There is no "room for interpretation" when someone's words are clear and unambiguous. She clearly, plainly, unambiguously said that in a case of alleged rape, the default position--THE DEFAULT POSITION--should be to believe one side (who happens to be the accuser), "until they are disbelieved based on evidence." The competing "evidence" will almost always be proffered by the accused, by the way, or by someone supporting the accused's position. And she didn't say just any evidence will do--the evidence has to be sufficient so that we DISBELIEVE her story. This flips everything we were taught in law school about criminal procedure on its head, it reverses the burden of proof.
Now, for a brief explanation, because a lot of people here are unschooled about this critical issue. This policy would flip on its head the long-settled burden of proof and make the act of love-making -- an act that occurs somewhere in the world countless times every second -- a presumptive offense merely on the basis of an accusation. That is a sea-change in our law.
Not only is shifting the burden of proving consent in rape cases unconstitutional, it is an idea long pushed by extremist victims' advocates. We've been warning about it at COTWA for years. Linda Brookover Bourque's "Defining Rape" said in 1989 that the ultimate objective of rape reform is shifting the burden of proof from "the victim" to "the offender." Mainstream feminist extremist Jessica Valenti advocates that America look to Swedish law as its legislative model for rape, and "activists and legal experts in Sweden want to change the law there so that the burden of proof is on the accused; the alleged rapist would have to show that he got consent, instead of the victim having to prove that she didn't give it." Serious feminist scholars have written extensively on the subject in an effort to change the law. Criminal law professor and feminist Michele Alexandre would make the sex act a presumed crime whenever a woman cries rape. See M. Alexandre, "‘Girls Gone Wild’ and Rape Law: Revising the Contractual Concept of Consent & Ensuring an Unbiased Application of ‘Reasonable Doubt’ When the Victim is Non-Traditional," 17 American Univ. Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law 1, 41, 55-56 (2009). In "Addressing Rape Reform in Law and Practice" (2008), Professor Susan Caringella of Western Michigan University's Sociology Department, not only refused to pay lip service to insuring that the innocent aren't punished with the guilty, she goes so far as to declare that men accused of rape are "overprotect[ed]." She writes: "It is high time to give victims a fair shake, to dismantle the zealous overprotections for men accused of this crime, which have been buoyed up by the myths about false accusations, ulterior motives, and so on, commonly embraced when rape charges are levied." Prof. Caringella advocates a shift in the burden of proof by enacting affirmative consent laws.
Two years ago, the Washington Supreme Court reversed some very bad law that put the burden of proving consent in rape cases on the accused.
Hillary Clinton is tapping into radical feminist thought, and you don't think it's "harmful"?