So a woman who wears a string bikini to a midnight gathering of drunk and horny Hell’s Angels and then gets raped won’t be able to count on any sympathy from you, I guess.
Damn.
That’s pretty harsh. I’m glad that I have human compassion. It works for me.
You think those are the two “general types of cases” we’re dealing with here? Just those two? Aren’t you forgetting a THIRD case-- the “case” that is apparently far more likely (40% - 60% of cases) than either of the two scenarios you suggested?
You know, the one where the pretend “victim” tells a vicious, criminal lie that could send someone to prison for 20 years?
You’re right, it was silly of me to equate the two. As has been mentioned, I’m sure falsely accused men and falsely accusing women aren’t open with their pasts– though, honestly, I sometimes wonder if there are any secrets left. I meant more that all of my experience has been with women who’ve been raped or assaulted, and not a single one has seen her assailant brought to justice (not that all of them pursued it). But I think it would be utterly misguided to assume that women who drop their cases (or don’t even go to the police) are more likely to be lying in the first place. Perhaps one needs to have a vendetta to even make it through the criminal justice system.
If you need cites I can provide, but in the interests of time I’ll offer a “my post is my cite” response to this issue.
Technically, legally, the statement is correct: a woman’s word is all that is legally necessary to convict a man of rape. As long as she testifies to each and every element of the crime, the finder of fact is entitled to believe her testimony and disbelieve any contrary denials from the accused.
Practically, of course, the vast majority of rape prosecutors would want to be able to offer more than a bare unsupported word, because the defense would be free to argue consent, or even that the act itself never happened, and characterize it as “he said, she said” and most juries would be reluctant to convict on such evidence.
But again – “reluctant” is not “impossible” or “illegal.” As a practical matter, in the vast majority of cases, more is needed, but that’s a practical bar, not a legal one.
In any event, being falsely accused of a serious crime is a brutally miserable experience. If the charges are publicized, a lot of people will assume that you are guilty. You may have to spend money on legal fees, money which you will likely never get back. Not to mention the time spent worrying. The obvious example of this is the Duke Lacrosse case, in which the defendants were obviously innocent, and yet they were prosecuted for the better part of a year. Even after the state attorney general declared them innocent, there were people who would not accept it.
Huh? Fear of being falsely accused of rape means one is either a potential rapist or a Penthouse Forum fantasist? Where do the other possibilities, mentioned in the Purdue/FBI study, come into play? Because I happen to know, or even walk by, an unbalanced or vengeful woman I should not be concerned about the possibility that she might accuse me of rape, dragging my good name through the mud and costing me thousands of dollars even if I’m proved innocent?
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And still are, or who maintain that the accusation was a Good Thing, because It Will Teach Men A Lesson.
Earlier this year I was casting my eyes idly over a tabloid agony column to see a letter from a woman whose intended had been charged with rape, and the columnist’s answer didn’t include even a nod in the direction of “innocent until proven guilty”, instead claiming that “charges are brought only when there is very strong evidence”. I guess that explains why the conviction rate at trial is so low - because the general public are so determined to exculpate rapists that they ignore “very strong evidence” in thirteen trials out of fourteen. At any rate, Dear Deidre was all for dropping the accused like a bad habit before one word of the evidence had even been heard, let alone a defence offered. Disgraceful. :mad:
I wonder how many people, if they absolutely had to choose, would rather be cut off from family, friends, employment, perhaps lose their home, all the other consequences of a false rape accusation; or be made to have sex when they didn’t really want to.
In the spirit of “And another thing”, whenever a false rape conviction does hit the headlines, you can bet that, as surely as night follows day, you will hear about what an evil thing this is because it will render it less likely that reports of real rape will be believed. Eh, the suffering of the victim of the actual crime is of small account, I guess.
I think they’re both awful, horrendous things, and both are violations of a different sort, but come on, I think rape is a little worse than “be made to have sex when you don’t really want to.” I think you’re downplaying it just a bit.
