Some interesting links, the first two from Man Boobz regulars:
Holly Pervocracy on Ten Shades of False Rape Accusations
[S]ometimes it’s easier for a survivor to live with the knowledge that their rapist is free than it is for them to go through years of being under constant suspicion of being an evil false accuser. It ends with misogyny justifying and reinforcing itself, as the concept “women lie about rape” becomes both proof of and proven by “women are untrustworthy, manipulative, and malicious.” It ends with rapists who tell their victims “no one will ever believe you” being right, with society standing behind them.
Every time we reinforce the common wisdom that “women lie about rape all the time,” rape gets a little easier to commit.
Ozymandias on No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz: Take My Social Movement– Please!
All too often, the mainstream men’s rights movement is not gender egalitarian at all. All too often, those of us who support equal rights for everyone– no matter what our differences in opinion– have found our voices drowned out by misogynistic, rape-apologist and frankly stupid asshats. That has to change.
Gawker’s Adrian Chen on How a 14-Year-Old Girl Became an Unwilling Internet Pin-Up
Reddit is home to a whole network of proud pervs, and through Jailbait I came across another board dedicated to creeping on someone named Angie Verona. … Three years ago, when she was 14, Angie took some photos for her boyfriend and stored them in a private Photobucket account. The account was hacked and the photos leaked. Pictures of 14-year-old Angie posing provocatively in a bikini and lingerie were thrown all over the internet, showing up on message boards like Reddit and 4chan, and posted on porn sites. …
[E]very teen with a Facebook account has pictures like Angie’s. What’s fucked up is this trafficking of pictures of random underage girls that falls just this side of child porn, with no regard for the real life that might be ruined in the process.
@ Bee
I understand and accept that a large number of these 75% of forgotten claims are, in fact, genuine rapes. And that they are dismissed for the reasons that you have stated, mainly, through lack of evidence. I also understand that with rape it is quite often the case that there is no dispute as to if sex occurred; only if it was non-consensual, and that it is often the case of his word against hers. But this doesn’t mean that false accusations aren’t made. And it doesn’t tell us how many false accusations are made.
“ How do you define “significant”?”
I can’t say for sure. It depends on the numbers. 10%, 20% I don’t know really. Significant is a general term, a noticeable amount, that’s how I would describe it.
“ Having sat in on a number of police interviews, and read a lot of civil and criminal trial transcripts from rape cases, I can tell you: It stinks. It’s not like all police officers and judges are awful and skeptical toward victims (but a lot of them are), and it’s not like rapists never get convicted, but there’s a really long way to go before the legal system (and society in general) will be able to grasp the idea that just because someone is homeless, a sex worker, an addict, disabled, sexually active, LGBTQ, a little bit “wild,” or drunk, doesn’t mean that it’s OK they were raped. (And: that just because someone is successful, good-looking, and has access to consensual sex, doesn’t mean they didn’t rape this person who says they did.)”
Please understand: I’m playing devil’s advocate here. But, in the instances you talk about, you have arrived at a different conclusion to the jury. Why do you believe that you are in a better position to decide guilt or innocence than the jury?
To be clear, I’m not really talking about cases where I’ve arrived at a different conclusion to the jury. I’m talking about things I’ve heard and read police officers and detectives, DAs, and judges saying, and what I’ve heard about how juries on rape trials make decisions. From those things, I’ve seen an anti-victim bias in the legal system. A few examples:
At sentencing in the famous Glen Ridge rape trial, the judge reasoned that boys who raped a mentally disabled girl with a baseball bat were successful high school athletes who posed “no threat” to society.
At sentencing for a less famous rape trial, the judge said that the (again, mentally disabled) victim wasn’t much harmed by the rape because she had been raped by family members previously.
During a preliminary hearing for a civil protection order, the judge questioned the petitioner at length about her grades, her clothing, and her habits (for the record, there was absolutely no reason for the judge to be concerned about the girl’s grades or clothes, or her parents’ parenting skills). In effect, the hearing was about what the girl had done to “deserve” her rape.
I’ve witnessed multiple interviews where officers blame victims — which I admit could be a part of the investigatory process — and tell me in private that they don’t believe the victim’s story. I’ve heard victim’s parents telling the officers that the alleged rapist is a “good boy,” or that his life will be ruined if the assault is investigated. I’m not saying that the victim’s story is always true, or that it should be believed without any sort of investigation; only that when the investigation ceases as soon as the officer finds an inconsistency or a third party starts feeling uncomfortable about the consequences, this is a problem. Officer bias is a problem. Officers not understanding the effects of trauma is a problem.
And again, the general public (i.e., jury material) doesn’t understand the complexities of human responses to trauma, or the physical impact of rape. Which you hear again and again from prosecutors, and which makes it difficult for a DA looking at a case where the victim has no injuries and has a story that’s incomplete or inconsistent to want to go ahead and press charges.
What I’m gathering from the mountains of evidence I’ve seen is that the legal system, because of widespread societal beliefs about sex and gender and consent, generally is biased against most victims, and that makes it difficult to put together a case that it makes sense to prosecute.
