“Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E Jean Carroll.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-carroll-judge-rape/
Whilst sexual assault is terrible we must remember that was determined only on the balance of probabilities and not beyond reasonable doubt.
It may seem like a distinction without a difference, but it’s an important part of our legal system.
Distinctions without a difference aside,
You know what seems like a distinction with a very important difference?
“Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E Jean Carroll.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-carroll-judge-rape/
They literally changed the legal code because of rape apologists since NY was one of the last states that didn’t consider vaginal penetration without consent rape unless a penis was involved.
Which, after and not before you get shaeshanked in the dufrane, you can feel free to distinguish your differences.
Because of dumps vaginally penetrating someone without their consent, regardless of method, that is also legally considered rape in New York
Dumps is a rapist by most legal definitions, his crime is one of rape today because of the sexual assault he committed and was held liable for, and the judge made it perfectly clear that dumps is a rapist in case anyone was confused.
Sure, it still isn’t a criminal conviction. Perhaps there was sufficient evidence for a criminal conviction and perhaps there isn’t. I don’t know.
One may conclude that in all likelihood he has committed such a crime. However, we cannot claim he has been convicted for such a crime, because he wasn’t (in the context of that civil matter).
Innocent until proven guilty is a valuable principle and politics is a trivial reason to dispense with it.
The TL;DR is that the jurisdiction in which the case happened has a very narrow definition of what constitutes rape; It requires penis-in-vagina insertion. Anything else is “only” sexual abuse.
Trump grabbed her breasts and inserted his fingers into her vagina. All of it non-consensually. But where it happened, that isn’t enough to qualify as rape, because it didn’t involve PiV sex. The judge was clarifying that no, the case didn’t say he raped her, but that is only because of the incredibly narrow definition of the word “rape”. The judge was basically saying that in common parlance, (not the jurisdiction’s narrow legal definitions), most people would agree that what Trump did was in fact rape.
The judge’s statement was in response to Trump’s lawyers going “LoL wEll AkShuAllY hE nEveR RapED HeR”, like some sort of “it’s not actually pedophilia it’s ephebophilia, and that’s not as bad” argument. The judge’s statement is also in line with what psychiatric fields and the justice department define as rape, which includes penetration with any appendages or objects. But again, the local laws had a narrower definition.
Also worth noting that New York quickly changed their legal definitions following the lawsuit. Because the lawsuit was a giant beacon to the fact that they were one of the last places in the country to still strictly define rape as PiV penetration. So if it were to happen again today, the verdict would have said Trump raped her.
You might be intending to reply to someone else, I actually explained these exact points in a couple other comments.
Oh, are you just adding a general tldr for everyone who isn’t aware? Got it.
The point of a TL;DR is to explain the link to third parties, and maybe add some context. I’m assuming you’ve already read the article, and it wasn’t directed at you.
