Rape

A ddifficult subject and not really one I had wanted to tackle.

The Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, has said on radio that there are different categories of rape, and the whole world is up in arms, calling for his resignation.

OK. A young man of 17 and a girl of 15yrs 11 months fall in love and decide to consummate their relationship in an informed, loving and consensual way. Under our law the young man is guilty of rape because the girl, not yet sixteen, cannot be deemed to have consented to intercourse.

Even the meanest intelligence, which must surely include the bevy of self-righteous activists mouthing off yesterday, can see that our young man has committed a crime of a completely different level of gravity to the husband who forces himself on his estranged wife, or the masked attacker who preys upon passing women. In these cases a woman's life can be ruined whereas in the case of the couple above it is not.

So there are different categories, or levels of gravity of rape.

Mr Clarke, who has a reputation for being a loose cannon, was an idiot to get into this in the first place. It appears though, that what he wanted to do is offer guilty rapists a reduction in their sentence if they pleaded guilty at the start of the trial, thereby saving the woman the trauma of going through what must be an appalling occasion for her, of months of confrontation with her attacker, and slur cast on her own life. Clarke believed, possibly rightly, that this would encourage more women to come forward with their accusations, without fear.

But the public is not ready for this and Clarke, an experienced politician, should have known that.