This book critiques the autonomy-based theoretical foundations of the legal response to sexual offences. To do so it examines the legal treatment of incapacitated rape victims arguing that the autonomous foundations have created a hierarchal response that forces individuals to be responsible for avoiding harm. The book uses vulnerability theory in two innovative ways. It challenges the foundations of the autonomous liberal legal subject in sexual offences, and it suggests a new sexual offe...

All is not well with the law on rape. It is rarely reported and even when it is, it is rarely prosecuted. Victims are deterred for a range of reasons, but these include a fear that it will never be possible to prove the rape has occurred and that the trial will be traumatic. Even when the case proceeds to trial, victims perceive that it is they, rather than the perpetrator, who is the one on trial. The past sexual behaviour of the victim,; the clothes she was wearing,; the people she socia...