An Ugly Rape Case Involving Vanderbilt’s Football Team Could Get Much Uglier

[Donald Ian Rankin]

38. I think the usual defence makes a difference.

Technically, in any crime there's an implicit "alleged" when one talks about a victim but no-one has been convicted, but most people don't bother to make it explicit.

In most crimes, when someone is caught and charged, they either plead guilty or say "I didn't do it, someone else did". So omitting the "alleged" when referring to the victim isn't actually contradicting anyone.

But men accused of rape not infrequently claim "we had sex, but it was consensual". In those cases, if you omit the alleged, you're explicitly saying "I think the accused is guilty".

Arguably, that's not an unreasonable thing to do - there are no accurate statistics, but very few people claim that anything other than a very large majority of men charged with rape are guilty.

But I think it's worth being aware that if you refer to someone who says "I've been robbed" as a victim of theft, you're unlikely to be taking an implicit stance on the outcome of a court case, whereas if you refer to someone who says "I've been raped" as a victim of rape, you're quite likely to be. You may well *want* to do so, on not unreasonable statistical grounds, which is fine, but it's something to be aware of.