Frankly, I don’t believe you for a second, but let’s play along for a moment. Where did you get your information? Did three sepsrate women tell you that they had fabricated rape charges against innocent guys, or did you maybe get your info from the guys, themselves?
Well, we better hope that juries’ first instinct is to doubt her claim. You know, that whole presumption of innocence thing? Remember that? If we ever got to the point where any woman claiming she was raped was automatically believed as a first instinct, we’d be in real trouble with our justice system. Imagine the power any woman would have over any man if she knew everyone would believe her story. Women could be assured that juries would believe her, and the need for corroborating evidence would decline. Women accusing someone of rape are already coddled by the laws of evidence to a degree not given an accuser alleging other violent crimes. I think a little skepticism, while it may be hard for the accuser to take if she’s telling the truth, is a good thing in that it ensures that people chosen from the public to be part of a jury will retain some skepticism and truly evaluate the evidence on a “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.
Not sure why I’m posting other than to see my post count go up. Its not like this post is a reasoned debate or anything.
Well, anyway, I personally know one woman who I am fairly certain was raped (Although she never specifically said the words, we danced around the issue enough that its not too hard to figure out) and one man who was falsely accused of rape. Think the mailman from cheers being accused of rape. Sure, he is a loudmouthed bore, and any woman who sleeps with him immediately regrets it, but capable of rape? I think not.
So it’s worse in your opinion to let a guilty man go free than to wrongly imprison an innocent one?? I’m glad our founding fathers and court system disagreed with you.
It’s better to let 100 guilty men go free then to wrongly imprison just one innocent man. The minute our justice system forgets that principle is the moment we lose everything that makes America a land of freedom and liberty. If we’re willing to risk taking 10-20 years out of a person’s life, the only life we get and a short one to boot, rather than let a guilty man go free then we’re no better than the oppressive governments throughout history from the French monarchy to the Red Chinese.
Aside from all the senseless debate posturing that has shaped this thread, I’d just like to say that I have always been astonished by the number of women I knew who were raped. I actually think the statistics are possibly too low.
By some definitions, I would be a rapist (hey, Badtz, how ya doin’?).
I know one girl who was raped. Like, RAPE raped. Physically forced down whilst he put his penis into her vagina.
I also knew one girl who was once flashed by a guy, and she called this “rape”.
I say we just all conclude that rape sucks; that rapists should have red-hot iron dildoes shoved up their ass; that some women will lie; that some women will be too afraid to report the rape; and that most women tell the truth.
by Blue John:
I agree. But I would add that a lack of compassion is the friend of injustice.
Wow. So by your logic we should doubt that a murder victim is really dead? Or that he was really murdered? Perhaps he killed himself and made it look like murder, or maybe he was taken by aliens in a spaceship.
Look, you can believe that the victim has in fact been raped without losing any sense of fairness at trial. The victim was obviously raped but you do not know if the defendant is the one responsible until the facts are presented. She may not have seen his face or she may have not been able to identify her attacker to a certainty. You can surely understand that someone who has just been raped will be quite shaken for some time.
Point is, you can believe the victim while giving benefit of the doubt to the defendant until all the evidence is in. It makes no sense to say a jury should automatically not believe the victim was attacked. That is absurd.
Not aliens in a spaceship, but yes jurors must soubt all the rest. The burden is upon the prosecution to prove all the basics, including that the guy is really dead, and that it wasn’t a suicide, therefore he must also show how the person died so that we can know it wasn’t a suicide.
That’s not the way it works. Mistaken identity is just one of the theories that should be available at trial to the defense. If the defense chooses that theory, then sure that’s the argument they’ll make. But the defense must be allowed to present that argument that A) sex occured between these people, but was consensual, or B) the entire incident is fabricated. If the defense chooses one of those theories, it is the prosecutions burden to demonstrate otherwise.
And what is enough to show that she was “obviously” raped?? Evidence of semen? Semen would be present in a consensual sex act also. Victim physically attacked? How do we know she wasn’t attacked after a consensual sex act in an unrelated incident? The last may be uncommon, but it’s still for the defense to choose among the theories and the prosecution to prove the necessary elements that demonstrate the unreasonableness of the defense. Burden of proof for every element of a crime lies with the prosecution.
The jury has to believe nothing until the prosecution establishes it. That’s how it works. After the alleged victim testifies and is thoroughly cross-examined, you might indeed conclude that she was attacked, but a jury must ask itself “do I believe her beyond a reasonable doubt” which is a higher standard than just “well, it’s more likely she’s telling the truth than lying.” Juries ought to be skeptical of everything until it is affirmatively demonstrated to their satisfaction.
POWER? Oh yeah, that’s the first thing that goes through the mind of a rape victim - woo! I have power now! Because everyone will believe me!
