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- cross-posted to:
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At least 25 undercover police officers who infiltrated political groups formed sexual relationships with members of the public without disclosing their true identity to them, the Guardian can disclose.
The total shows how women were deceived on a systemic basis over more than three decades. It equates to nearly a fifth of all the police spies who were sent to infiltrate political movements.
One woman, known as Jacqui, has said her life was “absolutely ruined” after she discovered by chance that the father of her son was an undercover officer, more than 20 years after his birth. The officer, Bob Lambert, abandoned them when the son was an infant, claiming falsely that he had to go on the run abroad to escape being arrested by police.
Other women had intimate relationships lasting up to six years with men who concealed the fact they were undercover officers who had been sent to spy on them and their friends.
I think the word you’re looking for is “raped.” Undercover police officers raped unsuspecting members of the public. Often repeatedly.
When literally everything that they used to gain consent was a lie, it’s a rape by any other name.
No. Just no. Stop diminishing what people who have actually been raped have gone through.
Would you consider this worse because it was years and wasn’t only physical? What word would you use to also encompass the extra trauma involved with this lie?
I can see why you would want to use a different word. Mainly to explain different scenarios of rape for people to be aware of, but I wouldn’t call it diminishing to other victims.
As scummy as what happened here is. I think describing it as rape is a slippery slope.
How were these women able to give any kind of informed consent?
TIL that I’ve been raped by exs because they didn’t disclose disturbing personal details about themselves until later in the relationship.
Or, maybe, consent isn’t something that you can decide to revoke years later.
Informed consent is typically limited to things effecting the individual sexual incident. So things like not disclosing that you have HIV or that you intentionally damaged a condom could violate that principle but that doesn’t mean that any lie renders the other person incapable of consent.
A person lying about personal details doesn’t mean that they’re a serial rapist. If you really believe that definition (rather than, as I suspect, engaging in motivated reasoning to reach an outrage-based conclusion) then every dating site and bar on the planet should be shut down due to the amount of “rapists” that they enable.
Obviously the government has liability here. After all these men were agents of the government at the time and there are children resulting from this incident and so it should be investigated before a judge.
But trying to call this rape is just nonsense.
would need to be further defined if informed consent can only happen if you know and can verify the personal details of your potential partner. I doubt that is the scope of it and courts would rule that you consent to the act, not necessarily to the identity of your partner beyond what is apparent to you. This is different to for example getting married to an individual intending to mislead you.
Rape by deception is legally recognized. If they would not have consented had they not been deceived, it is rape.
Gotcha. Read up on that, if they would not have consented had they not been deceived seems to be the typical issue to rule on these cases.
In many, if not all of the cases outlined, the police officers only had the opportunity to get to know their victims because they were undercover in their community (and often using the relationships as a means to bolster their cover). If this isn’t rape by deception, I don’t know what is.
There is no statute of limitations in the UK for rape, based a quick search, so all these “spy cops” need to be unmasked and charged.
That’s pretty nuch why every one of these cases has settled before it reached court. The first thing the prosecution would do would be to get documetation of how many times this had happened, and the met policy that knowingly encouraged it.