I imagine that a lot of false rape claims don’t come back to any particular man. For example, if a woman falsely claims that she was raped by a stranger; provides a description to the police; and later recants, no particular man will have been falsely accused. Similarly, one can look at Crystal Mangum’s earlier accusation, which was most likely false: The police told her to write up her claims and she promptly disappeared. Thus, the people she accused may not have been aware of it.
In a sense, most men have been falsely accused of rape. If a woman fabricates a rape accusation without identifying an assailant by name, every man faces some risk that she will choose his face from a lineup.
One last point: You need to consider the possibility that your acquaintances who have been raped are actually exaggerating or lying about it.
I can see your point, but this isn’t done for people accused of other crimes. Even people accused of murder don’t have their identities protected.
I don’t see what’s so daft about refraining from sex with a woman you think will later claim that you raped her. If you have any doubts on that point, it’s best not to risk it. You’ll have other chances to have sex.
*I am generally okay with that too.
*I mean not sleeping with people you don’t trust or who seem likely to have next morning regrets. That includes people you hardly know, people you do know but that seem dishonest or unstable, people who are falling down drunk, people who you suspect of having a personal vendetta against you or know to have been vindictive towards others, people who say they’ve just had a big fight with their usual romantic partner, etc. There are a lot of potential red flags out there, and when you see one it’s good to take care.
*I’m not a social skills coach. If you’ve never encountered a person who seemed dishonest, unreliable, or otherwise “off”, then you’re going to need to find someone with special training to explain it to you.
*There aren’t HOW many crazy people in the world? Even if one accepts the “40% of rape allegations are false” figure (and I do not, but I’m willing to work with that number for now), that’s still not a huge number of liars out there. According to FBI statistics on forcible rape, there were 94,635 rapes and attempted rapes in 2004. 40% of that is about 38,000. I can easily believe there are far more than 38,000 crazy women in the US.
Just to be clear, I’m using “crazy” in a rather casual way, not as a synonym for “diagnosed mental illness” or anything. I’m pretty comfortable with saying that a woman who willingly consents to sex, regrets it the next day, and knowingly files a false rape charge isn’t right in the head, though. Normal people do not do that sort of thing.
*The problem with harsher penalties for false accusers is that it makes it even less likely that a lying accuser will recant her phony claim. If the accuser and the accused actually did have sex, there will likely be physical evidence linking the accused to the supposed crime. He obviously won’t have an alibi either. Once the phony accusation has been made, it’s best for the real victim (the wrongly accused) if the accuser agrees to take it back.
Anyone who knowingly files a false police report or wrongly accuses another person of a crime should face consequences, and these should be strong enough to deter people from casually making false claims. But if they are extremely harsh, liars will have all the more reason to stick to their lies. That won’t help the falsely accused at all.
There’s also the possibility of real rape victims being pressured into recanting and then punished for that. Just such a thing happened in the town where I used to live (Madison, WI), and I’ll admit this high profile case has colored my opinions on the issue of false rape accusations. You can read a summary and newspaper articles at the Cry Rape website, a book about the case by journalist Bill Lueders. A brief summary is that a woman was raped by a home intruder, bullied into recanting by the police, and faced criminal charges for her supposed lies. After a lengthy legal battle the charges against her were finally dropped, but the police continued to deny any wrongdoing. Several years later the victim was finally vindicated whern advances in DNA testing linked the case to a man who’d been arrested for an unrelated offense. He was eventually convicted of the rape.
*Aren’t most people who report crimes given the benefit of the doubt? The only time I ever had to file a police report (my bag was stolen) the detective certainly seemed to take my claim at face value. I don’t see why rape victims should be treated any differently. Anything fishy about their stories should be checked out of course, but I’m happy with the benefit of the doubt being extended initially to all people who file police reports.
*This is a very important point. As far as American courts are concerned, people charged with criminal offenses are considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s the same for all kinds of criminals: rapists, thieves, murderers, anyone.
If things are worse for accused rapists than for people accused of other crimes (and I haven’t seen any actual evidence that accused rapists are treated any differently than people accused of similarly violent crimes), then it’s because rape is considered a very serious offense. I hope we can all agree that reclassifying rape as a petty crime wouldn’t help matters, and I don’t see any legal way to force the general public to adhere to the “innocent until proven guilty” standard.
That’s true to an extent, which is all the more reason why the authorities need to be skeptical of self-serving, uncorroborated accusations. With no exception for rape.
