My god, Randy, you’re right. I bet Roethlisberger got that woman drunk, chased her into a bathroom, and had his goons block her friends from coming to help her because he wanted to crochet her a hat. Then he convinced her to go public with a rape accusation so that his friends wouldn’t call him a fag. She just punched herself in the vagina a few times to give the claim some versimillitude.
Apparently, unless there’s a conviction, he’s not a rapist, at least to certain Dopers. And I get the distinct feeling that some of them would argue that even after a conviction he’s still innocent of the charge. A rapist is a rapist whatever his legal status is, and rape victims often decide not to press charges because of the hell they get a glimpse of should they not be Bill Napoli’s ideal rape victim: (sarcasm alert)
“BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”
The way guys argue on the Dope about how it’s not rape because he wasn’t charged or convicted is pretty damned chilling, given as it happens under the heading of fighting ignorance. I can just hear the outraged squeals coming now, as guys get ready to demand to know if I want to ruin mens’ lives and all that bullshit. Yeah, Rapeisburger’s life sure is ruined. How many guys are defending him?
As a guy who had a false rape accusation leveled against me (after she initiated the act in question, and the most likely interpretation of her actions was that she waited until there was potential physical evidence before she withdrew consent and left, to get back at me for some imagined slights. Fortunately for me, she didn’t notice that my roommate was also home and in plain sight, and was able to give a statement), frankly, I find your post disgusting.
Yes, Roethlisberger acts the sleaze. He’s gotten himself in questionable situations before, including this one. That doesn’t change the fact that his status as “rapist” is at the present time unknown, and it does the victims of rape no favors to insist all accused rapists are actual rapists in the absence of a trial or uninvolved witnesses.
And I might add, anyone using that “Bill Napoli” criteria is just as much an idiot.
Lots of things are unknown, but have very very high probability of being true, as all the available evidence points their way.
Who’s insisting that this is so? I call strawman.
Perhaps the only thing I find more remarkable than the number of women on this board who claim to have been raped is the number of men who claim to have been falsely accused of rape. It’s so prevalent that I’m a bit surprised that I’ve managed to get through life without raping anyone or being framed for doing so.
The post immediately previous to mine used enough straw that I thought I’d scrape up some of the leftovers.
I don’t think it’s THAT prevalent, but there’ve been a lot of threads vaguely about rape lately that have raised the visibility of it.
Indeed. The only difference being the number of women on this board who have been raped appears more in line with the numbers suggested by multiple studies, whereas the number of men claiming to have been falsely accused doesn’t seem backed up by research in the same way.
Or being raped yourself, for that matter.
So you trot out the ‘woman scorned’ strawman, whine that you were falsely accused of rape…and that’s supposed to prove something? It’s like arguing that you have a black best friend.
Doesn’t the phrase “whine that you were falsely accused of rape” do a lot to advance the argument! Why, it’s almost as good as if someone was told they “whined about not receiving the help and respect due to a member of the military”.
In the absence of recent statistics, what do you want? The FBI’s Unified Crime Report from 1996, as well as a British study from 1995 (http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors293.pdf) indicate that even of cases that go to investigation, between 3% and 8% or so (depending on counting methods) are proven to be false accusations. That doesn’t even count cases where the alleged victim recants or refuses to participate. I don’t think that’s a small enough number to justify your attitudes.
And anyway, my post was STILL more substantial and supported (having one data point rather than none) than your post I responded to, which was a bunch of whiny bullshit about how Doper men are all evil because god forbid we question the merits of a rape accusation.
As for the ““woman scorned” strawman” accusation, bite me. I know in marginland all women are virtuous maidens who’d never lie or try to get vicious revenge on someone for petty reasons, and only drop rape accusations because they’re scared of the big bad court system, but here in the real world, people of all genders can be evil bastards.
That you know of. :dramatic viola swell:
Cite for the latter? I haven’t noticed it.
I’ll hire the soundtrack composer if you do the casting call. I think you just wrote 2012’s summer thriller blockbuster.
Don’t really feel like doing the required research, but there’s been one in this thread and I’ve noticed a number of similar claims in various rape-themed threads on this board over the years. At least often enough to make me think “hmm, is this really that common?”
Wow, it’s the “somebody else used a strawman, so it’s OK if I do” defense.
At least you admit that you were just BSing us.
If by “BSing” you mean “responded to an idiotic, unsupported post with a equally personal response in which I regarded the poster as an idiot”, sure.
This is, after all, the Pit. You may have noticed I followed up with statistics in my next post, too.
Zeriel, I generally like you. But you’re completely off base here and, IMO, knee-jerking based on your personal history. Do false accusations of rape happen? Absolutely. But that in no way changes the fact that many, possibly even most, rapists get away with their crimes because the U.S. rape culture is completely fucked up. What happened to you is shitty, but it doesn’t mean that (in terms of public opinion) a rapist like Roethlisberger deserves any benefit of the doubt from you when the evidence is this damning.
Roethlisberger got her drunk, had one of his bodyguards lead her down a hallway, and then followed her into a bathroom. Another bodyguard prevented her friends from coming to help her. Both bodyguards claimed to have no memory of meeting her. The woman was bleeding from her genitals. These are all facts. The only thing that’s up for debate is what happened in the bathroom. As you may have guessed, I don’t actually think he went in there to crochet her a hat.
Not possibly even most. Overwhelmingly most.
Aww, I generally like you too.
Admittedly, I’m prejudiced about uninvestigated rape charges. Also admittedly, a competent defense attorney could string together all those facts into a perfectly plausible scenario where rape didn’t occur–something to the effect of “girl gets drunk and likes the idea of sex with a star athlete, her (more sober) friends think she’ll regret it (as distinct from “think she’s not consenting/able to consent”–certainly this behavior is not unheard of from either gender), bleeding can occasionally happen when having sex in unusual circumstances (like drunk and in a bathroom).” Due to my prejudices, it’s particularly hard for me to damn Roethlisberger when the facts (as I understand them) lend to a plausible (note–not likely) alternate interpretation.
I think something we can likely agree on is that a witness who’s willing to make a rape accusation should be given as much support (especially psychological) as necessary to help her follow through with an investigation/trial.
Actually, upon further reflection, I think I’m actually irrationally angry that the alleged victim felt herself hurt enough to make the accusation but didn’t have the support and/or courage (pick one, no judgement implied) necessary to follow through–which, to my mind, is tacitly encouraging him to go forth and rape again (if rape he in fact did the first time) since he now has an example of ways he can use his fame and his bodyguards to help coerce victims to not testify. In particular, the form of it (that is, the sequence of “reports crime, publicizes the accusation, then withdraws the investigation because she fears misogynist treatment in the justice system”) strikes a nerve with me because that happens to be the way my own scenario went down, and honestly I would have welcomed it going to court just to have an official seal that I was not guilty instead of being tried solely and deliberately in the court of public opinion–which, as we’ve discussed in the thread, has much lower standards of proof in general.
It should be obvious but having seen that particular irrationality in my position, I’m going to reconsider at least part of it.
I will also say this–more than anything, I want to see support for victims encouraging them to fight through the misogynist bullshit and help GET that conviction where it’s warranted. Looking at the statistics again, I am actively angry at how low the arrest rate is for rape vs. other major crimes.