To be clear, I agree that this is the case–rape has the lowest arrest rate of any major felony by a massive margin. (IIRC, something like 25%, vs 85% for murder)
My gut feeling is that these types of incidents (that is, rape victims who start the criminal justice process and then bow out) are contributors to that, as the mere act of withdrawing the complaint (or withdrawing one’s testimony concerning it) can be seen as tacitly implying that the complaint was baseless in the first place–especially in a high-profile case like this, which ironically and tragically is also apt to be much more psychologically difficult for a victim to face when she’s deciding whether or not to continue the process. I reiterate that I believe it would be beneficial to everyone (including victims of false accusations) if victims were given the emotional/psychological/financial support they needed to see their accusations through to trial (and, ideally, conviction).
Well, yes, I’m quite sure that’s the case, too. But that sort of thing is hard to conclusively prove, because if you could conclusively prove it, there would be convictions. So I decided to just avoid the issue of some rape apologist frothing at me for a cite.
I’d call that possible, not plausible. And only slightly more likely than my crocheting suggestion.
This is one of the really sticky bits of rape culture in the U.S., and (no offense intended to you) one that gets into borderline victim-blaming. In an ideal society, would everybody report every crime? Absolutely. But we don’t live in an ideal society; we live in one where certain types of rape are considered acceptable by a shocking and disgusting percentage of the population.
Even with solid physical evidence of the rape, a woman is still incredibly likely to have her name dragged through the mud just for making the accusation. Is it worth having your life ruined, while you’re probably already in the middle of attempting to recover from an event that is probably traumatic both mentally and physically, on the chance that you might be able to convince a jury to give the guy so much as a slap on the wrist?
Don’t get mad at the victim for deciding not to go through with a prosecution that had no chance of a beneficial outcome. Get mad at the person who decided to rape, the people who helped him get away with it, and the parts of society that shrug their shoulders and say, “Boys will be boys.”
ETA: And the victim here, when she stated that she wasn’t willing to go forward with the prosecution, explicitly confirmed that she was *not *retracting the accusation. And that’s just the problem–there just wasn’t a case, because there wasn’t enough physical evidence to prove, as our legal system demands, *beyond a reasonable doubt *that Roethlisburger was guilty. It’s *not her fault *that he chose to commit the actual rape in a private area, away from security cameras, and not leave any semen in her vagina.
Absolutely, it’s hard to say “the victim should work harder for a conviction” without that implication, even as we have to acknowledge that underreporting and testimony withdrawal are contributors (along with the culture, and the “reasonable doubt” standard generally requiring physical evidence that’s not always available) to the abysmally low arrest and conviction rates for rape in the U.S.
I wonder if there’s a different-culture bias here, too. In my experience it’s significantly more likely that the communities that I’ve been a member of will tend to automatically take a rape accusation at face value and drag the alleged rapist’s name through the mud–this might well be because I tend to hang with liberals, feminists, and musicians. Your statement is certainly true of my rural good-ol’-boy hometown.
Tangent question: does anyone know of any legal aid/charity type organizations that provide moral/legal/psychological support to rape victims to help them get a testimony together for a trial while helping them cope with the trauma of the crime itself?
This is often the work of women’s shelters (usually the charges are against a former spouse, boyfriend or family member) and I’ve never seen one that couldn’t use more money or volunteers, especially with legal experience, so if you want to see more bang for your buck you can’t go wrong looking up your local ones (though please avoid those ‘pregnancy crisis centers’).
The problem with providing moral/psychological support for rape victims is that many don’t get the support they need when they first seeks help – for example, from friends or parents who accuse them of lying or tell them not to tell anyone else – so they are discouraged from pursuing the matter. So you might want to check out RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) which focuses on awareness raising, information hotlines and counseling.
You can’t go wrong with Planned Parenthood, either! Their functions vary depending on the location (and, often, how active pro-lifers are in the area and the government), but whatever the circumstances of a rape, they are there to provide at least some small peace of mind: pregnancy and STD tests. Many also offer information and resources for women and girls, including legal aid.
Like you say, this IS the Pit. Feel free to call an idiot an idiot however you want.
That didn’t require your coming up with a whole new strawman. As you’ve noticed, I’m calling you on it. Can’t see that you should be off the hook just because someone else was as dumb and/or dishonest as you.
Well, as I also said, A) I followed up with some stats in the next post, and B) fuck, I dunno, how’s your wife and my kids? I don’t have the energy to insult you properly right now.
I’ve already admitted the statement was extraneous. It was a "flow of consciousness’ kind of thing if you must know; not meant to illustrate or prove anything. Kind of like how you brush your teeth without actually thinking about it. One of the most important activities you can do and you don’t think about it.
But here you annoying little gnats are, buzzing in my ears, picking at this one sentence, which I’ve already admitted was extraneous.
A strawman is a position that (a) sounds sorta like the one taken by whoever you’re arguing with, but (b) is much easier to knock down than their actual position is.
When you ‘follow up with some stats’ that knock the strawman down (which is what you did) it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve still just set up and knocked down a strawman.
Well, apparently I’m serially illiterate. I’ve been looking at “strawman” and reading it as something else for basically the entire thread. I blame insomnia.
Having read back to her posts, I’m comfortable assertingmargin (to whom I was directly responding, as hers was easily the most idiotic post on the thread) believes as I accused her in my post. Especially given that she ignored my supposed strawman regarding her beliefs (even after you pointed it out) and chose instead to make insulting comments about my own experience with a false accusation.
