Sorcha McCormack – författare

This book critiques the autonomy based theoretical foundations of the legal response to sexual offences. To do so it examines the legal treatment of incapacitated rape victims arguing that the autonomous foundations have created a hierarchal response that forces individuals to be responsible for avoiding harm. The book uses vulnerability theory in two innovative ways. It challenges the foundations of the autonomous liberal legal subject in sexual offences, and it suggests a new sexual offence based on a vulnerability lens. Through this understanding of vulnerability, it argues that an autonomy-based approach is at the core of the inadequate response to sexual assault complainants. It therefore encourages readers to rethink what we know about what it means to be human, how we view sexual offences, and how we treat incapacitated complainants. The book blends theory and policy to offer new and holistic ways to rethink our response to sexual offences and challenges the formulation of the subjective nature of consent and sexual assault. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of Criminal Justice, Criminology, Gender Studies and Social Policy.

All is not well with the law on rape. It is rarely reported and even when it is, it is rarely prosecuted. Victims are deterred for a range of reasons, but these include a fear that it will never be possible to prove the rape has occurred and that the trial will be traumatic. Even when the case proceeds to trial, victims perceive that it is they, rather than the perpetrator, who is the one on trial. The past sexual behaviour of the victim,; the clothes she was wearing,; the people she socialised with and the places she visited are all used as tools to claim that in fact the victim consented to the rape. Reforms are needed.In this book, we explore how changing the definition of rape will help tackle some of these problems. We argue there needs to be a shift in the focus of the rape trial: away from asking whether the victim consented, to focus on whether the defendant. Rather than focusing on the way the victim dresses, behaviour in response to the rape, the focus will be on what the defendant believed justified him engaging in a sexual behaviour. At the heart of our proposal is the claim that having sex comes with responsibilities. In particular, a responsibility to ensure you have reasonable grounds to believe the other consents. Without that consent, a very serious wrong is being done. The central legal focus should therefore be on whether the defendant had sufficiently good reasons to proceed with having sex.