Seems to me there’s some selection bias there too. Who’s going to tell an acquaintance “I made a false rape accusation”
The friends who have involved me in the process have either not reported the incident (and so would not count as false allegations of rape), or have been told by the police no charges can be filed for various reasons (not count as false allegations of rape), or have taken the process through to court (not count as false allegations of rape). It is possible some of the people who have told me they have been raped in the past made false accusations and recanted them, but I find it unlikely they would tell me years after the event that they were raped, despite having recanted/been “found out” by the cops earlier.
Which likewise would not go on the books as an allegation of rape either. Basically there is no mark on either side of the column officially.
No charge filed, no record of a rape allegation. Again neither side of the ledger gets a mark. Further, it seems from what was noted earlier that if a woman insists on filing the charge then it gets filed and the police investigate. It may be that when the police respond they sense a bullshit allegation and may discourage the filing of a formal charge but if the woman insists then that is that. Off to an official investigation.
In short, the above two cases do not seem to swing the numbers in either direction so cannot be considered as a means of suggesting the “false accusation” side is artificially inflated.
This would tally as a legitimate allegation of rape even if she lost the case. Losing the case is not the same as a false allegation of rape. This would then tally in the “legitimate allegation” column. This would serve to make the “false” side a smaller percentage of the total.
I don’t see why you can write it off as “unlikely” so easily. The fact is that people fabricate and distort things all the time. Anyway, if you have acquaintances who made false accusations and later recanted, they might not even mention it to you at all.
Yeah, you shouldn’t sleep with people you think will accuse you of rape. I don’t think anyone needs to be told that, probably why no one does it.
Do you have some evidence that false rape accusation victims didn’t trust the perpetrator?
I didn’t ask about dishonest/unreliable/“off” people, I asked about false rape accusers. Why do you assume they’re the same thing?
Yeah, obviously they’re dishonest by definition, but I see no reason to think they’re generally dishonest, and of course many dishonest people hide it pretty well. Admittedly asking for advice was just snark, I don’t think you can give any because I don’t think there’s any way to know.
Yep, may well be more than 38,000 crazy women in the US. They aren’t the people falsely accusing others of rape though.
Of course normal people do that sort of thing. They steal from each other, assault each other, and murder each other too. You can define them as crazy to make yourself feel better if you wish, but they bear no resemblance to actual crazy people, so “criminal” is probably a better word.
Possibly, but that is largely because people get convicted of rape on rather flimsy evidence (including a bunch of rapists, I’m sure). This was an understandable reaction to the general lack of evidence in rape cases, and the general biases against women claiming to have been raped, but the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. If more evidence than simply the word of the accuser were required, then vanishingly few people could get convicted of a rape they didn’t commit. This is the only reason there are so many false accusations IMO. Normally getting someone convicted of a crime they didn’t commit is a rather tricky task, in the case of rape sometimes it’s as easy as simply claiming they did it. And of course even if he isn’t convicted you probably fucked up his life anyway, win-win! Both the problems should be addressed.
True, more liars will stick to their lies. But less will make them in the first place, and the caught ones will get something closer to justice than a pat on the wrist. Finding the right balance is always tough of course, in this case I think it needs to be tougher.
Well, yes. But you don’t change, say, the punishment for murder because the police can be tools and pressure people into false confessions of murder. It’s a separate issue (one that certainly also needs addressing).
Did you accuse a specific person of stealing your bag? If so, you shouldn’t have got the benefit of the doubt IMO. If not, I see no harm in giving the person reporting the crime the benefit. Big difference in saying someone stole my bag and Joe Smith stole my bag.
Indeed, as it should be. I’m not complaining with how the courts deal with it, more the police and society in general. People accused of serious crimes should not have their names splashed in the papers (or anywhere else, IIRC some places have it illegal to print accused’s names). I’d say that for every serious crime, not just rape. Heck, any crime really, serious ones just being more important obviously.
It barely even seems worth arguing that rapists (and pedophiles) are treated worse than even murderers. Definitely worse than someone who commits plain old assault. You really think they aren’t?? I didn’t propose making rape a less serious offence, not sure where that came from. [though in my ideal world people would have fewer hang-ups about sex and rape wouldn’t be more scarring than any other assault, sadly we’re rather far from that so its current classification is appropriate]
I agree, there’s no way to force the general public to treat people as innocent until proven guilty. You can prevent the general public ever knowing the names of people accused of crimes though. And of course, general society and the courts are rather intertwined anyway. The jury system in particular, but even judges aren’t immune.
