%0 Journal Article
%T Complicity and Rape
%A Christopher Cowley
%J The Journal of Criminal Law
%@ 1740-5580
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0022018318819149
%X The case of R v Clarkson (1971) concerns the complicity of three non-participating observers to a vicious gang rape. The observers were charged with ¡®encouraging¡¯ the rape, but this was rejected by the Court of Appeal on the ground that two of them had been ¡®mere¡¯ observers, and there was no evidence that they had encouraged the perpetrators by word or gesture. This case is regularly cited to this day, without critical comment, as a limit on complicity under English common law. In this article, I want to challenge the Court of Appeal¡¯s judgment and argue that the two observers should have been found complicit. My argument is based on the special nature of rape, and the capacity for a male observer to compound the female victim¡¯s humiliation by their mere presence. My argument is even more justified in the case of Clarkson, I argue, because it took place on a British army base abroad
%K Complicity
%K abetting
%K encouragement
%K rape
%K bystander
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022018318819149