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"  Lee Setford is a British man who was just sentenced to five years in prison for raping an unconscious woman. It took the jury less than two hours to decide that he was guilty. The judge, however, had a different point of view. While he couldn&amp;#039;t overturn the jury&amp;#039;s verdict he decided to give Setford a little pep talk to remind him that Setford wasn&amp;#039;t a classic rapist because he didn&amp;#039;t come out of a dark alley and pounce on a woman; he just lost control and forced himself onto a woman who was unconscious. Actually, that&amp;#039;s the exact definition of a classic rapist. But calm down, everyone, it&amp;#039;s OK. Because the woman was attractive. What choice did Setford have but to rape her? Here&amp;#039;s what the right honorable Michael\u00A0Mettyear\u00A0told Setford. Caution: This will make your blood boil. &amp;quot;&amp;#039;It&amp;#039;s sad to see a man of generally good character in the dock for such a serious offence. &amp;quot;&amp;#039;I do not regard you as a classic rapist. I do not think you are a general danger to strangers. You are not the type who goes searching for a woman to rape. &amp;quot;&amp;#039;This was a case where you just lost control of normal restraint,&amp;#039; Judge Michael Mettyear continued in his assessment of Setford.\u00A0&amp;#039;She was a pretty girl who you fancied. You simply could not resist. You had sex with her.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; OK, what? Does this judge have absolutely no idea what rape actually is? It&amp;#039;s much rarer for someone to be sexually assaulted by a stranger than it is by a friend or an acquaintance, and according to statistics provided by RAINN,\u00A040 percent of rapists are known to their victims. And that&amp;#039;s a conservative estimate because so many rapes go unreported. So yes, Setford is absolutely a classic rapist, someone who did not respect the fact that a woman was unconscious and took the opportunity to have sex with her because she was attractive instead of asking for consent. Would this judge also view someone who lost control and killed someone because they just hated them so much as a non-classic murderer? Where is the logic here? Is there any? Mettyear is, unfortunately, not the only judge who thinks this way. Katie McDonough has written an excellent piece on Mettyear&amp;#039;s opinions at Salon and she cites other cases that are eerily similar, such as a Georgia judge overturning a teacher&amp;#039;s rape conviction because the victim (a teenager) was more mature than she appeared and a Louisiana parish that argued that a 14-year-old girl consented to sex with a corrections officer at the facility that she was being detained at. (No issues of power there. Just straight consent. Awesome!) Judge Mettyear is sad that Stetford is at all in trouble for losing restraint, but as Isha Aran over at Jezebel points out: &amp;quot;A man &amp;#039;in the dock&amp;#039; for such a &amp;#039;serious offence&amp;#039; isn&amp;#039;t sad. It&amp;#039;s justice. (Note: Setford had a previous conviction for battery, so I don&amp;#039;t know to what &amp;#039;good character&amp;#039; the judge was referring.)&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s one thing to take away from this: Rape is rape. And the sooner people like Mettyear start seeing it as such, the sooner real change can occur.\u00A0 RELATED:\u00A0 Cosmo Fights Campus Rape Follow Mark on Twitter. Image credit: Getty "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/news/a28440/judge-to-rapist-you-lost-control/>