No it isn’t. It’s a reason not to convict, but rape usually doesn’t produce forensic evidence and the lack of it is no reason at all to assume actual innocence.
This is laughable.
I do find it quite disgusting how many people are certain the maid has falsely accused DSK of lying.
A reasonable argument could be made that he can’t be found guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” which unfortunately is true in most rape cases, but that’s a far cry from assuming the alleged victim decided to deliberately injure herself and go through an elaborate ruse to accuse DSK of a crime he allegedly didn’t commit.
I’m reminded of the saying that if a woman is raped it’s best if she’s a nun and failing that, it’s best if she was a virgin.
Barrister of about 5 years standing. In two jurisdictions, one England and Wales and one Pakistan, in the latter you would expect (and they admittedly is) less reporting but no where near what NGO’s and the media would lead you to believe. I also am the Counsel for an NGO which specializes in inter alia giving legal advice to women who have been raped/abused and at risk children . I have prosecuted rape cases. I have an LLM where my thesis was on the conduct of rape trials and evidence in various common law jurisdictions. Before that I as a student interned and then volunteered with (in the UK) for JUSTICE as well as for the Rape crises center. So I would like to delude myself into thinking that perhaps I know a bit about the subject; at least more then the bare assertions made by Dio
I am well aware that many rape cases go unrecorded, I myself have had to tell victims that there is no way they will get him behind bars and it is an awful feeling. But I do know that false accusations are far more then what is recorded and I know that attempts to “remedy the situation” be they couched in attempting to increase rape convictions by increasing the number of cases prosecuted or by curtailing the evidence that can be adduced have only made matters worse
As a public defender I would like to point out you will almost always get cases where the decision to prosecute has been made or where it is certain to be made. SO your view might be skewed by that; as many of your clients are guilty as sin anyway.
You know this how?
Disgustingly true.
You said that this is what rape survivors are expected to do, according to some people.
But isn’t this precisely the issue under discussion? You yourself acknowledge that Mr. Bolton was not convicted of rape. So under what rules of discussion is Cheerleader H.S. automatically called a rape survivor?
Ms. H. S., through her parents, sued the school and Rakheem Bolton, and not only was her case dismissed, but the Fifth Circuit called her constitutional injury claims legally implasuible:
in Doe v. Silsbee Independent School District, the court said:
Most obviously, you show that it is physically impossible for it to have happened. The accused is shown to have been far away, or DNA tests prove that she’s had with a different man, not him.
Oh? And what would be harsh enough? Lynch gangs organized on the board? Like the vast majority of places the response to rape accusations on this board can be pretty much summed up as “rabid hatred”.
Hmmm, looks like someone removed all the claims of higher numbers of false accusations in favor of the low estimates.
And many of those “false” accusations occur when the police decide that there’s not enough evidence to prosecute. Or they decide that the victim is lying. A failure to convict does not mean that it was a false accusation. It might mean that there wasn’t enough evidence, or that the complaint wasn’t taken seriously enough. The 40% false accusation rate was from a particular area where the cops preferred to file rape accusations under “false” rather than, you know, actually investigate the cases.
Yes, he wasn’t convicted of rape. He was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge. If this world, or that little segment of it, was actually fair, he’d be expelled from the team at least, and expelled from the school and made to go to an offender’s school. Instead, he wants to put this all behind him, and he’s looking forward to going to college on a football scholarship. And it looks like he might have a realistic chance of doing just that, as being a rapist (and whether he was found guilty in a court of law or not, he’s a rapist in my eyes) is no bar to being a high school or college football player. And if a high school cheerleader is supposed to be a mouthpiece and representative for her school, shouldn’t a football player also be a representative, and expected to act with decorum? The fact of the matter is, he was a star football player and he brought in a lot of money for the high school. While he might be LEGALLY not convicted of rape, can you argue that in real life, he didn’t actually rape her? I can dig up more stories on that case, by the way. The victim and her family are NOT OK with the results.
The thing is, men with power and influence have been getting away with raping women and girls who have little power and influence. And the women and girls are blamed for “ruining” the men’s lives, if they come forward or try to get charges made.
There are false rape accusations. Sometimes they are made of whole cloth. But I can’t remember ANY false accusation of rape that didn’t involve sexual conduct between the accuser and the accused. I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen, I’m saying that in every case I’ve ever heard of, there has been some form of sexual contact. I think that sometimes the accused thinks that he has obtained consent, when actually no meaningful consent was given. And until we get some method of going back in time and recording the actions and thoughts of all the parties, we’re never going to know what exactly the facts were.
Actually, “allowed” is not necessarily the best word to use here, since it implies that the case against him was strong, and his pleading to a lesser charge was an excercise of mercy.
In fact, the first grand jury to hear the case against him refused to indict him. Since the standard of proof required for a grand jury is simply probable cause, not the much more demanding “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the failure of the first grand jury to return a true bill suggests that the case was not strong. In the criminal justice world, in fact, it’s often said that the grand jury will indict a ham sandwich if asked, making the failure especially notable.
A special prosecutor convened a second grand jury, which did return an indictment, after which Bolton agreed to plead to the misdemeanor crime of assault.
And on what evidence are your eyes relying? Have you wholeheartedly accepted H.S.'s version of events? Why?
Yes, I can argue that. I have no idea if he raped her or not – and if you do, I’d like to know what evidence you’re relying on to reach that conclusion.
I assume you’d be perturbed if I asked that you be removed as administrator of this message board because I could show that all across the Internet, message board administrators have abused their power and acted improperly towards board participants.