@ Bee
It’s clear to me that you have done far more research into this than I have,and I’ve read your comment above and can understand the point that you are putting across, which is, as I understand it, that there are a multitude of bias’s against victims (potential victims) and that, often cases are won and lost at points even before cases get to trial. I don’t doubt this, but, I don’t believe that such bias’s are exclusive to rape cases.
It is worth noting, however, that the examples that you have given are of, as I understand them to be, cases whereby intercourse has been established and that the complexity lies in whether or not consent has been given, from a mental capacity? As the first two examples you give are considered to be of “mentally disabled” people, I wonder why you choose such examples. This, to me, would be toward the extreme side of rape cases, whereby establishing consent is difficult due to the mental capacity of those involved?
I’ve never sat in on a rape trial, or any other trial for that matter.So I can’t really speak about the jury process, I just know that, whatever the crime may be, false accusations will be made.
I see what you’re getting at. Like, you’re comparing no one caring when homeless people are murdered with no one believing when a homeless person says xie was raped; or no one believing the church-going doctor could have killed someone with no one believing that the church-going doctor could have raped someone. And to a certain extent, that’s right. There is a parallel. But with rape cases, it’s overlain with all these ideas that people have about sex, specifically, and so-called truths about human nature. Like, a rape victim is going to act a certain way, and the fact that xie’s laughing with the SANE nurse in the ER means that the rape didn’t happen. Or, a woman would want to have sex with a handsome, successful man, so how could he have raped her? Or, if a woman had consensual sex with a man one night, how could he (or someone else, for that matter) have raped her the next night? All these things are tied in, specifically, to the crime of rape. We typically don’t have these same questions with other crimes.
Re. the first two examples I gave: I believe that consent was used as a defense in the Glen Ridge case. Although (and maybe this is me — I’m a little vanilla) I think the fact that the boys lied to the girl and told her that she’d get to go on a date with a boy she had a crush on if she followed them to the basement, and then penetrated her with a baseball bat kind of points in the other direction. (No offense to people who enjoy being penetrated with a baseball bat.) In the other case, I know the victim said she did not consent and did say no, and the defense’s main argument was that he did not use force. (Although he did admit to doing things to her that amounted to using force — go figure.) So consent and capacity for consent weren’t an issue in that case. I guess the main idea I was going for (using the first cases that came to mind) was not exclusive to cases that have to do with mentally disabled victims, but that rape can be difficult to try sometimes because the attitudes of judges are exactly the same as some of the more despicable MRA ideas. She deserved it. What was she doing out so late? Boys will be boys; we can’t punish them for a little fun. Etc.
Here’s another example. A woman was raped by her boss. He made a video of it. He was prosecuted, the victim testified, the recording was shown. She’s screaming and crying and saying no. Open and shut case, right? Right before he’s supposed to give his closing argument, the DA offers the accused a deal. If he pleads guilty to drug charges, he’ll drop the rape. There was a 1972 NYT headline — “What do you get in NY for raping a woman and stealing her TV? Charged with stealing a TV.” So, lots of rape laws have changed since 1972, supposedly to make rape easier to prosecute. But people’s attitudes haven’t changed. What do you get for raping a woman and selling drugs? Charged with selling drugs.
Yeah, I agree there. I’m certainly not trying to say that all rape accusations are accurate or true, that no one has ever filed a rape report maliciously, etc. I just … I guess, so many reports aren’t fully investigated, for one reason or another that it seems bizarre to me that so many people want to claim that they know exactly what percentage of rape claims are false. The typical police investigation (if there is such a thing) goes something like, well, the victim said it was rape, but the accused said it was consensual, so — oh well! Let’s just drop it. And then, Kanin’s study is bizarre on many levels. What people focus on, when they’re trying to discredit him, is the nontransparency of the study. While that’s a problem, even more problematic is that he based his study on police officer findings. Like I’ve said, I’ve talked to a number of officers who are ready to dismiss a claim just based on their misunderstanding of how a victim should act. And victims also, at least sometimes, call investigations off themselves — they realize that they don’t want to go through with it.
So yeah. False reports happen, certainly.
qwert: How many of the 75 percent of rape accusations which don’t lead to an arrest do you think are false?
Because if any of them are they have to be removed from the risk of legal consequence when you are weighing the matter of the horror of being falsely accused of rape (and I’ll be back to the conflation you made in your comment there).
Now, to the problem of what happens when one is falsely accused of a crime. We shall keep looking at the charge of murder, which you say is less worrisome than false rape, because of the ease with which one can be charged with a false rape.
In the first case, it’s actually sort of hard for a completely unfounded case of rape to alleged. Take last week, anyone in my neighborhood who wanted to say I committed a rape has a problem… I was 50 miles away from Tues afternoon until Saturday evening. I have an airtight alibi.
This is, by and large, the case. To have an alleged rape go much of anyplace it has to have some things which make it something approaching credible.
But murder is almmost always alleged, not by a personal complaintant, but by the police. They decide someone is a suspect (it just takes something which nags at their sense of suspicion). There is rarely a specific time, but rather a window; depending on when the body was found that window of possibility may be days, and it may be months after the fact. If I were supsected of committing a murder, say a month ago… I might be hard pressed to provide an alibi for a three day period of time which would prevent an hour to have beaten someone upside the head.
