johncarrion

"isn't it your position that civil rules should apply to all cases"

No, you said that you thought what I was proposing was similar to civil rules. Big difference, dickhead.

"Why should a victim of crime be obliged to prove a case against their aggressor?"

That's what I have issue with more than anything else. We don't know that they are a victim until the trial has concluded. Until then they're just claiming to be a victim. They may well be right, they may be honestly mistaken (it was dark and I mistook who he was), or they may be less honestly mistaken (I was drunk and assumed), or they may be maliciously mistaken (revenge).

Even if they have been beaten up or whatever, so it's pretty clear they didn't make it up, we should act cooly and say until we've had the trial, it's all just accusations.

Nobody should be a "victim" until there has been a trial. Innocent until proven guilty, accuser until proven victim.

Why isn't it suitable? You say that the 'rules change' when it's criminal, but that's only because those are the rules we've got. There's no reason that we couldn't make all trials use the civil approach.

If Sarah wants to accuse Bob of rape, she petitions a court and has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it happened. If Bob denies it then automatically an opposite trial of false accusation runs at the same time. If Sarah has evidence that Bob raped her, perhaps the testimony of police detectives, Bob looses both cases and goes to prison. If there's not enough evidence, both sides loose. If it becomes clear that Bob definitely did not rape her, Sarah looses both cases, including the false accusation case, and goes to prison.

At the moment Bob would have to make a separate trial for defamation or whatever. I think it should be rolled into one.

In the case of murder, or treason, or grafatti of public property or whatever, it would be the state accusing. If it turns out that it was a malicious false accusation then the police or prosecutors would be liable.

It's not even about whether the evidence as we know it is convincing.

Even if it is plainly obvious that someone did commit a rape, such as a video of it, a civilised society would treat them as simply an accused, just one side of a legal case, until the trial is complete.

If I could design society, I would remove the dock and in all court cases have two identical sides of the room - person A (person A could be the state or the Crown) says person B did something, person B says that person A is falsely accusing them of doing something. There's no defendant and victim, just two opposing stories and a trial to establish reasonable fact.

Every criminal case should be simultaneously a false accusation case.

This article is terrible. There is no "rape", no "rapist", and no "survivor" until a trial has been conducted. Until then, there is only an "accuser" and an "accused". The article also links to a report that only 54% of rapes are reported to the police. Until there has been a trial, there is no way to know if there has been a rape. What they mean is that 54% of people who claim rape do not report it to the police. I don't know they know that even.