Here’s the attorney talking on Good Day New York, denying the HIV thing.
Used to work at a network of 'em, actually.
I think the time has come when severe, severe penalties need to be imposed upon women who make false accusations of rape.
I had a hard time believing this story from the get-go. I mean, a woman enters the room and he just loses control and ravages her?
Um… yes?
Gosh, is there any such thing as rape at all? It seems so unlikely.
High time indeed. Why, for millions of years, there’s been literally no barrier whatsoever to reporting a rape. Now that I have heard about at least two and possibly more than two women who probably said something that probably wasn’t true, that is the last straw. It’s time we see, for literally the first time ever, what things would be like if we made it difficult on women who claim that they were raped.
I know! They should be raped, and nobody should do anything about it!
I would really like to see you explain how punishing women for making utterly ficticious rape allegations is going to make things difficult for women who were actually raped.
Not going to jump to any conclusions here, but this sounds a lot like ‘you can’t rape a hooker!’…standard tactics to discredit the accuser. We ARE talking about a very rich and powerful guy here, and one with the money to purchase the best legal representation (as well as someone who could influence local politicians, investigations and so forth). On the other hand, I’d say this woman’s actions have done irreparable damage to her case at this point…and there is the distinct possibility that having willingly fucked this guy (and finding out that he is rich and powerful) she decided this might be a good way to make some money by making a false accusation. Guess we’ll see how it plays out.
Considering that the evidence that he actually fucked her is pretty solid, I’d say that even if she was willing this guys was an idiot who was cruising for a fall. I realize that Europeans don’t look at things this way, and that the fact that he had many extra-marital affairs is of epic indifference to them, but if you keep doing stuff like that eventually something like this can happen.
-XT
If it does turn out DSK is totally innocent, would he be able to sue the hotel? Would they have to take responisbility for the maid’s actions? How does that work these days?
You’ve missed his point.
He is pointing out the fact that rape victims are already stigmatized, and often even blamed. Thus, a strong disincentive already exists for women to report fictitious rapes (and real ones, for that matter).
ETA: Sam, no. Employers are typically only liable for the actions taken by their employees in the course of their employment. Clearly, this woman was no longer in the course and scope of her employment when she falsely accused a guest of raping her (assuming the allegation is false).
So we’re to try to make it easier for women to report genuine rapes by allowing other women to destroy men’s lives with false allegations of rape?
No, we’re going to leave the not-particularly-good-but-better-than-the-alternatives system as it is.
Shades of Duke University all over again
If true, a huge slap in the face to all actual assault victims out there
So in other words, we’re going to make the decision to continue to allow women to destroy men’s reputations, their relationships, their bank accounts and possibly spend time in jail as the result of totally fictitious accusations of rape, and do nothing whatsoever about it?
At the very least - and I mean the very least - that is sexist as hell. “Sure, go ahead and destroy this guy’s life. I mean, he’s a man, after all, and certainly his life is unimportant compared to the ability of women to file rape charges willy-nilly while bearing no responsiblity whatsoever for their veracity.”
:rolleyes:
Right now, there are very few instances of false allegations of rape. Yes, it happens. What is more likely to happen, though, is that rape allegations are UNPROVEN. This doesn’t mean that the allegations were false.
And let’s look at this: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09093/960350-100.stm . Woman gets raped and goes to the cops. The cops decide that she was making it up, and she was charged and convicted of making a false report. She lost her job and had to spend five days in jail. Maybe her whole life isn’t ruined, but that episode was certainly not a picnic. What penalties should be given to the cops? For that matter, what penalties should be given to that rapist?
It’s already against the law to make a false report to the police. Suggesting that we need some especially severe (and I can tell that you meant especially severe because you said severe twice) punishment for false rape allegations indicates that you think false rape allegations are an especially severe problem in our society. They are not, really. If there’s a problem we’ve had with getting rapes reported, it’s that we make it too hard to do. When somebody reports one anyway, and it turns out to be false, well, that is terrible. They shouldn’t do that. But that’s already our opinion, isn’t it?
The call for double-severity is right in line with the modern fiction that the real victims of the state of sexual assault law are men, who are beset on all sides by inequities and traps and double standards, and in that light it maybe follows that this, today, is the breaking point, time for dramatic reform. But that’s silly. The law already allows for this lady, if she did the terrible thing it seems like she did, to be punished severely for it. Crying out for a crackdown is thoughtless opportunism and it would be destructive to far more people’s lives than false rape allegations are in the real world.
(Do you stand while typing? Do you shout your posts into Dragon Naturally but Sort of Unwarrantedly Fervently Speaking?)
I was with you until I read the report and found that the woman was not convicted in a court of law. The police simply didn’t believe her and tossed her in jail, probably thinking that she stole the money and was claiming rape to make her story sound more believable. What happened to her is unfortunate - to say the very least. But all that really happened was that the police jailed her under suspicion as they would anybody they suspected of having committed a crime. She was not tried, not convicted, and not sentenced to prison. And the police eventually did what they are supposed to do, and ferreted out the truth when another suspect came to light.
People get arrested and placed in jail all the time because the police suspect them of a crime. They either sit in jail or lose 10% of whatever their bail is to the bail bondsman. They lose jobs and they lose money, and if it turns out they’re innocent, that’s the end of it. They don’t have recourse either. She wasn’t treated any differently than anyone else the police suspect of committing a crime. Should the police just automatically assume that anytime a woman claims rape she is automatically innocent of any periferal crimes involved? Should a woman be able to commit any crime she likes and never even be questioned about it as long as she throws rape into the mix? That’s the only alternative that would have resulted in the woman in the case you linked to not being arrested and jailed until the authorities could get to the bottom of it.
No, I don’t think they’re an especially severe problem in our society. But I think they have especially severe consequences for the people falsely accused of them when it does happen, thus I think that especially severe consequences should result from making them.
So far as I know we don’t set penalties for crime based on how often they occur.