This proposed legislation change shows the extent to which the Ministry of Justice, as is the case with most other ministries, is now dominated by the agenda of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.  They want a man to be ruled guilty of a rape allegation unless he can prove he sought and obtained consent.  They also want to disallow any questioning of complainants about their sexual history with the alleged “attacker”.  Further, they want to define consent legally but we don’t know what they mean by that; rest assured, it will be a definition that makes it very difficult to prove consent was obtained.

The changes will see the principles of injustice in the DVA seeping into general criminal law; i.e. when a man is accused he needs to prove his innocence rather than the crown needing to prove his guilt.  They will also see another major erosion of well-established protections against false conviction by further limiting the ability of defence counsel to test the allegations.  Such erosion has been steadily occurring over the last few decades, specifically for sexual allegations for which men usually stand as the accused.

This proposal comes on top of amendments a while back that enables consent that was given to be seen as not having been given (See “Warning to all men” posted on MENZ 20/09/07).

As Bill Hodge said, the fact that a particular crime is difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt does not justify reducing the standard of proof required.  That will convict a few more truly guilty parties but it will also increase the rate of wrongful convictions.  Arson is also difficult to prove (because the evidence has usually been destroyed), but does that mean that we should make it easier to convict anyone the police decide to charge with arson? Of course not; that would be highly unfair.  But apparently fairness doesn’t matter when it comes to men. 

Quite possibly, a hidden agenda here is a wish to give mothers an easy way of maintaining primary care of children in an environment where shared care is becoming fashionable (because it is so strongly supported by good outcome research).  If the mother can obtain an easy rape conviction, this will rule out all but supervised contact for the father. 

It will be very difficult for a man to prove he sought and obtained consent.  Even if he has a signed consent form, the woman can argue that her signature was obtained under duress.  Legally, such consent can only be defended if both parties have been given independent legal advice about what they are signing and agreeing to.

The proposal shows how much Annette King and her ilk hate men and want to turn men into slaves and lower caste citizens.  It is  outrageous yet there is every chance it will be brought in.  Will this be enough to shock men out of their complacency and on to the streets?