It’s unlcear to me how you expect to be able to argue that Rakeem Bolton is guilty of rape because “men with power and influence have been getting away with raping women and girls who have little power and influence.” Yes, men have been doing that. But I don’t argue that Rakeem is innocent because women have falsely accused men of the heinous crime of rape. You would rightly be outraged if I said such a thing.
So why do you believe that you can say such a thing with impunity?
Which is a perfectly good reason not to deport her. However the Manhattan DA (Vance) is moving to drop the charges, so we’ll see what happens to her after that. If anything.
Sure, but the OP is asking why deportation proceedings haven’t already been instituted.
You’re making an assumption that is not true. In the “40%” study, the women themselves admitted to making false claims of rape. The study is very small, and limited to a particular small jurisdiction, but you aren’t helping your argument by exaggerating its flaws.
So does anyone have any information about the situation, or is it, as I suspected, someone jumping to conclusions based on there own hatred for false cries of rape?
In fact, the point of what I said was that it seems silly to assume that someone falsely cried rape just because the charges are being dropped. Lack of evidence seems more likely, unless you have information I don’t.
I almost wanted to apologize for bringing it up, but I’m pretty sure the thread would have gone this way without my help.
Leaving aside the issue of whether or not she fabricated the rape claims, my understanding (correct me if I’m wrong) is that she is a refugee, that is, she was granted asylum in the US. You can’t just deport a refugee. It has to be clearly demonstrated that they constitute a threat to national security, or they must have been convicted of a crime that is so serious that they amount to a threat to society. The standard of proof is very high.
I know she was accused of making up part of her asylum claim, and if it could be shown that she actually wasn’t entitled to refugee status, that status could be revoked and she could then be deported. But the revocation would have to come first.
If I’m wrong and she wasn’t ever granted asylum to begin with, then ignore this post.
I’d like this concept too in theory (and not only for rape, but for any false accusation). However, there are two problems with it :
1)People affraid of bringing charges (about real crimes) in case they would be eventually charged themselves.
2)People who brought false accusations not daring to recant (Recently, there was a lot of noise over here about the liberation of a man sentenced for raping a 13 yo when the now much older young girl showed up at a police station to say she had lied back then. Would have she done so if she had been risking a long prison sentence?)
However, I still think that actual sentences for false accusations are way too low, when there’s even any sentence at all. I’m not sure how this should be handled.
Not what I heard in a documentary about the Paris police unit in charge of sexual crimes. False accusations seemed quite commonplace (they showed footage of two of those), but, still according to the same police officer, generally collapse in quick order, before a prosecution even begins (in the first case shown, the description of the rape given by the victim required the rapist to have a minimum of three hands, and in the second, the victim recanted when she realized that the accused guy was risking a heavy sentence, while she only wanted to pester him a bit (it was said this was quite common) . In both cases the motive for the accusation was ridiculously mundane (a small amount of money not loaned or not given back, an ordinary argument between lovers).
But you totally did comment! 
Anyway, I’m not saying what you think I’m saying. You seem to think I have concluded this man is guilty on the basis of the accusation. This is false. I have no idea what happened in this case and since the charges have been dropped none of us ever will know. From what I’ve heard, the prosecution was correct to drop the case because they themselves had difficulty determining the credibility of the witness. So I probably lean a little more toward ‘‘she’s lying’’ than ‘‘he’s guilty.’’ However, absent a conviction and considering the fact that it is none of my fucking business, this accusation would not affect my treatment of this man or this woman.
Because we don’t know.
Just as the mere accusation of rape is not sufficient to convict someone of the crime, the lack of evidence for a rape is not sufficient to convict someone of a false accusation. You can’t have it both ways.
Just a minor addendum to my previous post above: if a country other than her country of origin was willing to admit her, she could be expelled on slightly less serious grounds than those I described. But only slightly. Being a “rabble-rouser, a victimcrat, a professional grievance-monger” as per the OP would in no way be sufficient to meet the threshold for expulsion under the Refugee Convention.
Could her refugee status be revoked on the basis that her reasons for admittance were fabricated? From what I understand, she was raped by a person in her home country but completely made up a compelling story about being gang-raped by several men in order to increase the chances of acceptance. (Given the fact that she’s admitted to lying about rape in the past, I do think the prosecutors did the right thing in dropping this case.) Though from the treatment they gave it on NPR today, it sounds like the prosecution itself made several mistakes in how the case was handled.
She could lose asylum in an extreme case, since there’s not a whole lot set in stone, but asylum cases in general are fraught with crazier stuff than her story. Asylum seekers are very often coached or advised, depending on your perspective, to tell a particular kind of story to make it clear that they deserve refugee status – i.e. if you’re from a place where the big bugaboo is ethnic cleansing, or a big religious conflict, you might indicate that’s what you’re worried about, even if it isn’t.
For women in particular, it’s gotten more and more complicated. At one point, refugee status based on some kind of gender-based persecution was pretty simple - you weren’t getting it. That’s changed, so now there are a few keywords you can toss into your story to make it more likely that you’ll get your request granted. Like it wasn’t some guys in the neighborhood… they had military rifles or uniforms, didn’t they? Wasn’t there some connection to a religious group or rebels from across the border? That sort of thing. I believe the claim with this woman is that she did that sort of thing to make her story more amenable to asylum, but of course that doesn’t mean she didn’t ultimately deserve it; it just means she was more likely to have what is essentially a coin flip come up in her favor.
Still, the answer is that yes, it could happen.