I wish the quoting function automatically nested quotes, as a lot of context is currently lost.
Der Trihs, getting clear, verbal consent from a sex partner will not protect you from someone who is deliberately, with malice forethought, setting you up for a false rape accusation. However, the women going to those lengths? Fairly rare. That’s a plot for a soap opera, not a realistic threat.
Obtaining clear verbal consent from your partner means two things:
there is no misunderstanding. If one partner says “hey, I’d like to fuck your brains out so hard, you actually change religions and political parties,” and the other partner says anything but “hell, yes!”, then the deal is off, and everybody knows about it.
it’s much, much harder for a person to kid themselves that it was anything but consensual sex. Sure, some accusers - caught up in spite, jealousy, or other ugly viciousness - are still going to try, but they have to lie to themselves even better than to the police detectives.
Everyone thinks they’re righteous, right? Inside our little heads, we’re each of us the hero, and heroes don’t say “hell, yes!” to fucking and then reverse themselves the next morning. Not without being more than a little crazy.
It’s not an absolute guarantee, which is what you seem to be looking for, but it does drastically lower the chances.
And I’ll add a third result:
God forbid, your partner, after her enthusiastic “hell, yes”, turns around and files a complaint with the police that you raped her. The police come over and question you.
You get to answer, “Officer, we had consensual sex. I asked her flat out, if she wanted to have sex. Actually, what I said was ’ I’d like to fuck your brains out so hard, you change religions and political parties,” and she said “hell, yes!”"
Unless she’s a genius sociopath with really good ad lib skills, the next time they talk to her, her story is going to fall apart.
Is it a 100% guarantee? No. But short of having every sexual partner sign a witnessed and notarized letter of consent for every single encounter, there is no such thing as a 100% guarantee. Not for you. Not for me. Not for any of us.
No,we don’t. We think men have the power of speech, the senses of hearing and sight, and the ability to deduce from spoken word and obvious body language whether or not we are interested in having sex with them.
No, they don’t. All of us make choices in how we deal with others. It stands to reason that if the risk of harm by another is high, then the time taken to determine if that person is trustworthy should be proportionately longer. This doesn’t mean avoiding all women (after all, a man can make a false accusation of rape as well). It doesn’t mean never being alone with another person. It means taking healthy precautions, trusting one’s instinct, listening to one’s friends, and not impulsively putting your health, reputation, finances, or other valuable in a stranger’s hands.
No, it isn’t. It’s not an all or nothing situation, and it never has been. The choice is not “consensual sex with random people until one of them files a false rape charge” or “never, ever seeing another vagina as long as you live.” Just like, for women, the choice is not “consensual sex with random people until you get raped” or “never, ever seeing another penis as long as you live”. (And, yes, I’m aware that I’m using heterocentric phrasing. If you need me to expand my terminology, let me know.) The choice is a sliding scale risk and trust, and men are not exempt from this just because of the biological imperatives of testosterone. For every risk one person assumes in entering a sexual relationship, the other partner assumes an equal risk.
All men don’t seriously think like that, right? That is, either interact with women and possibly get accused of rape, or be celibate? I’ve read other posts by you, Der Trihs, including the one about “What if men’s sex drives were the same as women’s” where you say that if not for sex, men and women would just voluntarily self-segregate. Are you just interacting with some screwed up women…or do you not like women, or what? You come off as kind of paranoid, just saying.
I think you are being unrealistic. People lie. All the time. And it doesn’t require malice aforethought; just that she decide to accuse you at some point after she consented.
Or by hating men. Or hating THAT man. Or just being amoral. I think you are being wildly unrealistic about people’s ability to excuse themselves.
Even assuming you are right, which I don’t buy, as pointed out that doesn’t matter. They’ll disbelieve her but continue with the investigation and prosecution anyway.
But we’ve set up a system were anything else is foolish.
Probably not; otherwise most men would be a lot more leery of women. But men have notoriously bad judgement about women and sex.
That’s the way our system is set up. Few men choose celibacy because they have such a strong sex drive; but the way our system is set up, a rational man wouldn’t want to be in the same state as a woman much less in bed with her. Not because of women are worse than men ( they aren’t of course ), but because our system means that men are completely vulnerable to the worst women, with little to no recourse.
To put it another way, how would you feel about being around men if rape was legal, and publicly approved of ?
On the whole, the genders don’t seem to like each other very much.
This has nothing to do with women. This has to do with a screwed up, biased legal system, and a society that takes unsupported accusations of sex crimes as fact.
