Failure to Pay a Prostitute: Rape or Theft?

[Straybow]

You like that sex barter site, hmmmm? You even brought it up in our PBeM thread.

By the way, for any old Civ2ers here, we need a player.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Yes, I brought it up because somebody accused me of being somebody else's courtesan.

And I hotly denied the allegations because... erm, he never actually paid me.

Wait a second...! Maybe that was rape!

[Proteus_MST]

If he wasn´t good,
your parents caught you doing it,
or you felt uneasy about it for other reasons afterwards,
then it definitely was rape

[b etor]

according to that, i've been raped.

[Wezil]

So have I.

[b etor]

[Alinestra Covelia]

I like how Wezil's sad smiley is the only one nodding.

[aneeshm]

Another way of looking at the question:

Is consent obtained under false pretences still valid as consent?

What if the guy thought he had the money, but turns out he didn't actually have it? Is it rape then? Or is it rape only if he knew he didn't have the money?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by aneeshm
Another way of looking at the question:

Is consent obtained under false pretences still valid as consent?

Sure-- Take it out of the prostitute realm. Girl bangs a guy at a posh hotel room assuming he's some millionare and he lies to keep up the pretense. She's peeved when she finds out he is the assistant bellhop but its no rape.

To say its rape if there are false pretenses means that the guys that said "I'll call you", " I love you" or any number of lameo lying lines that happen to succeed, would also be guilty of rape.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
If she wasn´t good,

then it definitely was rape

I've been raped

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
If you felt uneasy about it for other reasons afterwards,
then it definitely was rape

I was raped again

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
If
your parents caught you doing it,

then it definitely was rape

I was--- WAIT A SECOND-- my parents have never ever caught me in the act-- In retrospect I now know that they were simply too smart and aware to be coming downstairs but at the time I really thought I was getting away with stuff

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
I like how Wezil's sad smiley is the only one nodding.

Just what are you trying to say?

[Dis]

Originally posted by aneeshm
Another way of looking at the question:

Is consent obtained under false pretences still valid as consent?

What if the guy thought he had the money, but turns out he didn't actually have it? Is it rape then? Or is it rape only if he knew he didn't have the money?

that's why you insist they pay up front. As I said before, if you pay after, it's only robbery.

[MosesPresley]

This case shows both interpretations of the argument. The higher court reversed the lower court's decision.


Pa. judge blasted over sexual assault case
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press
Posted Thursday, November 1, 2007

PHILADELPHIA -- In a rare rebuke, a bar association has criticized a judge for refusing to uphold sexual assault charges against a man accused of letting friends rape a prostitute he had hired. The judge said she considered the case "theft of services."

Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni heightened the furor when she defended her decision to a newspaper. "She consented and she didn't get paid," Deni told the Philadelphia Daily News. "I thought it was a robbery."

Deni also told the newspaper that the case "minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped."

Dominique Gindraw was accused of ordering the accuser at gunpoint to have sex with three men, but Deni dismissed the rape and sexual assault charges Oct. 4. She upheld conspiracy, robbery, false imprisonment and other charges against Gindraw.

The chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association issued a statement Tuesday that questioned Deni's understanding of state law.

"The victim has been brutalized twice in this case: first by the assailants, and now by the court," Chancellor Jane Leslie Dalton wrote. "We cannot imagine any circumstances more violent or coercive than being forced to have sex with four men at gunpoint."

Carol Tracy, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Women's Law Project, called Deni's comments "a throwback to the Middle Ages, when rape was a crime against property, not against a person."

The 20-year-old woman, a single mother, testified that she went to a North Philadelphia home Sept. 20 to meet Gindraw, who had agreed to pay her $150 for sex. He then said that a friend was coming with the money and that the friend would pay her another $100 to perform sex acts.

Instead, three other men arrived, and Gindraw pulled a gun and ordered the woman to have sex with all of them, she testified.

The other men have not been identified or charged.

[Zevico]

Exactly. The law won't enforce illegal contracts. If your buddy steals your dope stash you can't have the police charge him with theft...

quote:
Absent the contract, the woman's consent is based on a legal nullity, thus the man never had her consent. (???)

The fact that a woman's consent is based on a legal nullity is irrelevant for the purposes of the criminal law. This is the case in England and Australia at least. It may or may not be the case in the US. I think it is likely to be the case in Canada as it is a CL country and this is a sensible decision. The English case confirming this rule is R v Linekar [1995] 3 All ER 69. Or R v Clarence (1888) 22 QBD 22, another English case referred to in that judgement, in which Justice Stephen said--
'That consent obtained by fraud is no consent at all is not true as a general proposition either in fact or in law. If a man meets a woman in the street and knowingly gives her bad money in order to procure her consent to intercourse with him, he obtains her consent by fraud, but it would be childish to say that she did not consent. In respect of a contract, fraud does not destroy the consent. It only makes it revocable.'
or Justice Willes in R v Clarence--
‘Take, for example, the case of a man…heartless, mean and cruel…, and with conscious hypocrisy acting the part of a devoted lover, and in this fashion, or perhaps under the guise of affected religious fervour, effecting the ruin of his victim. In all that induces consent there is not less difference between the man to whom the woman supposes she is yielding herself and the man by whom she is really betrayed than there is between the man bodily sound and the man afflicted with a contagious disease.’
Edit:
After a bit of fact checking, it turns out that R v Clarence (and an associated Australian case--Papadimitropoulos v R) was followed in Canada by Bolduc v. R [1967] S.C.R. 677. We've got ourselves a common law trifecta. In other words, in the absence of a contrary decision, the law of rape in Canada is the same as that in Australia and England with respect to fraudulently procuring sexual services from a prostitute--consent is not vitiated by fraudulent "inducing causes".

[Kuciwalker]

The common sense result