re: #349 Obdicut

I’m sorry, but can you support the contention that in Britain having sex with a woman while she’s asleep and therefore incapable of consenting would amount to sexual molestation?

I would really need to read what the woman REALLY said. But from what I have read (and I don’t know whether this is true) the woman in question never claimed that she was raped or that the sex (including that sex in the morning) was non-consensual.

Just that he did not wear a condom in the morning. It’s really difficult to speculate but the most plausible event seems to me - and I don’t know whether its true or not - that he’d wake up in the morning, has a pretty naked girl next to him he had sex with a few hours before. Maybe she was asleep first, maybe drowsy, maybe she gave consent when she fully woke up only discovering later that he did not wear a condom. She never claimed that the sex itself in the morning was non-consensual. She made breakfast for him in the morning, they joked about pregnancy and she bought him his train ride home.

In America, he would not even have to contend the allegations. They need to be proven and as long that this is just the tale of the girl, there’s no chance he’ll ever get convicted of anything. Even in Sweden I guess.

Just with the other woman they might want to establish a pattern of behavior and although they can never prove what really happen they might just let “plausibility” win.

The case is so difficult because sex without a condom may be considered “mild” rape or coercion in Sweden. But then, if a woman does not want sex without a condom, she just says: You won’t go in here, man. If he continues, it’s rape, and the condom is irrelevant.

But if sex was consensual, the only way to make the condom issue relevant is that he “tricked” the women into believing that he wore a condom. The first case seems hopeless. The condom broke and Assange claims that he did only notice afterwards. That’s quite credible, at least hard to refute. Shit happens.

The second case is trickier, but at some point in the morning I suppose the woman in question did wake up and gave consent. She - once again - never claimed that the morning sex was against her consent. Only the prosecution alleged that this might be “rape”.

And no, sex with a woman who is (still) asleep doesn’t have to be rape. If you have a girlfriend who has told you time and again that she loves to be woken up this way it certainly isn’t. If you take advantage of an unknown drunken girl in the street or on your sofa it certainly is rape. But very often, this is very hard to prosecute because it’s very difficult to prove that the girl was too drunk to give consent. Happens a lot both in the UK and in Sweden. Binge parties on Friday evening, and a big headache on Saturday morning.

So the circumstances really matter. Obviously you want to know the allegations first before you respond to them. Especially if the difference is freedom or 4 years in jail.