I am male.
Full disclosure - I’ve been raped, more than once. I’ve never been falsely accused of rape, so never been in these famous American PMITA lockups, but given the risk of that sort of thing is higher where I do live, I’m still willing to go out on a limb and say actual rape is worse than slim probability of BubbaLoving.
I had a Uncle accused of being rapeing.a 14 year old girl. His life was ruined,his family disowned him and he lost all of his money. He was sentenced to 15 years in Prison and that is where he died from being killed. He used to write and say how he would be raped many times and forced to do other sex acts,he was beaten a lot.
After his death the girl came forth and said she had lied and he was innocent, nothing was ever done to her for lieing.
If you are raped people are there to help and programs, when you are accused the ones there to help only want money.
How can you even say being raped is worse than being falsely accused of rape?
While both are bad being falsely accused is massively worse.
I’m not sure you can say one is worse than the other, because it’s apples and oranges. Rape is a violent crime that causes lifelong trauma. Accusations of rape can possibly end your life depending on who you are. Obviously, powerful people can overcome rape accusations more easily than regular joes.
Let me throw a mudball into this conversation: is it worse to be a white woman who has been raped, or worse to be a black man falsely accused of rape?
https://web.stanford.edu/group/maan/cgi-bin/?page_id=297
It’s 2-fucking-percent, yet a lot of women-haters try to make it seem like it’s much, much higher.
Correct me if I’m wrong, that study only counts rapes that are reported to the police, and only counts as false those proven to be false. I did not see where the study demonstrated how many were proven to be true. And many would have to be considered indeterminate, perhaps most. Given the risks of filing a false police report, if a woman is going to make up a false accusation, she’s not going to the authorities.
Now I agree that women are disbelieved more often than is justified. I’m pretty confident that the vast majority of rape claims are true. But false claims are probably a lot higher than 2%.
I’ve been accused of molestation by a family member and it took 25 years for it to reach my ears … in that 25 years I never knew what the others thought about me, because they never brought it up to me.
It was a complete lie and I couldn’t even defend myself … when by now my full grown son heard about it … my son was going to beat me up and then he called the offending party and they admitted that they lied (to him at least), but for 25 years I was treated funny and treated different than I would’ve been if the lie had of never been told.
I was a Christian by the time I heard the lie that was told about me … so I forgave her, but the scars are still there. I hope I see her in heaven someday of course I won’t be mad or that wouldn’t count as forgiveness now would it?
By the way I did bring up the subject to the offending party in an email and I told her that I had forgiven her and she said, “For what”? We haven’t spoken since then …
A man accused of raping a 14 year old girl, who later recanted after 15 years, after the man she accused of rape was killed and subjected to multiple rapes in prison sounds like the kind of thing that would be reported on by numerous reputable publications…
Try being raped(which doesn’t disappear no matter who confesses what, btw) and endure facing people who don’t believe you and/or think you are trying to destroy the rapist’s life. The real physical violation combined with false accusations from former friends far surpasses any harm the rare false accusation of rape might produce.
It depends on the situation. Not too long ago, black men were lynched for false rape accusations and it wasn’t really all that rare. Even today, people go to jail and get raped there, as the poster before you pointed out.
I don’t think one is worse than the other, so much as they are totally different and hard to compare. Kinda like asking, what’s worse, getting raped or being paraplegic? It can be a morbid intellectual exercise or really bad party game but the situations just aren’t all that comparable.
Several people have made the point that pretty much anybody who gets raped and reports it will be falsely accused of having made up their rape accusation by some people. So the choice is which is worse; being raped and falsely accused or just being falsely accused?
That is how things go and it is the #1 thing that needs to change.“Women need to be believed” is a little bit too simplistic, and pretty rich coming from women themselves who have disbelieved accusers, but it’s clear that society’s reflexive disbelief needs to end. Most women are telling the truth, because there is very little upside in coming forward. Most false accusations are crazy women who can’t measure the risks very well and think they can benefit. More often than not, it blows up in their faces.
WilyQuixote
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jcdew67 View Post
I had a Uncle accused of being rapeing.a 14 year old girl. His life was ruined,his family disowned him and he lost all of his money. He was sentenced to 15 years in Prison and that is where he died from being killed. He used to write and say how he would be raped many times and forced to do other sex acts,he was beaten a lot.
After his death the girl came forth and said she had lied and he was innocent, nothing was ever done to her for lieing.
If you are raped people are there to help and programs, when you are accused the ones there to help only want money.
How can you even say being raped is worse than being falsely accused of rape?
While both are bad being falsely accused is massively worse.
A man accused of raping a 14 year old girl, who later recanted after 15 years, after the man she accused of rape was killed and subjected to multiple rapes in prison sounds like the kind of thing that would be reported on by numerous reputable publications…
-It would be a great thing if it actually worked that way but it does not, at least back in the 1970’s
Many convictions are based on a she said/he said thing as the only evidence and sadly it usually comes down to how rich and famous you are to determine if you get convicted or not.
