You know what, I am stubborn by nature and overly sensitive to this particular issue. I mean, I didn’t even expect people to question me at all, I just expected to be believed so I was caught off guard.
So, you were horrible to your mentally ill mother and when your stepfather tried to intervene you were horrible to him, and your mentally ill mother says something incorrect, and your stepfather who thinks you’re horrible might see accepting this untruth as a small price to pay to get rid of his horrible stepson. Is that about right?
wow
my mom is horrible. my step father is horrible. on that particular day i reached my limit after almost 20 years of taking crap from them.
I’m hesitant to accept Robert’s Rules of Hor’bler.
Um, about this “wow” you keep using; i dont think it means what you think it means.
If I asked them, would they say the same about you?
There is also the difference between being legally accused of rape and having word get out - say at your college - that you are a “rapist” - where no one presses charges, but some woman has claimed you took unfair advantage of her. (Or that you aren’t to be trusted because your roommate says you steal his cash).
You need to protect your reputation before the accusation, so that people say “Ryan? Really?” And not “oh, yeah, I can completely see him hitting some guy in a bar.” If your reputation is good, and there is only one person telling stories, you can usually live it down pretty fast.
On the other hand, I knew more than a few people who I wouldn’t have been alone in a room with, or accepted a ride home from a party, or gone out on a date with - because I’d heard from multiple women that their behavior towards women was not what it should be.
To the OPs personal story - if Mom is indeed a little nuts, and Dad is an enabler - while Robert has been a nice guy putting up with his parents shit for years - other people have noticed - and Robert’s relatives are hearing the story from Mom and rolling their eyes (or thinking “Its about time, I’d have been pushed over that edge long ago.”).
I’ve never met the OP, but at this point I’m disowning him.
If you have horrible people in your family, you have two choices. One is to avoid them. The other one is to put up with them for family harmony and unity.
You are doing neither. You are spending time with people you think are horrible, letting them get to you, and taking it out on them.
If they have told you not to come around anymore, they are probably doing you a favor.
There were a couple of bathroom walls where I went to college, where some woman started a list by writing “Don’t go out with [So-and-so]; he raped me.” Other women added more names to the list. I never got asked out by a man whose name I recognized from a list, but if I had, I would have said “No.” It’s possible some of the women were lying, or that some of the names were common (I can’t off-hand remember if some of the names were names like “Steve Jones”), but when you balance getting turned down, which is all that happens to the guy, against what could happen to me, what choice would I have?
Besides, even if all the guy did was sleep with her once, then dump her, I want to avoid that as well.
Should people who are caught making false accusations of rape be put on the sex offender registry?
Does that include women who are actually raped, but misidentify the rapist, or just people who make up accusations out of whole cloth? the latter is very rare.
At any rate, no, that isn’t a sex offense, but believe me, the police have lists of people who make false complaints of any sort, which occasionally mentally ill people do, and other times happens between feuding neighbors; they also have lists of compulsive confessors, and false witnesses/tipsters, which is to say, people who call in with information on every high profile crime in the news.
It would only be for cases where the accuser knows, or should know, that the accusations are groundless. E.g. the “What was I thinking, I shouldn’t have slept with him. I think I’ll report him for rape- that’ll show him, alleviate my guilt, and let me get on with my life.” situation. Assuming that the prosecutor would have to provide mens rea evidence for the false accuser, it shouldn’t be too much of a fear. At least not any more than the fear a guy goes through when he wonders if she’s going to lie in the morning.
And it makes sense, in a way, to have a registry of people who are known to have made false accusations. Guys could check the list before taking a lady home. Because you never know what she’s going to do. Shouldn’t you protect yourself from harm?
There is one thing that bothers me a great deal about how one would defend themselves against a false accusation of rape.
if a woman is known to have habitually falsely accused men of rape, for instance, you cannot bring it up in trial, unless she has been convicted say for perjury or false police reports involving that behavior. Thus, perhaps if she lives in a small town and is well known, the police and prosecutor may know her history and take a new claim of rape with a grain of salt.
But if she moves to the city where she is unknown, police and prosecutors may take her seriously–and if the defendant happens to find out about her history, he can’t use it. But the prosecutor had he known her history might have made a different choice in deciding to charge and is unlikely to drop his case if he finds out about it after charging someone.
Are you sure about this? Isn’t it generally true that the defence can challenge the credibility of the prosecution’s witnesses?
generally true, yes.
And I am not certain that all states still have this rule, but mine does.
I include 60-448 not because it is relevant but so I won;t leave you wondering.
60-446. Character — manner of proof. When a person’s character or a trait of his or her character is in issue, it may be proved by testimony in the form of opinion, evidence of reputation, or evidence of specific instances of the person’s conduct, subject, however, to the limitations of K.S.A. 60-447 and 60-448.
60-447. Character trait as proof of conduct. Subject to K.S.A. 60-448 when a trait of a person’s character is relevant as tending to prove conduct on a specified occasion, such trait may be proved in the same manner as provided by K.S.A. 60-446, except that (a) evidence of specific instances of conduct other than evidence of conviction of a crime which tends to prove the trait to be bad shall be inadmissible, and (b) in a criminal action evidence of a trait of an accused’s character as tending to prove guilt or innocence of the offense charged, (i) may not be excluded by the judge under K.S.A. 60-445 if offered by the accused to prove innocence, and (ii) if offered by the prosecution to prove guilt, may be admitted only after the accused has introduced evidence of his or her good character.
60-448. Character trait for care or skill. Evidence of a trait of a person’s character with respect to care or skill is inadmissible as tending to prove the quality of his or her conduct on a specified occasion.
Thus, under 447, repeated false accusations would be a bad trait–a liar. So you could put a witness on the stand to describe her general reliability as poor because of her reputation as a liar, but if you get into the area of the witness testifying that she falsely accused Bob Smith, Ted Jones and Frank Brown as well, the specific occasions of those false accusations are inadmissible unless she was convicted in some manner for not telling the truth.
if, instead she was convicted for perjury in each of those three trials against Mr.s Jones Smith and Brown, then you could ask questions in those areas.
So the best it gets is a witness describing her reputation for honesty to be poor–but you are still unable to bring up specific occasions of why she is dishonest.
You can’t bring the defendant’s criminal history up, but you sure as heck can bring up the criminal history of a witness, and while you can’t bring up the victim’s sexual history, unless she makes it as issue first (if, for example, she claims on the stand that she was a virgin), you can bring up other things, and I’m sure that if she ever made an accusation against another man, and then recanted, the defense could certainly bring that up. If she identified another man in the police line-up, other than the defendant, the defense is going to bring that up, even if the guy she picked could be the brother of the defendant, it was before the DNA tests were done, and the defendant’s DNA matches the DNA from the victim.
Rivkah has a possible angle it could be admitted. If the prosecution opens the door on the area somehow, you can respond in like terms where you could not before. It works the other way too. You have to be careful where you tread.
I have a cousin who is a prosecutor. He goes on sometimes about witnesses who are supposed to stick to saying “Yes,” or “No,” but can’t manage to do that. A witness won’t just say “Yes,” to she’s sure it’s the defendant, she’ll volunteer that she doesn’t say things she isn’t sure of, and then the defense attorney has a field day with “So, you must have been sure when you accused So-&-so last year. But you recanted that.”
And that’s not even assuming the victim doesn’t have a pattern of recanting accusations. If she’s done it more than twice, a judge could allow it in as character evidence, if I understand Alex correctly.
This is probably one of those things there will be pretrial motions about the admissibility of.