Anybody who thinks that every single rape is reported *is *a rape sympathizer–at least in the sense of actively supporting the culture that makes it possible through willful ignorance.
Here’s the thing, though: extraneous, flow-of-consciousness statements reveal a hell of a lot about your general attitudes. Kind of like when I hear somebody offhandedly use the word “fag” or “faggy.” Funny how when I call them on it, they always try to claim they’re not bigots.
Without looking back at it, I think the studies I linked estimated somewhere between 35% and 75% of rapes go unreported and/or un-investigated for whatever reason.
And you never, ever heard from the woman in the case, just the guy’s denunciation that she was some variation of a crazy bitch----or, in Zeriel’s case, that she really wanted it. It doesn’t make me trust somebody. It makes me think of all the rapist apologists I’ve dealt with, who always blame the victim. As I said, it’s the new “My best friend is black!”
What’s interesting is that citing statistics is demanded by people who are essentially demanding that one re-invent the wheel. No matter what you cite, they’ll reject it, because they’re not listening–kind of like Malacandra who took a potshot at my ordeal with getting help from the VA.
Wow, that’s another nail in your rapist-apologist coffin, asshole. I never said nor believe that all women are perfect, but I also know that after dealing with rapist apologists, that’s exactly the sort of shit they like to accuse you of: believing that all women are perfect. You want to take pot shots at both women and me individually? It’s not doing your case much good.
How many guys claim that they were falsely accused of rape while they were in fact guilty of it? So you’re comparing me to guys who try to evade punishment with…somebody who served my country, got injured, and then finds the promises they made to me to be lies? Dishonorable doesn’t begin to describe what you are.
People have a huge resistance to the word ‘rape’—yet describe the act in terms of actions taken, and men admit to it. Evan Lysak and other researchers have repeatedly described the phenomena of men admitting to rape as long as the term itself isn’t used.
Yet one thing nobody’s studies is how people talk about rape, or at least the ways people who don’t think it was rape when it was talk about it afterward. Tim Beneke interviewed a lot of men for his book <i>Men on Rape</i>, but it’s not available in electronic form, which is the fate of a lot of the ground-breaking stuff about rape, the stuff that makes certain people uncomfortable. What was striking was overwhelming climate of sexism and insults that these men—doctors, prosecutors, actual rapists—created. Helen Benedict covered the language used, and for at least a decade Peggy Reeves Sanday has covered the field of college rape. And she wrote a book titled “A Woman Scorned”, which covered something that’s going on here: how women who charge rape, who were raped, or who were raped report being harassed, stereotyped, and lied about.
And I pointed out something very similar, which aroused a huge tide of hostility: people are defending Ben Rapelisberger as if the victim dropping charges in the face of great hostility means he’s innocent. Oh, yeah, and it doesn’t mean she’s a lying whore. Certain dopers don’t like having that pointed out. Like you. When you lash out the way you did, you’re not saying anything about me. It’s all about you.
See the above FBI and British stats–anywhere from 3%-10% of rape accusations that are investigated end in a not-guilty verdict–in other words, a significant percentage of investigated rapes ARE false accusations.
That’d be “all guys accused of rape who claim innocence”, or did you mean to clarify that a little bit? Funny how it’s okay for you to throw around little turds of absolutes.
It’s clear to me that you have no real interest in anything approximating a rational approach to this matter. You continue to insult me and ignore the cited numbers in my post that fail to support your bullshit viewpoint. Frankly, you’re showing similar behavior in the other thread where I’m a closet racist because…you apparently can’t read a goddamn bill.
Look, idiot, more than one woman in my life, including my wife, was raped. God help any of those motherfuckers if I get my hands on them. There was more than one rape attempt at parties I was a bouncer at in college–and I am goddamn proud to say I testified at both of the trials where I’d seen something happen, and we got the asshole convicted both fucking times. That doesn’t make me, Ben, or anyone else guilty of the crime just on a victim’s say-so–we have goddamn laws for a reason. Maybe if you’d put more effort into helping the victims be able to get through the hostility and get their case heard by a court (which I have, dammit), you’d see that conviction rate go up and make some changes.
“Not guilty” != “Innocent.” It just means (in the U.S.) that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and obtain a conviction. Were some of those “not guilty” people innocent? Absolutely. Were all of them? Almost certainly not.
Right back atcha, asshole. Found not guilty in a trial doesn’t mean they didn’t commit rape or whatever crime. It could mean that there wasn’t enough evidence. It could mean the jury absolutely would not convict that guy for that offense. There’s been at least one case—in Texas, I believe—where, when the victim finally realized that she could not fight off the guy, she begged him to use a condom and he did. Defense argued that this was consent. Or there’s this asshole here, who says he’ll never vote to convict a man of rape, no matter how guilty he is: Reddit - Dive into anything
How many racist fucks were acquitted in the Deep South during the Civil Rights struggle? Think they’re all innocent, too?
And nobody gives a shit about how many women you say you have in your life. It’s “My best friend is black.” Ben? You’re besties with this asshole now?
Lara Logan’s case proved that lots of assholes out there would say, “Well, I take rape very seriously, but that bitch asked for it by being stupid,” so saying it and proving it are too different things. Of course, lots of guys don’t even bother with that. ManBoobz.com is for sale | HugeDomains
