What you don’t seem to appreciate is that in a scenario where a complainant and the accused give two contradictory yet equally plausible statements - a proverbial “he said, she said” scenario - and there is no other evidence, the accused will not only not be convicted, he won’t even stand trial.
I don’t keep records and I am not going to go on a quest to find any BUT here is a recent case that had no evidence other than a person’s word.
It must be nice for everything to be textbook perfect for you but it just doesn’t happen that way in real life.
I myself have been convicted in a he said/she said case with no evidence although it was not a rape case.(she could very well have lied and said so but I am lucky on that)
From your own link:
My bolding.
Your link doe snot support your assertion at all.
At the very least look for a case that involves just the rapist and the victim testifying against other, and the rapist being convicted just on the victim’s testimony, if you are going to claim that it happens all the time.
Edited to add: If it happens all the time, then you shouldn’t have to do very much at all to find such a case, right?
I agree, which is why there is a system of appeals and reviews. I have no doubt that some cases fall through the cracks. That’s a far cry from your statement that it happens “ALL the time.”
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I myself have been convicted in a he said/she said case with no evidence although it was not a rape case.(she could very well have lied and said so but I am lucky on that)
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Do you really wish to have your criminal matter subject to scrutiny on a public message board?
This exchange has to be partly based on the idea of what’s the ‘correct’ or deliberately edgily ‘incorrect’ thing to say, not reality.
Somebody really thinks there’s a ‘cite’ which is going to give the exact % of the time somebody was convicted on somebody else’s word? 
Besides it not being absolute, it’s not even that simple to define. All kinds of background circumstances are evidence. One person’s testimony is very rarely literally the only evidence.
But in fact people can sometimes be convicted where one witness’s testimony is by far the dominant piece of evidence, the only conclusive evidence, if accepted. OTOH often heavy reliance on the testimony of one witness which is going to be as vehemently denied by the defendant means a case judged too weak to proceed with. I think that qualifies as common knowledge and don’t see much point in ‘citing’ some social ‘scientist’ doing a subjective survey of what the exact % supposedly is.
I have never been accused of rape (even informally, let alone legally charged with it as a crime), and although I had one incredibly creepy close call which shook me up very badly when I was 19, I have never been coerced into having sex with anyone without my consent.
I’d just as soon not alter that 0/0 tally in order to compare the two experiences. They’re both rather high on my anti-bucketlist of shit I do not want to go through. Nightmare material.
I have no idea what this means.
Why wouldn’t there be?
You’re reaching here. An accused convicted on the basis of evidence given by one witness is a perfectly acceptable and workable definition.
Still reaching. Such instances would not be a case where an accused is convicted on the basis of a single witness.
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Why would there be? We can go around and around
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I don’t understand ‘reaching’. My point is just that there is virtually always some other evidence than a single witness’ testimony. Even if it’s evidence the defense decides to stipulate to once it’s discovered and presented (the defendant was there, sex took place, etc).
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Which is why this isn’t a good legal definition and the imaginary study in point 1 if it were to exist would be a study of legal outcomes so would probably adhere to legal definitions. Because ‘on the basis of’ is not a clear way to distinguish the fairly common case where one witness’ testimony is the key or only conclusive evidence (if accepted) from the much rarer case where there is literally no other testimony or evidence of any kind presented. Who really cares for the purpose of this discussion if other background evidence is presented which is clearly insufficient by itself to convict and the defense might not even contest? But the imaginary study would need to say where it was drawing the line.
It is possible to support the victim-survivor without stringing up the accused. We do it all the time. Support and help the victim-survivor to whatever resources he/she needs. The investigative and legal process is there for a reason.
And I stand by the fact that sexual assault is rarely a false accusation, with one caveat, custody battles (things get ugly).
Hm, lets see. Have my person violated for real no shit against my will, or have a condition that can be disproven and an apology given and possible financial recompense for false imprisonment.
How about you get raped and see if it is any better than a false accusation? I have been sexually assaulted, and I would rather not have had it happen …
All you have to do is do a search of women caught falsely accusing someone of rape and see many pages comes up.
How many false ones are convicted? Those won’t be in the news,it takes money and lots of it to determine how most cases will turn out. Money talks sadly
Not everyone has access to Matlock doing cases for “Justice”
THEY DO convict on only one person’s evidence in some cases, any other evidence is circumstantial “accused liked sex and was in the area” or “accused met person one time and whistled”,“accused was seen near rape victim around time of rape” etc. It is pretty easy to make up circumstantial for a number of the cases.
