It's a good question - and like all good questions it comes with a few caveats. The answer is complicated. In individual cases the jury gets to decide on the innocence or guilt of a rapist - whether they did what they are accused of doing is less relevant.

In a wider sense, it is the government and the lawmakers and this means laws are subject to change. It used to be perfectly legal to rape your wife, because marriage itself gave the conjugal act legitimacy. "the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given herself up to her husband, consent which she cannot retract" (Hale 1736)- that all went by the wayside here in the UK in 1991. Yes, it was really that late. But they changed the law after R v R in Leicester and the various avenues of exhausted appeal.

But it gets messy. It really does. As I wrote about here. https://medium.com/p/f528e3db67d9

And what we cannot have - is people deciding for themselves, independently of the legislature, independent of the process, and based entirely on what they 'feel'.

Should we pushing for better laws around rape, absolutely, should we also be pushing for anonymity for the accused (I think so). Should we be pushing these issues in Government and the courts rather than in the crucible of Facebook and Twitter, you betcha. If you do feminism wrong, you get the wrong result and too many people are doing feminism wrong. They've mistaken a push for equality under the law with their own feelings about what that equality should look like - and it's dangerous. It's particularly dangerous for women because the backlash it may engender makes them less safe in the long run, not more safe.

The point of opening the can of worms is that you look at them and you work out why they twist and they turn and you analyse it. That's much better than throwing closed tins at each other. :o)