• Men falsely accused of rape are victims too, says wrongly-charged student
    52 replies, posted
I'm sorry, is the argument "they might imprison the accusers without proper evidence they committed the crime!" Tell me all about that struggle...
Because bringing forth rape accusations is already risky. We have a demonstrable societal problem with women not being taken seriously unless they have access to some kind of media platform and even then theres blowback. We don't have a recurring societal problem with false rape reports.
Isn't this obvious? Why does this need to be a news story?
Yes we do?
Feel free to cite your sources saying we don't have a problem with false rape reports
Imagine raising such a fuss about data security and handing passwords to border control but being okay with this. This alone is going to make tons of rape victims never report the crime, because if they do, the police are going to take their phone and look through everything in it. Knowing the way US police handle evidence, they might never get that phone back.
Are there any other crimes you guys think we should apply eye for an eye to, or is it just false rape accusations? I'm not sure how he is going to prove an unfalfisable claim but out of curiosity, do you guys have any data on the rate of false rape accusations? Based on what I've read, and touched on by someone on the previous page, the data we have is pretty sketchy so I personally wouldn't make bold claims one way or the other.
Iunno, I'd rather them rule out any chance of something that can ruin someone's life permanently without any recourse. Any false rape rate of over 0 should be dealt with in any way possible. The police can't use the information on your phone for anything other than the case at hand as per the constitution. You need evidence to pursue a legal case. You shouldn't be able to make a claim and get someones life absolutely destroyed without at least trying to remove the possibility that it could be false.
What is interesting about this discussion is that any data we are going to use on the rate of false rape accusations, presumably to formulate an argument for why they should be handled much more severely, is compromised by the sheer amount of women who don't report rapes in the first place, and how many of those reported don't go to trial. I don't think you are going to see many people saying false rape accusations are bad, or even that they couldn't be punished more heavily (particularly in the era of social interconnection we live in nowadays) but it just seems like there is a lot of grey area here.
Okay, it was repealed in 2012, but it can still be applied to offences committed before then if they were committed against a child.
I was wrongly accused and I can confirm it was traumatizing and also that nobody cared.
Do you have stats to back that up? The truth about false assault accusations by women
False rape accusations happen. But they are outrageously overblown to the point of absolute stupidity. To the point that they're barely a blip on the radar when you compare it to true rape accusations and reports. In fact, rape and sexual assault not being reported due to pressure or public backlash completely eclipses the "False Rape Accusation" issue. And the problemwith putting false accusations in the forefront or putting it on the same level of priority as actual rape/sex assault discourages victims from being able to report the abuse. Cause it establishes this narrative that Rape is on the same level of occurrence as false rape accusations. Meanwhile if you compare the two, its pathetically minuscule to actual rape. That doesn't mean they don't happen, they do. But putting them on the same level of a problem as sex assault and rape is really fucking stupid. Btw this chart ain't for women only, this is for all rape and sex abuse of both women and men. https://www.rapecrisisscotland.org.uk/siteimages/imported/resized/false-allegations-perception-and-reality-rgb-656@2x.jpg "Furthermore, sexual assaults are among the most underreported form of crime: a majority of rapes, attempted rapes, and other sexual assaults go unreported." Estimates vary, but researchers have concluded that the percentage of rapes reported to formal agencies is “quite low, ranging from 5–33%.” This would suggest that the pool of victims in position to make credible claims is much larger than the pool of people included in analyses of false reporting. While the precise proportion of false rape reports may be undetermined, the most recent and credible research on this topic suggests that around 5% of rape or sexual assault allegations are false."
Sexual assaults are under-reported but I've always been wary of the 3% statistic, it doesn't happen that often but it's also not the rarest thing on the planet. I know of 2 other cases where people who personally knew the 'victim' could confirm 100% without a doubt that they were lying. Anecdotal, but it seems to be a behavior that's picking up frequency under the current social climate, and people doing it now will probably move onto some other horrible behavior in the future. I don't see what frequency has to do with severity- we can acknowledge that false accusations aren't that common but also acknowledge them as being a real problem. The real problem is how punitive our society is, as well as how reactive people are. Individuals seeking out vigilante justice or believing something just because they read it online are doing a disservice to their societies in ways that reach far beyond this one issue.
So your point is that we should ignore these official reports and studies, and just go off on a "Gut" feeling of what is probably manufactured outrage.
I'm saying that these studies only rely on the data that is availible, which is only all cases which have been proven to be false. Proof for claims going either way is notoriously extremely difficult as it's usually a crime which occurs in private. I literally stated that my case was anecdotal and that it was more or less my opinion.
