But your claim is that at least 50% of rape claims are false. And when asked if that many women are lying, you pointed to roofies. So, just how many rape claims are tied in any way, urban legend or not, to roofies? What percentage of rape claims have roofies involved?
You are the one who has brought up a statistic (at least 50%). I’d like to know where you get it.
I’m interested in this also. 50% seems like a pretty high number to toss out.
Admittedly, there don’t seem to be agreed-upon hard numbers to go on, but there have been attempts at trying to arrive at a number. From a wiki on the subject, the “studies” range from 1.5% to an outlier of 90%. But the average numbers are pretty low. USJD claims 2%. The police claim 1.5-8%.
How are you arriving at your claim of 50%?
Did the muggers genuinely believe that the lost drunks willingly gave them their money?
As I’ve noted elsewhere, it should be fairly obvious that in the vast majority of false rape accusations (particularly of the “date rape” consent vs coerced variety) there will be no way to conclusively prove any accusation to be false. Most of the lower numbers that you see are the result of a strict standard for declaring accusations to be false, e.g. the accuser recanting. The true number is obviously considerably higher than these estimates, though it would be pretty much unknowable.
Yes, this is pretty much all noted in the wiki. But if the lower numbers are obtained by using a strict standard, I was interested to know what standard dalej42 used to obtain his number.
While I agree that the number is probably higher than the numbers using a lower standard, how can you know that it’s “obviously considerably higher” if the true number is unknowable?
What does the behavior of a wrongly accused person look like?
In this thread and the Pit thread, I’ve seen posters (not you in particular) making implications of Cosby’s guilt based on his non-response to the accusations. Their argument has been that a wrongly accused person would not be so silent.
Now that it looks like Cosby is collecting information for his defense, you’re now saying that this also doesn’t look like the behavior of a wrongly accused person.
What behavior would make Bill Cosby look like a wrongly accused innocent person?
He used the “Women are gold-digging whores” standard. It’s basically his go-to statistic in all rape-related discussions.
Speaking up a whole hell of a lot earlier, of course. One accusation may reasonably be “not dignified with a response.” Innocent people don’t let it get way, way beyond that before they address it.
Yes, but in media and public perception, there’s ultimately no way for an accused person to appear innocent - whether actually guilty or not.
Ignore the accusations = “He/she doesn’t deny it! Must be guilty!”
Deny/refute the accusations = “He/she *does *deny it! Must be guilty! Denying is what guilty people do!”
Nonsense. Cosby himself benefited, for years, from an overwhelming reluctance to believe/pursue accusations against him.
Nonsense. Innocent people deny accusations against them, at least once they have reached a certain volume. Wouldn’t you? Isn’t the natural analogy people draw the one with what their own reaction would be?
Of course we know the guilty can deny too. It is the manner and circumstances of the denial, and secondary evidence and reasoning, that people weigh in their assessments.
But very few people would themselves sit mute before a rising chorus of false accusations.
Do they? Do innocent people really deny in all cases? Is it always the best strategy?
Especially with 40 year old accusations (one is from 1974 for fuck’s sake)
To condemn based on this is no better then saying he’s innocent because “raped women simply don’t go back to the scene of the crime”
At the end of the day - there are lots of things for and against his innocence
a) The number of accusations
b) The lack of police reports and comprehensive investigations
c) The time lapse between event and reporting
d) the sheer number of accusations combined with an almost total lack of contemporaneous reporting / reports / doctor visits - basically any evidence outside of what the ladies are saying
I’m betting he’s done something wrong - whether that “something” is drugging and raping over 20 I am really not willing to say at this point.
And I am very very troubled by the way that he can be vilified and punished like this.
What’s more - it really is no win for him at this point. There is no way he can refute the accusations - and if he tries, he just looks like a guilty fuck trying to intimidate the victim, if he doesn’t try it is taken as a tacit admission of guilt -
Really what can he do at this point?
It’s been roughly 5-6 weeks since this whole thing started again since 2005. Exactly when should he have spoken up?
After the first allegation, 14 more got tacked on instantly from the 2005 lawsuit, so after the first woman spoke up, the numbers instantly piled on. He said in that first week or so that he wouldn’t be responding to innuendo. That wasn’t deemed a good enough response.
If he spoke up a lot earlier, what would you have had him say to show his innocence?
Nm
What can he say if he is innocent? This is kind of an academic exercise, but let’s try:
"Ladies and gentlemen, dearest fans, I am here today to discuss some extremely serious accusations, alleging that I have committed a series of heinous, unforgivable crimes against women.
I want these allegations to be taken seriously. Sexual assault affects X million women yearly. And situations where people in positions of power use that to harm others are all too common in Hollywood.
But I also want to assure you, I did not commit these crimes, or any criminal sexual act. I am innocent of these charges.
