A comment from Rape Crisis

Rape Crisis themselves (now called Rape Prevention Education) made a comment on the earlier thread which debated a consent scenario last week. I thought the comment was worthy of highlighting here, especially as it is good to see that this scenario is already used in educationing people, as many commenters suggested should be the case:

I thought I could perhaps clear up a few of the issues here for you! This scenario is used as part of our BodySafe Programme – which is a rape prevention programme in high schools in Auckland. The purpose of using it in the classroom is to start discussion with students. I have never had a class agree whether this is or isn’t rape. The purpose of the scenario is not to answer this question but raise the exact discussions you have had. The main purpose is in the facilitate discussion with the teenagers about how this situation could be prevented from both Jo and Jareds perspective.

The main message been:
That both parties need to be clear about what they want – body language can be very hard to read, especially when teenagers have had drugs or alcohol. Therefore, there are a number of things Jo could do – not go to the bedroom in the first place, make it clear at some stage (ideally before they even get to the bedroom) that she doesn’t want to have sex, or leave the bedroom. Of course there is the possibility that she could then be physically forced to have sex, so we cover this aspect too. We are also trying to educate the males that they need to ask for consent every time they are having sex. Something along the lines of “are you sure you want to do this?” when Jo pulled up her underwear, would have made the outcome of this scenario very different. Teenagers also need to be aware that every person, male or female, has the right to not have sex with someone, no matter what has happened leading up to the point of sex.

From a legal perspective, there are definitely signs that show that consent was not given. The majority of the teenage population that we work with agree that someone pulling up their underwear during sexual activity, shows that they are having second thoughts about having sex. However, I doubt this scenario would ever reach prosecution in a New Zealand court. However, this does not mean that there are not long term effects for both Jo and Jared.

It is great to see so many thoughtful responses on this subject.