I actually did include it, that was my intended second case. But looking at my post again I see failed to make this clear – I didn’t number the second case and I went off on a tangential point in the middle. Both you and I Love Me, Vol. I took what I intended as subsets of the first case (1a and 1b) to be the two separate cases. I apologize for my sloppy writing.
I intended Case 1 (“woman did not really consent”) to include both actual rapes (1a) and horrible misunderstandings (1b). The last paragraph of my post was supposed to be about Case 2, actual next-morning regrets. That was what I was referring to with “It’s a very small percentage of people who think that the correct response to making a personal mistake is to file a police report against anyone else involved. … Women who do this are lone nuts acting independently, not part of some organized conspiracy against men.” I don’t think there a lot of women like this but I’m sure they do exist, and I apologize again for my bad writing.
No, what I said was I didn’t have sympathy for people who say they’re really worried about bad things that might happen yet are unwilling to take any precautions against them. I thought I had managed to be clear on this point, but I was referring to people that nothing bad had happened to (yet) but who were worried about bad things that might happen.
To use your example, if a woman says “I’m really afraid of getting raped, but I’m not going to stop going to midnight gatherings of drunk and horny Hell’s Angels in my string bikini” then no, I can’t say I feel all that sorry for her. She still wouldn’t deserve to be raped, but I’m afraid my heart isn’t big enough to feel sorry for someone that irresponsible. I also do not feel sorry for any man who says he’s really afraid of being falsely accused of rape, but considers it too much trouble to exercise care in selecting his sexual partners or be sure that he has their consent.
Is this something that keeps you up at night? I can understand that any man might think of such a thing now and then, but if you spend a lot of time worrying that someday some woman is going to falsely accuse you of rape then yes, I think you have issues.
Thanks for the info, Bricker. I appreciate it.
Fair enough Lamia I can only say that the overall tone of your postings suggestged that to me.
And I ask again, because you never answered me the first time: how do you propose that a man can be sure – and PROVE – his partner has given consent?
The whole point of the OP, which you seem to be ignoring, is that a woman can say “yes, yes, yes” and in the morning say “no, no, no” and at that point, the man is up a creek and she faces no repercusions at all. You seem to feel there’s some magical litmus test the man can apply to the woman that will tell him, “Oh, she’s going to lie about this in the morning and screw up my life. I should not have sex with her.”
You think rape doesn’t ruin families and friendships? That raped women don’t have some relationship issues? That potential lovers or boyfriends don’t sometimes cut and run because they don’t want to deal with someone’s drama? That friends won’t accuse a woman of lying about being raped by someone from their social circle? That parents won’t encourage their daughter to keep quiet about being raped by a family member? Come off it.
It occurred to me today that I actually did know someone who later made a false rape accusation against a guy she’d had consensual sex with. I’d forgotten about this because it happened years and years ago, the woman was someone I’d been in elementary school with and hadn’t seen since, and I only heard the story secondhand. It isn’t a case of “next morning regrets”, but I think it’s close enough to what the OP was looking for.
A little backstory: “Theresa” was a friend of my friend “Susan” in elementary school. Susan and I continued on to the public middle school, but Theresa went on to the local private Catholic school. I then moved away and never saw Theresa again. But I remained in touch with Susan, and when we were about 17 she told me the following story on the phone.
Theresa was caught having sex with a black classmate (his race will be important later) in the school library. She initially claimed that he had raped her, but her story soon fell apart. What had actually happened was that Theresa had in the years since I’d known her developed a drug problem and had made an agreement with this guy to exchange sex for pills.
I don’t know any more details than that, and I never heard what happened to either of them afterward. I don’t know how long it took for Theresa to admit the truth. Susan didn’t mention the police being involved, but they may have been.
Theresa’s motivations for lying are obvious enough: she was trying to cover her own ass. Aside from whatever punishment she’d have faced for having sex in the school library, her parents were also very strict and her father in particular was both overbearing and openly racist. I remember young Theresa saying quite casually that the reason she was changing to the private school was because her father didn’t want her at the public middle school where there were “too many black people”. I suspect her parents would have been angry that Theresa was having pre-martial sex at all, and her father would definitely have been angry that she was getting it on with a black guy. So Theresa tried to throw the guy under the bus to protect herself. She’d be the innocent victim, not the pill-popping slut.