Few things: One reason it goes unreported is fear of being doubted. I don't have any scholarly evidence on hand for that, but I think you'll agree. If evidently false claims were prosecuted gently, there would be at least be something to fear for knowingly making false claims. If you're making a true accusation, you have nothing to fear, because there won't be evidence you fabricated it, because you didn't. If you're making a true accusation, again, you will be more likely to be trusted, because people will know that you would be more afraid to make a false claim than if there's no risk. There will be one less reason to fear filing a true claim. Legitimate reports should increase. It's notoriously hard to prove a rape. It's easy to prove fabricated accusations, assuming evidence is available. The people who say it should be punished severely are extremists. You're strawmanning the argument. This is clearly a real problem. Whenever this discussion gets started, men come out of the cracks admitting this happened to them, and usually that it strongly changed their lives for the worse. Not to be crude, but it's hardly a secret that there's a lot of people with poor mental health out there, who are willing to make false accusations. Even if it was a small problem, one more time, this doesn't pose any risk to honest victims. This doesn't pose any risk to honest victims. Please try to hold all of the above in mind simultaneously, and recognize that even just having it on the books that making a provably false claim carries literally any penalty at all, you will be helping honest victims. If you're against this policy, you're actually making things worse for rape victims. I know this is a really touchy subject and it's hard to conceive, but there are plenty of shitty people out there doing all sorts of creative shitty things. This is a really easy policy change to improve society for absolutely everyone who isn't abusing the legal system. It's a win for rape victims, a win for false accusation victims, a win for law enforcement efficiency and effectiveness, and a lose for people who are lying to the courts to try to ruin the lives of innocents. Imagine if there were no penalty for falsely accusing a spouse of abusing the kids. Imagine if there were no penalty for SWATting. Filing false police reports, for any crime, is not acceptable. It should be gently but firmly deterred, for all crimes. One last time, it's a win for everyone. It's not a competition, it's not a tradeoff. It's an objective improvement.
So we should allow people to utterly ruin someone's life with just an accusation that they don't even push for full prosecution?
The issue then, is how we treat victims of sexual assault and the accusal process. We already have a hard enough time getting men to come forward with their experiences of sexual assault and I don't think implementing a punative charge will make that number go up any. I'd have to find the study, but most of the false accusations are done by people who are habitual cons. They tend to falsely report a lot of crimes. As an addendum to my previous post, that 8% of "unfounded rape reports" included rape reports where there wasn't enough evidence to take them to court. No one is suggesting we believe every accuser, but the hysteria over false reports is pretty tiring. We live in a society were Steubenville and Brock Turner are a thing. I think this perception that women just make their accusation and then the accused life is over forever is a really over blown reaction and pretty unfair to the person who had to take the leap of faith that an accusation is. We can have better recourse for the wrongly accused without hanging another sword over victims heads.
No it doesn't. "That figure does not include any unsubstantiated accusations where an investigation was unable to prove a sexual assault occurred, so an accurate figure for the total remains unknown." "Other studies have figures in the same range. The FBI has put the number of "unfounded" rapes - those determined to be false after investigation - at 8%" This number would be a lower bound, not the expected result. From the study itself(Which appears to measure things from 13 years ago, would be nice to have more recent numbers) "Rapes by force constitute the greatest percentage of total forcible rapes, 87 percent of the 1996 incidents. The remainder were attempts or assaults to commit forcible rape. The number of rapes by force decreased 3 percent in 1996 from the 1995 volume, and attempts to rape decreased 4 percent. As with all other Crime Index offenses, complaints of forcible rape made to law enforcement agencies are sometimes found to be false or baseless. In such cases, law enforcement agencies “unfound” the offenses and exclude them from crime counts. The “unfounded” rate, or percentage of complaints determined through investigation to be false, is higher for forcible rape than for any other Index crime. Eight percent of forcible rape complaints in 1996 were “unfounded,” while the average for all Index crimes was 2 percent." RAINN puts the number at 9/230 accusations lead to prosecution, that's around 3%, which would leave ~97% as your unfounded stat if that were the case. As mentioned earlier, there is no stat on how common false accusations are because they are currently not something you can accurately measure. Your article is very bad at making a convincing argument in several regards, and manipulates the data into the number of convictions that the justice system can prove were false after the fact is low therefore the number of false convictions is low. That statement does not follow. Overturning a false conviction is not an easy process, and some are never overturned. This once more steps into the territory that false accusation convictions are higher than real ones therefore real accusations are rare. It's bad logic. In addition it only counts prison time as a serious consequence without addressing that the accused will almost certainly lose their job and any further employers searching their name will almost certainly come across the article of them being accused which will highly impact the chance of finding future employment. Not to mention the social factors of such. Lastly there is no study on how common false rape accusations that don't get reported to the police are.(For example someone caught cheating claiming the partner raped them as an alibi, but refusing to go to the police about it) You would need this data for a true representative sample. Anyone trying to argue that false accusations are rare or common based off of statistics are blowing smoke. There aren't any accurate stats here besides conviction rates. Look at the consequences and punish accordingly. We don't consider how rare a crime is for any other sentencing. That's not how justice works nor should it.
Ah, sorry. I've had the FBI report on hand for a while and hadn't reread recently. Better accounting and analysis for crime statistics is a must. I read another article after you posted this that went over similar points, including police department mishandling (intentional or not).
That would be a significant reduction in the sentence. Currently perjury in the US carries a sentence range of at least 1 and no more than 5 years in prison. Rape on the other hand, well just yesterday a man was convicted of intoxicating and raping a 14 year old and received a sentence of 10 years probation and no jail time.
One of my best friends from uni was falsely accused of raping his ex-girlfriend by the woman herself not two months after they split up. Though he was, fortunately, cleared of all charges, the lengthy six-month process transformed him from a confident, outgoing charmer to a quiet shut-in and even now he tells me he still gets messages from people who still somehow think he's guilty. Rape is not a fucking joke, and neither is falsely accusing someone of it just to spite them.
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