When is rape not rape?
When it’s armed robbery, according to Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni of Philadelphia. Faced with a defendant who forced a prostitute to have sex with him and three other men at gunpoint, she decided at the preliminary hearing to drop the rape and assault charges and hold him on the bizarre charge of armed robbery for “theft of services”. Apparently she thought this was appropriate as the prostitute consented to sex and - fairly obviously - didn’t get paid. No matter that she had a gun to her head and was forced into sex, regardless of what she does for a living.
The full, unbelievable, story is over at Albert’s, with more info at the Philadelphia Inquirer. This judge is up for election this autumn; let’s hope she gets dumped.
Umm, no - that’s rape. This must be an interesting variation of the “she was asking for it” “defence”.
You could make a reasonable case for theft of services rather than rape if a client engaged the services of a prostitute, and then left without paying (the sex then being consensual, but the contracted payment being withheld).
Reading the Inquirer article, it suggests that the prostitute in question agreed to sex with two men for $250, man 2 turns up with a gun, and she was then raped at gunpoint by 4 men. There appears to be no suggestion that the gun wasn’t produced until after the sex occurred. That being the case, I can’t see how you could ever possibly hope to be able to prove “armed robbery” but not rape.
Either the apparent facts of the case are proved to be true, in which case all 4 men are guilty of rape, or there isn’t enough evidence to prove those facts, in which case there isn’t any evidence for the “armed robbery” either.
So I’ll provisionally chalk that one up to “stupid judge who should be looking for a new career”.