I suspect everyone’s first reaction to this story is the same as mine when I heard it: “Wow, what a bitch.”
The guy involved absolutely did not deserve to be accused of rape, and Theresa’s decision to tell that lie about him was 100% HER fault. But if he’d exercised better judgment, as I’ve repeatedly suggested here, he could easily have avoided the whole ugly situation. He could have stopped and said to himself, “Maybe it’s not really such a good idea for me, a young black man living in the South, to have sex with a white girl with a racist father right here in the school library, especially since she is only agreeing to have sex with me because she’s a pill-popper who needs a fix.”
For perspective, a woman who wears a bikini into a Hell’s Angels biker bar only has to survive the night; if her risky behavior backfires she could be raped and suffer a lifetime of emotional trauma. A man who has sex with a woman has twenty years (or the applicable statute of limitations) to hope that the woman doesn’t go psycho on him; if his risky behavior backfires, he can lose his freedom and his career and all his friends, thousands of dollars in legal defense, and suffer a lifetime of emotional trauma.
Risk for the criminal rapist: imprisonment. Risk for the criminal false accuser: virtually nil. Is this equitable?
In my view, two things must happen. Since “spite and revenge” are the motivators for false accusation, remove the enticement to cause harm with a false accusation. The alleged perpetrator’s name is never revealed unless he is convicted; and a false accusation stays on the perpetrator’s permanent record in the event of a background check — possibly she has to register as a sex offender, or something.
Not at all. I didn’t say “All rape is defined by Case B as I just stated it” but rather “Case B would be considered rape, and punished as such; and if you had to, wouldn’t you rather suffer that than Case A?”
I never came on it; see above.
I don’t think it’s that difficult to be sure your partner has given consent. If there are any doubts he could try ASKING her.
I don’t believe I ever said anything about men collecting proof of consent. My advice wasn’t meant to help the guy in court, it was meant to help a rape accusation from ever being made in the first place. If the woman has given clear consent then that avoids the possibility of horrible misunderstandings, and it also reduces (but admittedly does not eliminate) the possibility that a regretful woman will be able to convince herself that she didn’t really consent. She won’t be able to say to herself “Since I didn’t actually say ‘yes’ he should have realized that I was reluctant, so he as good as raped me.” If she’s grimly determined to lie then there’s nothing the man can do to prevent that, but obtaining clear consent will make it harder for her to justify the lie to herself.
I have not suggested that there’s any foolproof method for determining whether a woman is going to lie. I have only said that men could protect themselves against SOME accusations by being more careful about who they have sex with. There are SOME cases where a reasonable man should be able to recognize that the woman is bad news.
I must say that I am really surprised that I’m having to defend so strenuously the idea that making responsible decisions is good. I had no idea that so many people here thought that since good judgment isn’t 100% effective 100% of the time then there’s no point in being careful at all.
I think by definition a false rape allegation implies consent was actually given (assuming sexual intercourse occurred at all). If consent was not given and the guy had sex with her then the rape allegation is true.
She isn’t saying this. She’s saying that if a woman is raped, that woman will be told what her ‘mistakes’ were and how she could have protected herself better - by not drinking, not going back to a stranger’s apartment etc. If a man is falsely accused of rape, no-one says to him that perhaps it was a bit reckless of him to bring a woman he had just met back to his apartment, or have sex with a woman who is clearly drunk. For decent men who would not rape, surely this is something to be aware of - that woman you have just met could very well say the next morning that you raped her, and so perhaps it is better not to have sex with her. The false accusation is entirely the woman’s fault, but, just as women are given safety tips on minimising the risk of rape, why shouldn’t men be given tips on avoiding false accusations?
Not true in the majority of states. Rape usually in the US requires both expressed absence of consent and the use of force. In New Jersey, the act of penetration absent consent has been ruled to be sufficient force. That’s not true of most states, however. Saying no isn’t enough.