses a 1985 ruling by a lower court.

"This opinion is significant. It appears the California Supreme Court has clearly rejected an opportunity to revisit past barriers to rape convictions," said Douglas Beloof, an attorney with the National Crime Victim Law Institute.

The 2000 case involved two 17-year-olds who had sex in a bedroom during a party. The boy testified that the sex was consensual and that he stopped when the girl demanded. She testified the boy kept having sex with her for about a "minute and a half" after she called it off.

The boy was convicted of rape and served about six months in a juvenile facility. The high court affirmed that conviction Monday.

Justice Janice Rogers Brown, while agreeing with the majority on what constitutes rape, dissented on whether the boy was guilty. She wrote that the girl never clearly said stop, instead saying "I should be going now" and "I need to go home."

Brown also wondered how much time a man has to stop once a woman says stop.

"Ten seconds? Thirty?" she wrote.

©2003 Associated Press

[Born in a Rage]

Perhaps if she wanted him to stop, she could have told him explicitly to STOP!

This attempt at exploiting the semantics in such a situation is feeble. Am I to believe that if a murderer claims that his victim didn't say "stop" before he killed him, he 'only' said "you better get out of my house" that he would be innocent of his crime? Rape is a crime with a long history of people trying to 'blame' the victim.

[Texas Eagle]

The answer is: Guys are bigger and stronger than girls (Janet Reno nothwithstanding) and should be held to a higher account.

Besides, how could a girl FORCE a guy to....you know....I mean, how wimpy must a guy be.

[glory]

And maybe none of that happened and she just changed her mind in the middle of INTERCOURSE. A guy with a girl who originally consented and they were going at it--90 seconds is not a long time. Who would take anyone seriously if you are in the middle of the sex act? Did he even understand what she was saying on the verge of a climax? I've got to get home, may not mean, I don't really want to have sex anymore, but I have to get home before my parents find out I snuck out. Not really a protest of the actual sex, but the consequences of sneaking out or being out late. I wonder why it's so easy for you to take what the girl says as fact vs. what the boy says. I can remember being a teenager and these on again, off again type of romances which included sexual intercourse. Girls can be very viscious and vengeful and manipulative, particularly emotionally(which imo means they could play a legal angle to the hilt) and are inclined, in my experience, to use manipulative tactics(like lying) to get themselves out of trouble. BTW, I am female, but I don't have the faith in womankind telling the truth as much as you do.

[Mark]

Didn't William Jefferson Blythe Clinton show the yutes how it needs to be handled ....like with Monica?

[Mr Rogers]

What's the sound a woman makes when she's having fun in bed?

The real answer is, "Why does it matter?"

[Born in a Rage]

A guy with a girl who originally consented and they were going at it--90 seconds is not a long time.

Lets imagine a girl who is a virgin and consents to have sex with her boyfriend.....she is scared and finds she is uncomfortable. She tells her boyfriend to 'stop' or 'that's enough, I need to go home now' or whatever. He should cease what he is doing immediately, it doesn't mean he should continue for another 15 seconds, 90 seconds or 5 minutes.

[ontos-on]

You would like to believe it was as you say, if you take it that he was the insistent aggressor and she was yelling and screqaming and pushing him away. Create the scene that way if you want. But you are willfully inisisting on applying what you must know about human nature ---even your own experience. Why it is that you have placed yourself in that place, is itself interesting. Don't you have exeperience about how people, men and women, do complex things and then may wish it to be a certian way after the fact. Why should we credit the protesting woman after the fact. This is the alleged "date rape" scenario. She apparently entered into a certain sexual relation witht person, when it "goes beyond what I hoped it to be, maybe hwat I hoped before the event or maybe what I no hope after the event since I now have regrets and now "believe" that he isnisted on it happening.

Do you really think a just and fair legal fact-finding and analysis can be applied to such a situation?

[glory]

Rape and murder are not the same-poor example. How do you factore into your little rape scenario the fact that this girl initially gave her permission and I'm assuming defrocked, layed beneath this boy, and likely even participated in MOST of the sexual intercourse or the women who actually said no without ambiguity and were ignored in the most violent of ways. IMO, those are mitigating circumstances and your idea(and the justices) that this is a rape is a slap in the face to women forced in back ally at knifepoint and forced to have intercourse. The fact you can equate the two is morally bankrupt.

[per loin]

Read it again. She never told him to stop. She said, "I should be going now."

