I sometimes feel the implication is that rape survivor advocates want accusers to be able to win criminal cases with very meager evidence, or maybe even none at all, and that we should simply accept their behavior, whatever it is, because that's in the normal realm of what happens.
I think we should definitely not jump to judgment about the behavior of a survivor. We should begin from the assumption that the survivor is telling the truth -- at least the truth as they see it.
This is not the same thing as putting the accused on trial and assuming from the start that they are guilty of a crime. It's about giving support and treating the survivor as credible from the beginning, instead of approaching their claims with skepticism or even open hostility, depending on the status of the person who is being accused.
Advocating for survivors doesn't mean saying that anybody accused of rape should go to jail. The point is that our society is very unsupportive, even hostile, towards survivors, and most claims don't even get seriously investigated, let alone prosecuted. This would be a problem even if the legal definition of rape and sexual assault were more consistent across the board.
The NH case is a striking example because even though it was accepted that the defendant (a) had sex with the victim and (b) the victim said "no" multiple times, the only charge that stuck was statutory rape, which is a strict liability crime (meaning the consent of the victim was immaterial).
Many rape cases will come down to "he said / she said," which means that proving the charge will come down to a matter of witness credibility. This is unavoidable.
The problem is that things like
- "She didn't seem openly upset in the days afterward"
- "She talked to the accused, and even seemed friendly toward him, in the days afterward"
- "She eventually went along with it and even seemed to enjoy it"
- "She didn't tell anybody, or go to the police, until a significant time had passed"
all get used as evidence that the survivor is an unreliable witness.