:rolleyes:
Sounds like a prosecutor’s wet dream some of those statements. Tell me. What experience do you have in the criminal justice system as either a lawyer, judge or law enforcement official?
Not a prison rape joke. C’mon, that’s too obvious. Give me some credit!
HINT: Just a Speck of gallows humor.
Sorry, not you, the thread.
Good question.
Why aren’t you afraid of a man claiming you tried to rape him?
I mean, if a random crazy woman can accuse you of rape out of the blue, why aren’t you afraid of crazy men accusing you of rape?
I’m a risk taker. 
I guess anything is possible, but being accused of raping a guy doesn’t occur to me.
Right, and maybe I’m a risk taker but being accused of rape by a woman or a man doesn’t occur to me.
I’m just curious as to why you think the first problem–being falsely accused of rape by a crazy woman–ranks as something to worry about which is why you avoid being alone with women, but the second problem–being falsely accused of rape by a man doesn’t.
Is it because you don’t think it’s something men are likely to do–falsely accuse you of rape, that is?
So why is it that women are falsely accusing men of raping them all the time, but men never think to use this weapon against other men?
You’d think, if it were such an easy thing to do to ruin a man’s life by accusing them of rape, that men would be doing it all the time just like women do.
So what’s the difference between men and women here?
And then there’s this story covered in an episode of “This American Life” — http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/581/anatomy-of-doubt
A woman is raped. She reports it. Her friends and the cops think she’s not acting like a rape victim should act. One of her friends calls the cops and says she doubts the claims. The cops then charge her with making a false claim. She gives up and accepts a plea bargain.
Then … one of the investigators just by chance discovers a rape being investigated in another jurisdiction that has exactly the same “unlikely” MO that the victim originally claimed. Not only is that guy a serial rapist but he kept photographs of all his crimes, including the one against the woman who pleaded out to making a false claim.
Since injustice is a like scored game you win…
Oh, wait, it isn’t.
Slee
Vaginas are scary, apparently.
Cite?
Zero, which I’m sure comes as a total shock shock to everyone since I never claimed to have any, genius.
I do, however, have 40+ years of experience at being a woman, and either I or other women in my immediate circle have heard all those things and more in situations ranging from guys getting grabby at a party to being stalked by creeps in the parking lot at work to a friend who almost gave in to a rapist becaus she was afraid he’d hurt or kill her if she fought or raised a stink (and who called police at my urging, and was “lucky” enough to get an officer who assured her that “not fighting/screaming your head off = consensual sex so quit wasting my time”) to a friend whose sister was gang-raped in college and talked out of pressing charges because the parents feared retribution.
:rolleyes:
Tell me. What experience do you have with unwanted sexual contact and reporting same to the authorities?
Who do you think says stuff like this? Sure bystanders might say it. But the reason this is an issue is because many police officers and investigators and and prosecutors and judges have these attitudes.
For what it’s worth, I ran a poll on this topic last year on the SDMB, “Woman accuses man of rape/sexual assault. Who do you believe?,” and** 94% of Dopers voted, “I believe the woman.”
**
However, although someone added:
(representative of the general population at large, that is,)
he also elaborated:
For a long time it was very commonplace, and the courts assumed guilt, that if a child said it, it must be true, with no meaningful cross-examination… So much so, that there was a well-established legal aid organization called Victims of Child Abuse Laws. Many incidents were later disproved, after men had spent years in jail. It was such a slam dunk, women were being advised by their divorce attorneys to claim sexual abuse of the children in order to close the door on the father’s custody and get him out of their lives.
That was around the 1980s, but the courts have since come to their senses, to some extent.
Weird. Men never say they’re afraid a woman will hit them. Of course, most men can hit most women harder. Men never say they’re afraid a woman might sue them. Of course, men generally make more money to pay lawyers, and still are most lawyers and judges. Men seem never to be afraid of women at all, except for just two areas: the one in which women deny them sexual access, and the one in which they might enlist the help of society to punish them for sexual assault. This seems to be the one spot where some men feel there’s a chance they might be the victims, and doesn’t it drive them crazy. Thousands of rapes per year, perhaps a dozen false accusations per decade (all caught), hundreds or thousands more rape allegations dismissed for specious reasons, hundreds of thousands more never reported to begin with, and some men are just terrified that some random woman or child, for no good reason, (exactly how many women or children do you, average man, piss off every year) will accuse them of something they take great pains never to be accused of. The odds of being accused are low, and of being convicted are even lower, but still, the need to adjust public opinion by trumpeting the idea of false accusations is just irresistible. Too bad. My take: you don’t worry about false allegations of shoplifting unless your pockets are full of (completely innocent) candy wrappers.
I was expecting this: 6 things I learned having my penis surgically removed
Out of every 1000 alleged rapes, about 350 are estimated to be reported, and of those 350 cases, 15 are found to have sufficient evidence to press charges, and 7 make it to trial. And of those 7, five result in conviction. Being falsely accused of such a crime is undoubtedly a nightmare (I’ve read some accounts, and actually the social ostracism tracks very well with my experience being falsely accused of lying about sexual abuse.) But the odds of spending years in prison on the basis of somebody’s mere accusation are vanishingly small. Probably even less so after that abortion of justice and common sense in the 1980s.
Just to be clear where I’m coming from… I work for a domestic violence and sexual assault services organization. We provide everything from shelter to forensic exams to legal support. One of the most challenging jobs is that of our legal advocates, who have to explain to countless victims that the prosecutor will probably not take up their case because prosecutors generally only take up cases they are likely to win, and rape cases are notoriously hard to win, in part because the claim of consensual sex is so easy to make on the part of the alleged perpetrator. The idea that there are all these prosecutors eager to pick up cases with little to no evidence is what I find contradictory with the legal realities victims at my agency face.