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The dead also can't have their consent violated and feel that particular psychological trauma which I think is the real root of what makes rape such a particularly awful thing.
Fair enough, but when someone commits an arson not knowing someone's in the building and that person dies it's still murder, and it doesn't seem right that defendant knowledge matters in one situation and not the other.
I'd say if the alleged conduct here is true it should be charged as attempted rape and punished the same as an actual rape, so this is kind of a semantic thing, but it's something I feel pretty strongly about. I just think that it dilutes our understanding of what rape is and why it's so horrible to call something rape when it doesn't happen to a living creature.
I mean... The post explicitly says "attempted rape" and never just "rape", so isn't it doing exactly what you're asking for then?
From the details given, it’s not clear if the person was dead or only unconscious at the time of the assault and it’s not clear whether the attacker knew either.
I’m not clear on your second point; you say that it doesn’t seem right that defendant knowledge matters in one case and not the other. So if:
It seems like not calling it rape is what would apply a double standard here based on defendant knowledge.
Our society treats bodies as an extension of a person; for example, we do not harvest organs from a body if the person didn’t consent to be an organ donor while they were alive.
Your focus on the victim’s suffering as what determines the severity of the crime seems problematic to me. If a victim doesn’t let being raped destroy their life, do we not punish the rapist as severely? We distinguish between manslaughter and murder based on pre-meditation and intent, even though the victim is still dead in both cases, and similarly I think that focusing on the attacker’s actions and intent should be the key factor in calling their actions rape.
If the defendant were going to a morgue or funeral home and defiling bodies, I may feel differently but given the timing here it feels way too grey to not treat it as rape.
FWIW, I’m coming at this conversation as a rape survivor myself. I know the level of mental devastation it can cause. And personally, I don’t think that treating the sexual assault of someone who may or may not have been dead yet (and if they were dead, had been so for no more than 30 minutes) as rape takes anything away from the severity of the crime or my experience as a victim of it.
And anyway from a semantic perspective, according to the article it is being charged only as attempted rape.
By that logic, you can't steal from the dead because they no longer own the property. Because the act of stealing is taking something that belongs to someone else.
This is incorrect as your property is transferred to someone else upon your death, so it's still theft.