Fair trials? Sure, let’s keep our system intact, and believe the accused party is innocent until proven otherwise. That doesn’t mean you must disbelieve the victim of the incident. HELL, you’d be surprised to know, perhaps, that most rape cases are quite cut and dry - there’s NO DOUBT the victim was assaulted. Medically, it’s the only way to explain the doctors’ findings when the victim was rushed to the ER. Want cites? Let me know. I have a boxful of cases dating from 1970 to 2001. Perpetrators? Almost all known to the victim.
I’ve heard one man, in trial, claim he was innocent and falsely accused. EVEN if the cops who walked in on the scene actually caught him in the act. EVEN if his victim was probably two minutes away from finding herself in the “homicide” list rather than the “rape and assault” victim list. He’s not the only one. Everyone in jail is innocent, you know.
False accusations? Yes, they exist. Are they common? No, I don’t think so. Can you easily call up a search engine and spew out evidence of such cases? Sure, they’re uncommon enough to be reported in the media - just like cases of medical malpractice involving transplants of organs of the wrong blood type. If some city police officers were to publish a list of verifiable assaults (physical and/or sexual), weekly, you’d have an entire section of the paper dedicated to it. Again, if you want cites, let me know… lots of boxes here with that data.
Are the statistics flawed? Potentially, because the “definition” of assault is somewhat flexible. Are there “degrees” of severity in all these cases? Probably. The catch is that it affects people very differently. HOWEVER, the criminal code, at least in Canada, is very explicit as to what “counts” as sexual assault. So, trust me, there aren’t that many cases of frivolous accusations.
Are there many rapes that go unreported? Yes. Are there many rapes that have caused women to end up in the ER, and yet they still won’t press charges? YES. YES YES YES YES YES. If I only had a dime for every time I heard “No, no one would believe me, he’s such a nice guy!”, I’d be freakin’ rich, and in Minnesota already.
But, you know, all argumentation asside, I think SPOOFE said it best:
RexDart: Evidence of force is easy to see - and it goes beyond semen samples. Tearing in the uterine walls, broken bones, crushed throats, vaginal bruising, broken pelvic bone, often broken or bruised ribs, dislocated shoulders, etc. Semen samples are useful, however, because many of these supposedly “innocent” men end up claiming they never even HAD intercourse with their victims, and the semen sample is used to prove otherwise.
But what you propose means that unless these men are caught in the act, we can never be “free of doubt”. That may be true… but… would you, as a juror, take the risk when all the evidence points to the fact the victim is probably saying the truth? It’s all nice and dandy to speculate, until it happens to someone you love and THEY end up having to relive it all, just to prove they were violated.
Then we wonder why women don’t report. They’re afraid to be re-victimized.
The anger and mistrust being levelled at women by the male posters in this thread makes my skin crawl.
It boils down to this. Whether the one-in-four statistic is inflated or not (and I don’t think it is) the fact is that a huge percentage of women will be subjected to a sexual assault at some time in their lives, and most of the time, these assaults will not be prosecuted. The percentage of women who accuse falsely is so low as to be insignificant to the larger issue and it’s a fucking red herring in this thread. People are occasionally falsely accused of selling crack too, does that mean that we don’t have a crack epidemic?
I don’t understand the hostility towards rape victims in this thread. What are so many of the men so defensive about? I have to wonder…
Everyone has the power of rape. Unless you know every grain of this man’s being, you can’t say he’s incapable of anything.
I don’t see any “hysteria” in the quoted stat at all. My oldest sister would have been horribly raped (and possibly killed) if she hadn’t fought off her attacker (someone who had broken into her home in the middle of the night). If she had taken any longer waking up, she would have been yet another statistic.
There are four women in my family, and one was almost raped. One out of four doesn’t seem crazy at all.
The issue is very complicated. I remember one woman with whom I was intimate as a teenager. She was raped when she was twelve, and had a very hard time admitting the rape even to herself. Once, when she was sneaking out of the house to meet me, an older man saw her and looked like he was about to stop her; she told me that had he threatened to tell her parents, she would’ve threatened to cry rape.
Ick.
Of course, she didn’t cry rape – this may’ve just been an idle teenage threat-fantasy. But it really unnerved me.
I’d guess the majority of women have been sexually assaulted, if you include being groped by a stranger as sexual assault. Hell, I was assaulted when I was ten, if that’s the criterion. Rape figures? It’s hard to tell: the nature of the crime and of its reporting makes it difficult to track. People don’t feel ashamed and guilty and embarrassed when their car is stolen, and they don’t hesitate to call the police. Rape is different.