Czarcasm Try being raped(which doesn’t disappear no matter who confesses what, btw) and endure facing people who don’t believe you and/or think you are trying to destroy the rapist’s life. The real physical violation combined with false accusations from former friends far surpasses any harm the rare false accusation of rape might produce.
-Rape victims have FREE programs and more to help them get through the bad time,accused/convicted do not.
Society looks worse on people accused than people falsely accusing.
False accusations by friends means they weren’t really your friends to begin with.
Czarcasm Try being raped(which doesn’t disappear no matter who confesses what, btw) and endure facing people who don’t believe you and/or think you are trying to destroy the rapist’s life. The real physical violation combined with false accusations from former friends far surpasses any harm the rare false accusation of rape might produce.
Really has the feel though of trying (the link people not you) to come up with a number that will get that reaction. I also believe on general principles of human nature and (American) society as I know it that false rape accusations are the exception. But as mentioned ‘proved false’ is a high bar. Also in cases there can be an epistemological question whether anyone can know a rape (as opposed to sex) occurred, especially where the parties know one another. If the man (as usually) gets so far into a gray area that a jury of his peers says yes, that was rape, based on honest testimony to the best of everyone’s recollection and fair evidence, then too bad. It’s almost always avoidable. But it’s not necessarily as cut and dried as whether you were the person who burglarized the store.
On the original question the flaw I think is in making one alternative, ‘falsely accused’ much broader than the other, ‘raped’ from which it’s reasonably assumed there’s no gray area, since there often isn’t. Fixation on prison rape is a common phenomenon in our society, but even debating the likelihood of it presupposes falsely accused and convicted. A lot of rape cases lack clear evidence. It’s not just or even necessarily mainly a ‘rotten system that won’t do justice’. IOW the other side of the coin from the first paragraph: all the times both sides can and do know a rape occurred, but there isn’t enough evidence to prove it. Purely one person’s word against another’s often isn’t enough to convict people (unless there’s a big credibility gap between them). I don’t support any change to the justice system that would make a special lower bar for conviction in case of one type of crime.
That’s not how the burden of proof works in any criminal justice system this side of North Korea. Any rape charge which is based only on statements by the accused and is not supported by any corroborating evidence will not get anywhere near the trial stage.
Being charged and tried for a serious crime, whether innocent or not, generally imposes a heavy personal, financial and emotional toll on the accused. I’m not going to shrug this off of being of no consequence but your insistence that being falsely accused of a serious crime is inherently worse than being a victim of such a crime is absurd.
Society generally looks down on people charged with any crime. Yet rape and related sex crimes are the only crimes where people feel the need to don their Sooper Skeptik hats and search for reasons not to believe the complainant.
I notice you’re not limiting your comments to those “falsely accused” anymore.
I’m quite happy to have “violent sex offenders” kept far, far away from children. Aren’t you?
Pretty sure the ban on gun ownership is one that applies automatically, with perhaps some limited exceptions, to all felons in the USA and is not limited solely to those convicted of rape. Seems perfectly reasonable to prevent persons convicted of a crime of violence (and rape is inherently a crime of violence) from obtaining a firearm. Does this not seem reasonable to you?
No its not 2%. Its about 8% according to a 1996 FBI analysis (which is what is referred in your link). This has been pointed out many times on this forum. The FBI defined that figure as “unfounded” meaning the accuser knowingly made a false allegation or one that s/he believed was false. Contrast with other crimes where the rate is about 1-2% maximum.
Rape absolutely has a much higher rate of purposely false accusations than other crimes. That is something which LEA should (and do) keep in mind. It is also irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Please note that statistics in this area are regularly employed by all sides to prove their point and often without context.(I am not saying both sides are equal, they are not, but we need to keep this in mind).
MRA types often say that something like 2/3 Innocence project exonerations are for rape case and that DNA tests excluded/exonerated half of convicted rapists who were tested. Both are true. However for no i) Most exonerations were based on cases of rape and murder (where there was no question of lying) and for ii) these were cases where Courts had ordered tests to be done, in other words cases where there already were doubts as to the conviction, it was not a random sample.
(As an aside, I do think we are going to see several rape convictions overturned in the next few years as forensic science comes under more and more scrutiny. Bite marks have been used since a 1989 paper, but their probative value has been questioned recently and it turns out DNA Tests are not as reliable identifiers as previously claimed.
In the case of bad convictions, I wonder how much of that isn’t false accusations per se, but fingering the wrong guy? Victims are under pressure once they report to identify their rapist, and if it’s a stranger it’s very easy to get the wrong guy. A person’s perception in a traumatic event is that their recollection is crystal clear, but in reality it only seems that way. Or victims are pressured to be sure when they aren’t.
[quote=“WilyQuixote, post:114, topic:713666”]
That’s not how the burden of proof works in any criminal justice system this side of North Korea. Any rape charge which is based only on statements by the accused and is not supported by any corroborating evidence will not get anywhere near the trial stage.
People are convicted ALL the time on one persons word with no evidence or their word as the only evidence.
I’ve always wondered how that can be constitutional.
Perhaps you can give us an example of this happening in regards to a rape case?
Let’s find out if it is real, first.