From link I didn’t read:
“A teenager who claimed her ex-boyfriend drugged and raped her when he refused to rekindle their romance has been ordered to pay £200…”
Well I hope she’s bloody well learnt her lesson!
Nope.
Yep!
(Sorry. Pet peeve.)
Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever met him.
As for the OP, while false accusations of sexual assault are indeed a serious issue ｰnot only for the harm they do to the accused, but also for the far-reaching harm they do to actual assault victimsｰ as others have pointed out, you’ve so thoroughly poisoned the well that there’s no hope of a reasonable discussion here.
Looks to me like you came here for recreational outrage and decided to Pit women in general while you were at it.
Why? Do you think it should be higher?
(Bolding mine.)
So, while I’m sure you agree that rape should be punished severely, you believe that a false allegation of rape should be punished more severely than the actual crime of rape itself?
What if someone were to falsely accuse another of making a false allegation of rape? Does the punishment just keep getting more severe the further removed you are from an actual assault?
It seems to me a guilty person pleading innocent to rape is falsely accusing another person of making a false allegation. Probably happens all the time and hopefully the guilty person is found guilty and goes to prison for rape.
. . .
M’kay. So, rape is still the lesser of two evils?
(False allegation of rape < actual rape !?)
I would change #2 to:
- Whilst traveling in the U.S., what’s a quick and easy way to cheap out on the tip?
Pretty much this, mainly the “Meh” part. This seems to be another instance of armchair judgment by an OP without full knowledge of all the facts and circumstances. Accusing someone of a serious crime can be – AND IS – frequently regarded as a very serious crime itself. But accusations are a prime example of where all the facts and circumstances matter a hell of a lot and where judicial discretion is important. If this teen is supposed to get a long jail sentence for this, what sentence would the OP want to give to someone who spent months fabricating an elaborate forged trail of evidence in order to secure the conviction of his business partner for rape or murder?
How so? Does a criminal conviction bar civil claims in some way?
I think you mean:
(False allegation of rape > actual rape !?)
I’m not sure why you think a false allegation is less heinous a thing to do than rape is.
We are assuming a false allegation so the person being accused is innocent.
A false allegation by itself carries immediate bad effects. Family and friends may shun you and you might lose your job. If you are married your marriage will be sorely tested. Any relationship really. Even if you are found innocent you can easily find your life wrecked. Not to mention crippling bills from lawyers for your defense (or pray that seriously overworked public defenders give your case more than a few hours time).
If you are found guilty you lose your freedom and go to prison. And not the comparatively nice white collar prison but prison with the worst sorts of society. What happens to you in there can be torture. It is estimated 15-20% of men in prison are raped and usually the rapes are repeated. But even if you have an easy go of it with no violence you have lost your life to prison. When you get out your life is still largely wrecked and recovering from that is exceptionally difficult.
A false accusation for a serious crime is no small thing. I am not sure why you think the punishment should not be commensurate with the crime the false allegation was about.
To be clear, this is in no way meant to diminish the crime of rape. It too is a very serious and heinous crime that wrecks lives. Those guilty of it deserve their time in jail.
While I agree that false accusation is a serious criminal act that deserves serious punishment, I’m baffled as to how you can argue that it is literally as heinous as actually committing the alleged crime.
Would you argue with a straight face that falsely accusing somebody of murder is just as heinous as murdering them, for example?
A false accusation is effectively calling on society and the courts to exert their power to hurt somebody. And society and the courts can decline to comply if they decide they don’t believe the accusation. Actually raping or murdering somebody, on the other hand, is directly and immediately hurting them yourself, in a horrendously drastic and vicious way, without even allowing them a chance to appeal to the judgement of others to defend them.
If you can look me in the screen and say solemnly and sincerely that you would be just as willing to be murdered as to be subjected to a false accusation of murder, then I might take seriously your suggestion that false accusation of a major crime and the major crime itself should be considered equally heinous. But on the face of it, the suggestion looks pretty ridiculous.
I think you’re barmy.
But it does.
