Have they ever determined if the e-mail (in which a player said they would kill some strippers) was real?
Oh, it was “real” in the sense that as far as anyone can tell, he did write and send it. I did not read it as being “real” in the sense of his actually planning to, IRL, flay strippers. I read it that he was being an OTT fratboy ass. His lawyers seemed to agree, and cited it as exculpatory because someone who really had been aware of/participated in a rape would not be so stupid as to record violent sentiments against the strippers thusly raped. The defense theory seems at this early stage to be centering around the notion that the strippers and the players got into some sort of beef and the current accusation is payback for that (Kanin, the researcher who found that of the rape allegations he studied on a number of college campuses, 50%(!) were false) identified “revenge” as one of the three chief motivating factors in false rape allegations).
So: my best guess (all any of us have) is that there was some kind of unpleasantness at the party – either a gang rape (really “unpleasant,” but which I’ve wondered about sort of dubiously in another thread) or a beef about payment, about the complainant being wasted, about what the strippers said/did, about what the players said/did. If there was not a rape, I am assuming e-mail boy was writing his pissy OTT e-mail as a slam against what he saw as bitchy unsatisfactory strippers in view of whatever beef they’d had.
As far as I know, Kanin’s study was of a single small midwestern town of under 100,000 people, over a decade or so in the 70s and 80s, and the numbers he got back were 41%, not 50%. The government uses a different methodology, but comes up with a figure of 8% for false rape accusations.
Kanin did a follow-up study on several university campuses and came up with a figure of 50% false. I cited that study only because this accusation took place amongst college students. Also, regardless of the rate, I would think (no cite, obviously) that when false allegations do take place (at whatever rate), the reasons for them (including revenge) may be rather similar.
Your number for the FBI’s reported estimate is correct. I suspect it is low because I do not think they were as inquisitive as Kanin (rather, I suspect they just reported whenever a PD reported an allegation to be false, i.e., spontaneous recantation), but that’s speculation. The FBI reports that include that “8% false report” figure note that it is the highest false-report number for any tracked felony – the general rate of false reports is 2%.
The assault is a fact. The gay thing–not so much. Cite.
Hmm…
It appears she may be looking for a way out. The pressure may force her to “drop the charges”.
She drops the charges before the trial shows she may have made it up. Blame the media/Duke/etc.
Yes, and you can bet all the attention will then be focused on how evil the system is that imposed all that pain and suffering on her. The additional doubt cast on her story will be little mentioned.