While I believe that ones consensual intimate life is private, I feel an obligation to apologize to my fans for a series of bad choices that will come to light as we investigate these claims. I was unfaithful to my wife with several willing and legally consenting partners from 1983 to 2001. I am deeply sorry for these acts, and my wife has forgiven and reconciled with me.
I am sorry to disappoint those who have looked up to me. Please accept my apologies, and do not follow this path.
5 of the people accusing me were willing partners. The rest have never had sexual relations with me. I’ve never been alone with X, Y and Z. I do not know why they have taken this path, which is an unfortunate distraction from the many real sexual assault cases, and I ask them to please stop and to begin to tell the truth.
Unfortunately, my innocence cannot be affirmed in a court of law due to the statute of limitations. But I have worked with the Women’s Sexual Assault Network to identify and hire an independent investigator, and have committed to making that report public. I will also be working through legal mediation, in hopes that my accusers, whom I have committed no crime against, will voluntarily recant their false claims.
I recognize many people will not not accept the results of this, and some will continue to believe I am guilty. This is the nature of this type of accusations. I do not want this to become a polarizing issue. I am innocent and would like to clear my name. But I am also an old man at the end of a long career, looking forward to spending my autumn years with my family.
Thank you to my fans, my beloved wife, and my family for their support in this difficult time. Thank you to the countless people manning crisis support hotlines, running women’s shelters, and investigating sexual assault claims. Your work is needed. And thank you to all who are committed to knowing the facts before condemning an innocent man. You have made the right choice on this one; I will not disappoint you."
The way I think of it is: consider cases of false accusations. In what percentage of such cases would you think there will be enough evidence of falsehood to allow for police or researchers to declare that the case is definitively false (as opposed to unproven)? I think it would certainly be a lot less than 50%. So I would think the true percentage of false accusations would have to be a lot more than double the number of confirmed false accusations.
Seems obvious to me, but YMMV.
Based on Law and Order, which I know is always perfect with respect to our legal system, being really blitzed does relieve one from *intent *if you kill somebody with your vehicle. So you’re responsible for the death, but it’s not first or second degree murder.
This kind of gets similar to theologians discussing how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, but maybe being really drunk should be a lesser sort of rape or something. Or maybe the drunk person has to accept responsibility for being drunk if they did it of their own accord.
It’s all very messy, and I honestly don’t know how I feel about it (being too drunk to consent. I know how I feel about date-rape drugs or otherwise tricking someone into being too stoned to resist).
An Ed.D. is still a doctorate. It’s more focused on educational practice than theory, but it is still an advanced degree. And many doctoral programs aren’t really about attending classes - they are about producing original scholarship. And doing an educational TV show is just the sort of thing that one could write a dissertation on - e.g. Why do the show (theoretical basis)? What other educational programs have been done, and what were the results (prior research)? How was the show designed (experimental apparatus)? How would success be measured (methodology)? What was the result (results)? What does that teach us about education (conclusion)? What can we do next (future research)? That’s a graduate thesis or dissertation.
And some people are clamoring for a great extension to the “rape by fraud” concept. Rape By Fraud is a real legal concept that can result in a rape conviction, but it normally requires a fundamental deceit about the nature of the act, not a simple lie. Traditionally, the main forms of that were getting sex by impersonating someone’s spouse, and claiming that what you were doing was a medical procedure. You can’t just cry, “He said he had a 2013 BMW, but in the morning I found out that it was a 2011 BMW. I WAS RAPED!” Well, I guess you can, but that’s not “Rape By Fraud” that will get you a conviction in most courts, so it isn’t really “rape” as the law sees it.
What legal distinction is there between the different types of deception? Bottom line is the guy induced her to have sex based on false claims.
I can see where a jury might be unsympathetic to the BMW type claim. But its less clear that this is a legal distinction.
But affirmative consent, if I’m understanding correctly, really isn’t that high of a standard. All it means is the perpetrator recognized that the victim didn’t have the capacity to consent. And it’s not even a new law, just an aligning of campus investigations with the existing federal law (although, FTR, I think campuses have got no business investigating rape claims.)
I think it’s pretty obvious whether or not a person is capable of giving consent for sex. This is not rocket science. It doesn’t mean every drunk girl suddenly has a convenient out if she decides to have sex and later regrets it. That’s just as much a fallacy as the statistics you’re shooting down.
Certainly no later than 2005, when there were multiple accusers ready to testify. That needs some kind of explanation, don’t you think? Most people read a settlement as hush money, right?
“I am not a rapist, and I am appalled and outraged to be so accused. What actually happened was…” might be a good start. Something like that. (even sven probably has the right tone above, for a figure like Cosby.) What would you say if several people were publicly accusing you of despicable crimes?