Daniel
Many women don’t report rapes because they were young minors when the rapes occured. I know one woman who was sexually assaulted by her uncle as a child. Another woman snuck out of her house when she was twelve, met up with a group of friends, and was raped later that night. She didn’t tell her parents, partly because she was afraid she’d be punished for sneaking out. Of the women who have told me they were raped, the majority were under sixteen when it occured. It’s not surprising to me that these assaults go unreported.
I think that rape is an issue about which good men sometimes have a blind spot. They would never rape a woman and are appalled at the idea. To the best of their knowledge, their friends would never, ever rape a woman. So the idea that so many women actually get raped becomes almost inconceivable.
Yep burundi, exactly. As a young girl myself, and having grown up in a rather icky household, I find it understandable, but almost frustrating the naive nature of some men. Most people don’t realize how often it happens, and how big the problem really is. I’m not quite sure about the 1 in 4 numbers, of course, but it could very easily go either way.
The trouble comes in when women are genuinely raped, and don’t show any of these obvious signs of trauma. Should we then assume that such women are lying?
It boils down to not being sure that any statement in the above is true.
Regards,
Shodan
RexDart, just to clear up my position and my statements in this thread:
I am not speaking about a jury or a trial when I speak of ‘believing a woman straight off’. I’m talking about a girl, a woman, a relative, total stranger or friend, or lover, coming up to you and saying,
“I’ve been raped”
or
“I was raped a long time ago.”
Is your first instinct to believe her? Or to question her on her definitions of rape and then ask for concrete evidence? What struck me in this thread were the responses from men that seemed to suggest they would brush off any admission of rape as (as skateboarder put it) “rape”.
Does that make sense? Sometimes the worst part of the assault is having someone you trust not believe you.
zoe, yeah, we should have compassion but that shouldn’t obscure the facts and it shouldn’t be limited to the supposed victim.
bodypoet, you’re right that I’ve never been raped and nor do I knowingly know anyone who has been raped and I understand that rape is a traumatic experience, of course, but I like to think that even if I had experienced it I wouldn’t lose my capacity for rational thought. The police have always been very nice to me when I’ve reported being a victim of violent crime, although it’s only happened once and my only other experience with the police was getting cautioned for criminal damage. I simply don’t believe that the average policeman is anything other than completely sympathetic to victims of sex crimes, although there will always be aberations. I also fail to see why a female police officer would be preferable to male, they’re all police.
Diogenes the Cynic, the things you state as facts are quite simply untrue.
elenfair, I haven’t enough money to spend on thinly veiled propaganda. (“Women, Violence and Social Control”? “The Continuum of Sexual Violence”?) A quick google of LIz Kelly, author of “The Continuum of Sexual Violence”, reveals that she is a feminist who has launched a laughable attack on the Conflict Tactics Scale (in an attempt to support the victimist idea of domestic violence as a crime against women, see “The Battered Husband” by Suzanne Steinmetz, among others) and she thinks strippers are part of the same continuum of sexual violence as victims of rape. The one making the argument, rather than the argument itself, I know, but it hardly convinces me she’s reliable and unbiased. Perhaps googling is part of the continuum of sexual violence too, everything else seems to be. About as reliable as you’re expect of the content of a book whose other chapters include “Male Violence in Feminist Theory: An Analysis of the Changing Conceptions of Sex/Gender Violence and Male Dominance” and “Policing Male Violence - Policing Women”. Google really is useful.
You’re right that statistics don’t lie, it’s the statisticians we’ve got to worry about. It nice to know that you have come to the conclusion that there are few actual cases of malingering, it’s also less than surprising considering your choice of reading material that you choose this belief above verifiable fact. ‘“Legalisation” of woman abuse’! Hilarious!
You’re right that it takes an incredible amount of proof to get “these men”, that is, the accused, locked away. Not necessarily “incredibly large” though. 1, 2, 3, 4.
You say most rapists are known to the victim and get off scot free, the question has to be if they never go to trial how do you know there was a rape at all? The cryptofeminist UK Home Office says about a third of reported rapes don’t get to trial because the situation is ambiguous, usually when the two parties knew each other. If there’s no proof a rape occured there’s no reason to believe a rape occured.
You’re right that some false allegations are caused by mental illness, but wrong in saying this is the norm. There are many reasons for rape, see 1, 2, 3.
Of course, the crime isn’t always reported, none are, there’s still no evidence for a huge body of invisible victims.
You’re right about rape victims not thinking about power, but that’s irrelevant to what you were responding to. He was talking about false accusations. False accusations are made by people who weren’t really victims of rape, people who lie, understand? Women who make false accusations do so because the legal system makes it possible for them to do and to get away with it and to achieve their aims, whatever those are. You have offered plenty of propaganda and anecdote, but nothing more.
The authoritative Kanin study is the best source on false allegations. No idea how many women actually are raped, no idea at all, but there’s no reason to believe it’s one in four.