You’ve presented a whole slew of hypotheticals and then claimed that those potential outcomes have equal or greater weight to an actual violent assault.
Your perspective is askew.
I figured Steophan would be defending the judge’s decision. Guess his excitement for law enforcement only extends to unintended executioners, not those given that decision-making power by the people.
It’s a good thing he poisoned the well enough for you to not click the link then. That site looks like TMZ. They showed 2 photos of this young lady, both ripped from facebook. The first one had one of those silly surreal photo filters. How can you read a story when it’s preceded by that? And on the far right column I was treated to the sight of the buttocks of 2 unclothed men at some Tommy Robinson protest. 
Why the fuck would it not be? A false accusation is a lie. A potentially damaging lie, sure. But still a lie. It’s in the same class as slander or defamation.
Rape, on the other hand, is a physical assault. It is an act that can cause lasting physical and emotional harm at the very core of a person. It can leave someone with the mental illness PTSD for the rest of their life. It is in the same class as assault and attempted murder. Hell, many rapes are in the same class as torture.
There is, yes, the additional issue that false accusations can harm the cause against rape. But no single case is all that harmful, any more than a single case of lying about assault means we stop believing assault victims.
Point is, one is defamation, while one causes direct physical and mental harm. One causes external harm to one’s reputation, while the other causes internal harm to the person (and possibly external harm from others).
And that’s without getting into how an admitted or proven false accusation tends to actually negate at least some of the harm done by the accusation in the first place. Getting someone convicted for rape doesn’t do a lot to lessen the pain of the rape itself.
One of the big problems in anti-rape activism is the tendency to treat both issues as the same. If you think you’re weighing the possibility of one heinous crime against an equally heinous one, it skews your perception. You concentrate too much on whether the victim is credible, rather than the evidence.
As such, people are more likely to be accused of false accusations of rape than other crimes. This should not be.
Murder has a finality that none of these other things do.
As such it is not remotely comparable.
That leaves the rest of your post not worth answering since it is too much trouble to try and separate the bogus comparison from the discussion at hand.
Okay then, tell me solemnly and sincerely that you’d be just as willing to be brutally and painfully beaten with serious injuries and a long recovery time as to be subjected to a false accusation of having similarly beaten another person. That doesn’t have the “finality” that you’re objecting to.
What hypotheticals?
You do not think an accusation of rape against you would have no effect on your life? Your friends and family and community and your job?
You do not think you would have to spend tens of thousands in a defense or pray a few hours of a public defender is enough to acquit you?
You do not think that violence in prison is a thing? That rape in prison is not a thing?
Even if you avoid all the unpleasant parts of prison life and get to read books in your cell with no trouble you think spending years or decades in a prison cell is a minor thing?
Do you think once you get out you have a reasonable chance at restarting your life?
There is abundant evidence of all of the above.
A false rape accusation is a wrecking ball that can wreck years of a person’s life even if found innocent…and they may never recover. Or they go to prison with lifelong repercussions.
Is it “worse” than being raped? I am not sure it is possible to answer that. They are both horrors each with their unique hell attached and both ought to carry severe penalties.
Tell me what you think the outcome is of being accused of a violent, possibly capital crime are that your community and friends and family and employer will find particularly despicable. We are not talking about a bar fight here.
Your post feels like you think the false accusation amounts to the police coming to talk to you and then that is the end of it. Case closed.
You seem to be deliberately focusing on the very worst-case potential consequences of the false accusation (trial, conviction, prison rape, life totally wrecked) and glossing over the typical consequences of the actual rape.
Let’s try to get your comparison on a more realistic level here. Would you rather be brutally and painfully raped, or falsely accused of rape by somebody who publicly recants and apologizes in the next couple of days, while the initial investigation is still ongoing and no arrest has been made?
Again, I’m not trying to argue that false accusations of rape aren’t a serious matter or that they shouldn’t be punished seriously. I’m just saying that trying to paint them as equally heinous as committing actual rape, especially if they’re quickly recanted and discredited, is absurd on the face of it. And nothing that you’ve said so far is making that false equivalence look any less absurd.