Bull shit.
She has a history of run ins with the law, before and after the Duke case.
I’m also of the opinion that the courts in general go easier on women who commit acts of domestic violence. I suspect that she’s been violent to her partner before, but that he and/or the law let it slide.
What makes the OP particularly distasteful is that the people most likely to suffer from the fact that up 50% of rape accusations may be false are not, as the OP seems to think, those who might be falsely accused, but actual rape victims, since that statistic gives people like the OP an excuse to indulge his misogyny and feel more sympathy for the accused than than for rape victims who will be presumed liars.
I’d say the OP demonstrates its effectiveness as a glass half-full/half-empty litmus test for misogynists pretty conclusively.
I am going to go out on limb here and guess that people falsely accused of rape actually do suffer, particularly the ones who’e life’s are ruined or end up in jail.
No one ever said they didn’t.
Did this remind anyone else of that Simpsons ep where Bart calls Santa’s Little Helper’s girlfriend a bitch and then is all, “Well, that’s what she IS, it says in the dictionary!”
But just to be clear: the accusation is the first part of the process, not the last. If the statistic of 50% has come to light, that suggests that a good number of those accusations don’t hold up through the entire legal process. Which is exactly what the process is for. Not to excuse in any way a false accuser, but again there is a process in place to *try *their accusations.
All people accused of a crime are considered innocent until proven guilty. Think about that for a minute. I’d wager that a lot of the same people whose kneejerk reaction to this statistic is that a rape accuser is probably a liar, and the system is set up to railroad poor innocent males into jailhouse showers, are a lot of the same people who think the system is set up to coddle the criminals and ignore the rights of the victims. Well which is it?
The fact that it riles people on both sides of the fence is a good sign: it’s a flawed system that usually, but not always, works.
The plain truth, however, is that a falsely accused rapist who is eventually exonerated by a system that works, is a less horrifying outcome to me, for one, than an actual rapist allowed to go free and rape again because of a presumed prejudice against his accuser. In addition to which, what do you think it does to rape statistics to make it abundantly clear to rape victims that they’re likely not to be believed? I’d think it would further decrease the reporting of actual rapes, feeding the imbalance even further.
I have a choice here, given that I was referring to the OP and not to you. For now I’m going to assume from your defense and your response that you’re more or less adopting the language used by the OP, and I’m going to respond to you as if you’re him.
First of all, it doesn’t matter, even a little, whether she “deserves” to be “singled out,” or that I have no idea what either half of that construction really means. What I (and Hamlet first) objected to was the monstrously specious characterization of the American criminal system when it comes to sexual offenses. So it doesn’t make any sense that you’re telling me why she deserves your scorn, since I didn’t even say anything about her.
Second, even if I pretend that what I’m really concerned about is the woman’s feelings, it still doesn’t make sense. She had some kind of bad experience with some guys and said a lot of things that weren’t true about it. Then a lot of other autonomous entities did a lot of other sleazy things. You’re talking about her initiating a process that led to people acting like “tools” as if those people weren’t responsible for their actions. It’s a strange approach to be taking, but you follow it to some pretty absurd ends, for instance that this woman’s lies polarized the nation along racial lines rather than just reminding many of us exactly where we stand on this kind of issue. Again, even assuming all of this was what I actually objected to, which it wasn’t, the justification for calling her a bunch of really ugly things is that some other people overreacted? There was a media circus so the right thing to do is carry on with a circus mentality? The subsequent reaction of other adults doesn’t seem to me to be the most attractive rubric by which to determine just how much spittle to spend on cursing at her.
But so anyway, I don’t really care much how you feel about the lady, so long as you admit that’s what your real problem is; plenty of people like to curse at people in apostrophe and make themselves look like animals. Just don’t perpetuate obviously wrong and horribly, horribly destructive myths about criminal justice while you’re doing it.
The problem with rape is that the mere accusation has far more negative consequences than pretty much any other crime. Merely being arrested for rape can destroy somebody’s life - even if they are later found innocent. Even if they are completely exonerated some of the stigma can linger, and life will never be the same.
This is pehaps why false accusations are viewed so badly.
That the system worked is cold comfort to the innocent guy that lost his job, lost friends, now is under a cloud for everything that he does.
I’m not disputing that for a minute. The OP, and you, are the ones insisting on a false dichotomy. I still think that to take the glass-half-empty position to sympathize more with a falsely accused rapist than with a falsely disbelieved rape victim is disturbing, on many levels. The whole situation is an ugly one, but your position errs on the side of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, in my opinion. A false accusation of rape is far more remediable than an actual act of rape, and the system should be weighted accordingly. You would support the opposite, even when the established system already presumes innocence.
Huh? The above was my first post in this thread. I have read some stuff (and seen some stuff) that suggests that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, police are expected to believe an accusation of rape.
This is a little different to other cases where there is exected to be some positive proof of a crime before investigations start. Not that I think this is neccessarily a bad thing.
But if that is to be the position, it should mean that false accusations are all the more harshley dealt with.
As far as I know she was not convicted of lying about the rapes except for conviction in the press and by cocksuckers on the internet. Her accusations were found to be inconsistent and not enough to proceed to trial against the accused. The accused sports team members should have been considered innocent throughout. But they weren’t, again, the press and internet cocksuckers convicted them based on what they wanted to hear day by day.
That is exactly what is going on her. This woman is now accused of serious crimes. She is entitled to protection of the law. Just like I would want protections if I were accused. If you abandon protections for the accused, you have abandoned them when someone comes with untrue charges for you and your family.
The Nifong case is/was remarkable because of the lying and suborning perjury by the prosecutor, which the prosecutor was indicted for, charged and convicted. That abuse of power is not uncommon in my limited experience. Most Illinois death row murder cases have had credible charges of prosecutor misconduct. Police and prosecutors are entrusted with enormous powers against which most citizens are completely helpless. I would like to think that most police and prosecutors use these powers responsibly and with an understanding of how abusing those powers unravels the communities we live in.
If in fact this woman lied about those rape charges, which appears likely, it pales in comparison to the damage done by Nifong. What Nifong did was a dagger aimed at the heart of justice.
Agreed, although I do think that you are far too easy on her. The accusations weren’t inconsistent, they were outright false, demonstrably so at that.
I have not argued otherwise.
I also agree with this. In fact, I agree with every word you said, my caveat notwithstanding.
That said, for her role in the Duke case she deserves every bit of what she gets. And if these allegations turn out to be true that will just be icing on the cake. In any event, she appears to be an all-around scumbag, and I cannot generate even an iota of sympathy for her.
And I may one day agree with you that she deserves everything she gets. But it won’t be before a guilty verdict, which I presume will not happen.
Who’s insisting on a false dichotomy? Being a rape victim sucks. Being a victim of a false rape accusation sucks. As I understand the statistics shown in this thread, any given rape case (in the absence of other considerations) has both of those outcomes equally likely.
Look, I had my college life nearly destroyed by a false rape accusation. So have a few other of my male friends. My wife was forcibly stranger-raped. So were other of my friends. I don’t have to have a skewed view of which was worse to acknowledge some damn statistics.
It’s pretty bad that WASP jocks from wealthy families emerged as the heroes of this debacle.
I can’t help it, either.
Um… Why?
Depends.
Are we talking human victims or cats thrown outside in a blizzard?
Most of the 20 or so?
Ah, c’mon Airman, I don’t know or care what happened with Ben…I was joking, figuring on one of the Steelers fans rising to the occasion. I mean, its the offseason…what else are we gonna do? The draft can’t get here fast enough for Christ’s sake!