And the way the system is set up, the time in question on this matter is infinite.
And probably be laughed out of court.
Who said anything putting anything in someone else’s hands, stranger or not ? A man is at risk just for being a man; the woman doesn’t need to be a stranger, she can be someone he’s known for decades; or on the other hand she can be someone he’s never met.
But the whole point is that the risks aren’t at all equal. Any woman can casually ruin a man’s life, with no effort or cost to herself; she doesn’t even need to be in a relationship with him to accuse him. A man can’t do the opposite.
Do you have some evidence that they did? Because if they did, they were wrong. Someone who is going to falsely accuse you of committing a serious crime didn’t deserve to be trusted.
I expect that someone will now want to say something like “How can a man know with 100% certainty whether a woman is trustworthy?” He can’t, and I’m not asking him to. I’m only saying that men who care about protecting themselves should try to exercise good judgment. If you really don’t know what good judgment is then I can’t help you.
*I think it’s funny that you are calling for me to provide evidence for my claim that some men sometimes get involved with women they have no good reason to trust, but provide no citation to support your claim that a woman’s word is all it takes to get a man convicted of rape. That is not how the American legal system works. It’s not at all easy to get a rape conviction.
If you’re posting from another country then I have no idea how your legal system works and none of my remarks should be taken as applying to it.
*No, there isn’t a big difference. My bag was stolen while I was out of the room so I wasn’t in any position to name names, but if I had seen Joe Smith do it then I’d have included that in my statement to the police. I’d have expected them to take me seriously and investigate the theft regardless of whether I saw the guy who did it or not. That’s all they’d need to do at that point, investigate. If my story didn’t check out then that’s one thing, but there’s nothing inherently suspicious about someone saying they recognized the person who committed a crime.
*That’s a reasonable enough stance. I’m inclined to say that the press shouldn’t be restricted in that way, but it’s not really an issue I feel strongly about.
*I have never seen any evidence that they are. Do you know of some study that compares relative social scorn levels for people accused of different types of crimes?
*Sorry, I was just throwing that out there as a crazy “solution” that no one would agree with.
Some women don’t like men to have one night stands with anybody. So they are comfortable with the idea of false rape accusations.
That said, “The most common reasons the women gave for falsely accusing rape were “spite or revenge,” and to compensate for feelings of guilt or shame (“Forensic Science Digest,†vol. 11. no. 4, December 1985).” from here: AmericanDaily.com
As spite and revenge often occur after the relationship has gone on for a while, it seems as though the one-night stand scenario does not apply in many cases. (Misplaced guilt or shame is another matter.)
Being a good judge of character is all fine as well, but I’m not sure I’ve known many people who have a reputation for being a person likely to make false accusations of rape. Thus, I’m saying the ability to anticipate this sort of misbehavior seems exaggerated here: otherwise there would be rules of thumb.
or the 3rd case where a lucid woman consents to sex and in the morning changes her mind, I’m sure you meant to include that, just slipped your mind as you were so focused on the cases where the man could be held reponsible for puttin’ his dick in the crazy, I mean, what was he thinking.
Here’s the real problem phouka. People are terrible at judging the character of their loved ones. And a significant share of these false accusations arise from vindictiveness, a side that many might not notice in the earlier stages of the relationship.
We’re programmed that way. AIDS researchers are familiar with truth bias: people think they can detect lies when actually their chances are only slightly better than 50%. Then there’s the double curse of incompetence: those who are bad at something (like judging character) also tend to be bad at evaluating their own deficiency. They tend to think they are closer to the average then they actually are.
In the case of AIDS, you can get your partner to disclose or take a test, “Just to be safe”.
But false-accusation types are trickier to ID. Judging from the spotty information in this thread though, I’d be wary of the vindictive and argumentative, but also of prudes that look down upon the promiscuous - they might be prone to denial and malformed guilt. Worst might be those whose naked self-interest in ideological realms robs them of empathy. Self-justification is powerful. And avoid the tightly-wound.
That covers a lot of people of course --and those are rough proxies-- but it’s not as sweeping as the plan offered by Der Trihs. But pending better empirical data, it’s the best we can do.
Regarding point 2, I would agree. As long as some women (a significant number, it seems, according to the studies cited in the OP) feel they have the right to change their minds about consenting to sex AFTER the sex has already occurred then it apparently isn’t a good idea to EVER have ANY form of sex with ANY woman–even if she has consented to it.
“If he floats then he raped her. If he drowns then he’s innocent.”