No, to the comment, What happened to the missing 75%, the complaints that don’t result in arrests? These must surely include a significant number of false accusations that the police determine as such.
Why must they surely include a “significant” number decided by the police to be false?
Because that is you pulling things out of your ass. If the police had that high a rate of actually false (as opposed to insifficient evidence, lack of suspects, etc.) that they were ruling even 1/3rd of them as, “false” you’d be able to find them.
Why? Because when someone makes a false accusation of crime (as opposed to a mistaken identification) there is usually legal repurcussion. Charges are filed. The police (and the DA) dislike having their time wasted.
But you, for some reason, decided some large number of cases “must be false accusations that the police determine as such.”
How, to reverse your question, can you determine that a large number of those unprosecuted cases are false.
More to the point why would you, in the absense of evidence, why should you?
Please understand: I’m playing devil’s advocate here.
Again why?
What is your interest in trying to show that a large number of a complaints about a specific crime are false? What is the thing you are trying to investigate/
Why do you care not to find the numbers to go with the stuff you claim (you say you have no idea what the actual rates are, though you are sure they are significant, while insisting that the numbers other provide are suspect?
Why won’t you answer a question about what you think? You weren’t asked what the technical meaning of “significant” was, you were asked what you meant when you used that term.
Why did you dodge the questions you were asked?
@Bee:
The bottom line is, people are very undereducated about rape, and it shows in how rape in handled by our legal system. Juries want to see bruising, tearing, and other injuries. They want to see a clearly “good girl” who was raped by a clearly “bad man.” Anything else is difficult to try.
Is it really still that bad? Why then do we get another impression when we hear from those infamous cases like Duke Lacrosse, Hofstra… yes, I would even say the DSK case?
Yes, it is that bad, Simon. You get another impression when you hear about “those infamous capes” because there is a shit-ton of misinformation about rape, sex, and gender that is present in the media and in society. And notice, of course, that none of the cases you mentioned went to trial. They were mostly played out in the media, where people jump to conclusions about whether the victims are “good victims” based on things like sexual history and race, and whether the accused are “good guys” who would never rape anyone based on the jobs they hold and their access to consensual sex.
Basically you are responding to me saying that society is stacked against (at least certain kinds of) rape victims by pointing to two cases where the victims were at least kinda believed by media sources, for a few minutes, until they weren’t, and one where the DA dropped the case because the witness wasn’t credible, not because she wasn’t raped. That doesn’t prove a different point of view, Simon. That’s more of the same shit I was talking about.
Whoops. Clearly that was a typo.
*Those infamous cases.
My bad. Although I do think Those Infamous Capes would make a pretty good band name.
Or a name for an action movie!
Or a superhero team!
It’s ass-covering. By saying “oh, I’m only playing devil’s advocate”, one can claim that it doesn’t matter if the proffered opinion was false, stupid or just plain obnoxious, because one didn’t actually believe it, you see; it was just an abstract view offered up for clinical examination at arm’s length.
mythago: That’s one reason. The more common; apart from more formal/artificial debate, is that it lets one make a claim, often repugnant; that one actually believes, without having to actually admit to it.
Then one can, “in the interest of examining the question (or non-question), promote the idea, and still be, “only looking at all sides”.
The way I tend to judge such things is.
1: Does the person own his/her words?
2: Is there any commonality to the positions taken?
3: Does this commonality support a consistent position?
Two is the harder one, because one may just be a contrarian. If there is a general opinion, and one wants to investigate things which actually have more than one side it may appear one has a personal belief.
In this case one might argue that the common understanding of “innocence” isn’t really the case; and that a greater supposition of not-guilty without proof is the thing the culture, as a whole, ought to do.
Ok. I, as a rule, tend to agree with this. Insofar as it goes that’s a perfectly fine position to take, and one might be willing to go all in behind it, even if one doesn’t really believe it, because the larger question merits a spirited discussion.
But that’s not what qwert is doing. At every question which touches on crime in general he is more than willing to accept the idea of giving credit to the complaint, except for rape. When challenged his only fallback has been, “rape is so easy to accuse”, which he supports with, “anyone can do it, anytime; why a hundred women could accuse me of it, at any time, for any thing which ever happened [really, a hundred? That’s a lot. The average number of partners for men is, rounding up, 10 in a lifetime; boasting much? Or is it more likely to be case of rhetorical hyperbole, meant to show that every man is always at risk from any women?]. That’s not much of a defense, esp. when people are actually discussing things with stats.
That’s a bit of a bind. With little, (or no data), an admission that he has no numbers, and people asking why he’s defending rapists (because he admits most allegations are factual; sort of. He wants us to accept his, unsourced, assertion that a “significant number” of cases which lead to no arrest, are based on malicious accusations, though, as with most of his case, he admits he has no data), he has to either explain his personal reasons, or use the “devil’s advocate position.
I’d find it easier to take at face value if he’d not brought it up when challenged on his numbers, but rather presented it as an artificial position from the beginning.