By the court's logic, if they were driving around in his car, and she said the same thing, he would be guilty of kidnapping if he took ninety seconds before turning around and heading toward her house.

[M. Peach]

I must be missing something. Didn't she say, "I need to be going" or something to that effect? I don't think she ever said "stop" or something definitive like that.

It has now been legislated that men are supposed to be able to read women's minds.

[SarahW]

"NO" is "no". "No" is always "no". If they say "no" it means a thousand times "no." "No" plus "no", equals "no", all "no's" lead to "no","no","no."

(with apologies to TMBG)

[harpseal]

I note the following facts. The girl did not say stop. The girl did not state she was fighting him what she talked about was going home. Her lack of clarity alone should be enough to be certain there was reasonable doubt the young man raped her. We are talking about two young people who were engaging in what both said was consensual sex. I also question how long it took him to stop. who had the stop watch to time it at a minute and a half or was it just guess.

If it was a guess and not the result of looking at a watch even then I would not necessarily call it rape.

Five minutes or even three minutes might constitute assault at that point but once the act is started it can not be considered rape unless there is an element of force in continuing and there was no such fact noted by the appeals court.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

[M. Peach]

I'd be willing to bet you don't get a lot of dates - or you're married....

[friendly]

The California Supreme Court also notes that the teenage dupe had only to utter the magic words to dispell all guilt and punishment:

"Put some ice on it, babe.. Oh and vote democrat." (The Juanita Loophole)

[Mr Rogers]

If "No" is "No" - certainly not true for a number of females I've known - then what is "I have to go home now"? Is that "No", or "Finish quickly, I need to go home"? And how is the boy supposed to know? And if he is ignorant for 90", does that merit 6 months in jail?

[supercat]

This attempt at exploiting the semantics in such a situation is feeble. Am I to believe that if a murderer claims that his victim didn't say "stop" before he killed him, he 'only' said "you better get out of my house" that he would be innocent of his crime? Rape is a crime with a long history of people trying to 'blame' the victim.

Let me put it to you this way: how plausible is it that a girl who was engaged in sex without consent would, for 90 seconds, be able to come up with a more emphatic statement than "I should be going now", or "I need to go home"? Frankly I'd find her case much more compelling if she'd been trying to physically remove him but been unable to say anything.

Frankly, statements like she made could very reasonably be interpreted as "Hurry up, I haven't got all day". Since, presumably by the girl's own testimony, she failed to make any effort to correct such an apparent misunderstanding, I find it hard to believe that her real removal of consent wasn't retrospective.

[Born in a Rage]

Her lack of clarity alone should be enough to be certain there was reasonable doubt the young man raped her.

Well, harpseal....I would say that if this girl wasn't 'really' raped and just wanted to be a "b!tch" - as someone else on the thread commented earlier....that perhaps she could have just lied and said she said the word "stop", instead of putting herself through the type of scrutiny that has been brought up on this thread over a single word. If she was lying about the whole idea that she was raped; I doubt if lying over the fact if she said a particular word or not would not have been an issue to her.

[Green Knight]

Meatloaf rules. /off-topic

[Born in a Rage]

Frankly I'd find her case much more compelling if she'd been trying to physically remove him but been unable to say anything.

Perhaps she was trying to physically remove him too. The article is so short and doesn't give many specifics about the case in question except for the recent decision of the justices.....so, I'm afraid for some things we will all be giving 'the benefit of the doubt' to one person or another - the guy or the girl.

[San Jacinto]

It is not a question of exploiting semantics. It is a question of making a judgment based upon the known facts. You are basically just making up facts to suit your own purposes.

If the girl had been physically trying to push the guy off her (as you are sure she did), then why did she not so testify? If she did so testify, then why did the article not report it? The article says: "She testified the boy kept having sex with her for about a "minute and a half" after she called it off.

It is the Judge who says the girl never clearly said to STOP. There is no mention of any trial testimony that she said "STOP!" The apparently uncontroveted testimony of "calling it off" were her remarks about "needing to go home." This boy did not commit rape.

By the way, I consider rape a very serious crime. Someone very dear to me was the victim of a vicious assault. There is no punishment too severe for the scum who did that to her---and I mean that quite literally--- I would myself flip the switch or pull the trigger to kill that individual if given the chance. But sex is not rape. Changing one's mind in the middle of consensual sex is not the same as being pulled into a dark alley. Holding this young boy to the criminal standard of rape based on these facts is pathetic.