I just read recently in the paper about a case involving a homeless man who’s been in jail for the past 6 months or so. Some teenage girls were in a park one day and accused the homeless man of sexually assaulting them. Homeless man goes to jail denying the whole time that he did nothing. Now the girls come forward and say they lied because they had ditched school that day and did not want to get in trouble for it.
I don’t buy this – there is physical evidence for an actual rape.
I went a googling for a cite to a news story from a few years ago about a man who served a few YEARS in prison after being falsly accused by his daughter. She recanted, I guess after she grew up a bit. Never found the site but I did find a site devoted to false accusations. Just in case you want to be outraged some more.
From what I could read between the lines, the police had gone to the girls house to question her - but I think they themselves had already come to the conclusion that the “rape” didn’t happen. I can’t say this for sure but its the feeling I got from reading the 5 line paragraph.
Problem with this is, AFAIK, to the examiner, rape looks just like “enthusiastic” sex (unless there’s visible evidence of being beaten or whatever). With rape, there’s evidence of seminal fluid; same with consensual sex. With rape, there may be evidence of bruising, but there can be bruising with consensual sex, too, especially if you bruise easy and were really goin’ at it, so to speak. Yeah, 13 is a little young to be sexually active, but, hey, it happens. It’s possible that the reason she said she was raped was because that explained the loss of the cell phone and and evidence of sexual activity. Girls have been known to cry rape before, after having had unprotected consensual sex, so that, if pregnancy or VD results, they are not held liable by their families.
The problem I have with rape is the attitude of ‘guilty until proven innocent’ attitude at the people accused of it, especially if told by a child.
Example.
About 15 years ago, I student taught at a Jr High/High school. In the mornings I had 7-8th graders. The 8th graders made it a miserable experience. I had no idea what was going to hit me next. These kids were smart and malicious as hell. I am no wimp but they almost had me running. There was complaints to parents, to school officials, other teachers etc. Only the reputation of my supervising teacher standing up for me kept me from being run out. {side note - this experience paid big positive dividends when I got out in that I was very toughened and seasoned as a first year teacher and was told so by many people in my first year}
One day I was in the supply closet with the door closed. Outside I heard familiar 8th grade voices. It was several of them planning on how to get me next. I also found out the reason - they didn’t dislike me and thought I was fine its just that they wanted the real teacher back. This stiffened my backbone and was able to get through.
Skip forward 2 years…
The biology teacher of the school was accused of rape by a 14 year old girl. Several of her friends vouched that he had made comments/provided evidence that it happened and that he threatened to kill them/family if they told.
Poor, poor 14 year old girl! and her friends! The community was outraged. How could a group of kids make up such a story!? It had to be true! I had serious doubts when I found out who it was…my former 8th graders. Yes, you darn tootin they could do this.
The guy was arrested and brought up on trial. He protested saying he didn’t do it. The administrators of the school sided with the outrage of the community.
Turns out the date her friends and her said it happen he was with family over 1000 miles away. No way he could have done it.
They then change their story to a different date. Bad luck - he had an iron clad alibi that date also. Charges were dropped.
Did the community rush to his aid begging his forgiveness? Did the ‘children’ try to repair their harm? Did the school administrators switch their enthusiastic outrage against the children?
Nope. they’re kids. IT HAD TO BE TRUE!
He was fired (for a different unrelated reason ya know) and couldn’t get work in the community at any job. He tried to get work in another part of the state but no one would hire him. He and his family quietly moved out of state and I never heard of him again. (This was North Dakota).
I have taken many flames in my life from not immediately believing children. If there is some evidence that is different. However, the accusation of a child means no more to me than the accusation from an adult. I will not believe it at face value until I see some evidence.
And admittedly we don’t know the specifics either way so a percentage of my vitrol is admittedly excessive. Problem is cell phones are often very traceable and posession of that cell phone could now be considered evidence attached to a rape report, not a lost/stolen cell phone.
I have major problems with the whole “blame shifting” mentality behind this. My phone is gone but, uh somebody raped me and took it. As zebra and Blinking Duck pointed out, rape accusations have some special stigmas attached to them for the accused, even innocent. Because of this, falsely crying rape and pointing fingers is an extremely serious claim that I really feel leaves the word hoax sorely inadequate. Rape convictions carry special punishments, falsely claiming rape just to get someone in trouble should as well.
This is a sore subject for me because I got to go through a lighter version of this with a claim by a member of a message board I belonged to long ago (BBS days).
She claimed I forced her to have sex with her to try and save her relationship with her BF (apparently the first 3-4 consentual encounters did not come up). She made the claim in a main discussion area, and set off a wildfire of flame emails, threats from her BF and general shunning by many who claimed to be my friends. It took the combined forces of 8 other board members, mostly women who had previously dated me (it was kinda a local personals BBS), posting that they would have a hard time imagining the idea of me forcing myself on anyone. In addition I publicly posted several of the emails where she made statement concerning her enjoyment of our sexual liasons and was looking forward to our next date. One of the admins compared the postings to his email logs and verified that these were copies of the mails she sent me (they logged emails and IM’s for suspension of priveledges if someone was harassing other members). Her account was locked down and I never heard anything from her again.