It comes down to how good of a talker the attorney is, do you really think OJ would have been found “not guilty” if he had got a crappy court appointed attorney?
Sexual Rape is a horrible crime and can I really say one is worse? No I can’t since I have never experienced it.
I just know by experience that one person can be convicted by one person’s word, you can say “the courts have to do this” or “it would never make it to trial” but unless you have been in those shoes you know nothing of what really happens.
I have to say, being raped may not be as bad as being accused but I am going on the worst and assuming the accused got convicted.
I meant to say in last sentence “I have to say, being accused of rape may not be as bad as actually being raped but I am going on the worst and assuming the accused got convicted.”
The people here who think rape is worse are assuming that if you are accused you will most likely get off free with no damage done. People who think that accusation is worse are focusing on the potential effects of prison time.
Here are the facts:
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People who are falsely accused rarely end up in prison: according to this page.
Here is the thing, how does the second link know that those 20 people who faced trial and walked free are rapists if they were not convicted? According to our legal system, they are innocent. But most people would assume they are guilty.
For every person who goes to prison for rape there are two who went to trial and walked home. Are most of them guilty or innocent? Nobody knows. I sure don’t.
Here is what we know. If you are accused of rape to the cops, you have a ~1/3 chance to face trial. And you have a 1/5 chance of facing trial and walking free from that trial, and a 1/10 chance of going to prison. That means the damage caused by most trials, which can never be reversed (everyone in the community will hear about this, your family will leave you, you need to tell your employer, the money you spend on a lawyer…), does not serve any good purpose. Only 2 of 100 (“falsely accused”) will be found innocent and may have the damage reversed, those small figures are actually a bad indication, not a good one, as that means most people are never found guilty or innocent and their lives are ruined for no reason. Not by prison, but by the trial itself.
We need to put rapists in prison, but the conviction rate means the cops are not doing a good job, and the legal system is mostly ruining lives and wasting taxpayer money.
The real overlap I see between the two experiences is the trauma of false accusation. What most people don’t get is that the odds of a victim telling the truth and being ostracized, shamed, blamed and branded a liar are significant. It happened to me, and I was only 17. I was a victim of false accusation. The false accusations were, depending on the person or mood, that I was lying about being abused, that I had instigated or encouraged the abuse, and that I was psychotic and had joined a cult. The result was a ruined reputation, for me. The result was my mother trying to gain power of attorney over my medical decisions because she would rather believe I was crazy than believe the truth. My abuser never suffered a single consequence. I still suffer consequences to this day. The abuser was my adopted father. Women who tell the truth do so at significant peril in many cases. Society made my abuse a million times worse with its terrible response. My experience is typical of abuse survivors.
One experience that seems to resonate with me on an emotional level is being falsely accused of rape. I read an account once on Cracked and it mirrored my own false accusation experience in many ways. The sheer helplessness and overwhelm of losing your credibility seemingly overnight. Yeah, I relate to a lot of it. I don’t want false accusations happening to anyone.
The only thing a lack of conviction indicates is that rape is very difficult to prove in a court of law. I work for an organization that does, among other things, immediate examinations in the aftermath of sexual assault, more commonly known as rape kits. Physical damage is rare. The presence of the man’s DNA is pretty much invalidated the minute he claims it was consensual. A large part of the legal advocates’ job is taking the freshly traumatized women and explaining to them that the odds are vanishingly small that they will ever see justice in a court of law. Nobody is going to pick up a trial unless the prosecutor is convinced there is sufficient evidence to prove a case. So consider that. If someone is on trial, at least the prosecution believes there is significant evidence to justify a conviction. The prosecution is unlikely to take up a case of it thinks it might lose. At least that’s how it works in my county.
So false rape convictions are terrible. The issue is that I see society as still tipped overwhelmingly in favor of abusers and rapists, and against victims.
The problem is that in 2 of 3 cases the prosecutor goes to trial thinking there is enough evidence, and it turns it there is not. That conviction rate should be much higher, and it could be low only due to 3 possible reasons:
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Insufficient evidence and they go to trial anyway (whether the person is guilty or not is another thing).
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The cops did not catch the right person.
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False accusation rate is in fact high.