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Originally Posted by dissentowner
Well by that definition if consent can not be given before or after the act exactly when can consent happen? Right at the moment. Consent can also be taken away at any time. Were the videos played for the jury? They were. Regardless they are going to take what they saw into account. Has the crown proven in any way there was not consent? They have not. Did the videos destroy her credibility? Probably.
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“Did the videos destroy her credibility? Probably” suggests you’re not looking at this from a neutral POV like you claim.
I recommend you read this to better understand:
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7525019
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But CBC News spoke to experts who said that even after the #MeToo movement, the concept of consent isn't always understood and some people are putting misplaced trust in videos mentioning it.
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For example, she said, if someone has consented to having sex with one person and a second person enters the room, or they want to change acts, the participants need to get consent, in the moment, for everything that's happening.
"That's really the only case in which these videos, I think, could really stand up," said Mendes, who also acknowledged recording a video in the moment of sexual activity isn't so straightforward to do.
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Lisa Kerr, an associate law professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., agrees that context is everything.
"For example, you might see on a video that the complainant is intoxicated and you might want to assess what you see on the video with the evidence at trial about their level of intoxication, right? Does it confirm it? Does it undercut it?" Kerr said.
"You might assess the demeanour of the complainant in the video. So, does the complainant appear to be calm? Are they confident? Are they comfortable? Or do they appear to sort of be distressed and ill at ease?"
Depending on what is recorded and how it's interpreted, a consent video could benefit the prosecution or the defence.
"The video is not going to be determinative of whether there was consent at the time for the specific acts," Kerr said. "The video may be helpful for assessing the credibility of witnesses, for sort of getting a sense of what was really going on here."
Videos or app responses can give the illusion of navigating the ambiguities of consent, but if they are only recorded after a sexual encounter, Kerr said, they may be seen as an attempt to make up for a lack of consent at the time of the sexual activity.
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The victim’s testimony is evidence there was not consent. The accused will likely provide evidence there was consent, or that they believed there was consent.
As pointed out, this is a long, complex trial. If the videos were sufficient evidence of consent, there wouldn’t be a trial.