Many have stated that women who have been the victims of rape/sexual assault victims aren’t taken seriously enough or believed. I wanted to try a poll of Dopers (the ideal thing would be to have a statistically representative sample survey of the population at large, but that’s not doable): When you read of, or hear, of a woman accusing a man of raping or sexually assaulting her - before any further context or facts have emerged (this is very important) - which is your* first natural inclination* - to believe the woman, or disbelieve her?
(yes, men can be victims too, and women can be perpetrators, but for simplicity’s sake we will just go with the man = accused and woman = accuser)
First inclination is to believe, most rational people with any empathy won’t accuse someone of rape unless it’s true.
Neither. The claim must be investigated but the man is entitled to the presumption of innocence until he is found guilty.
I think historically women have been believed. When DNA testing came along, it was found that a very high percentage of men in jail for rape were not guilty!
But I think in many of those cases, it was someone known to the woman. An ex-boyfriend or someone who had ticked her off - she decided to get even.
Can’t be done these days with DNA testing. And in the case of a complete stranger (no romantic relationship), more likely the woman’s claims are correct.
The problem with all this is if the woman in fact was molested, then reports it - goes to court. That is when the trouble starts. The defense lawyers will rip them to pieces and cause more psychological trauma - not fair!
I’d believe her. Accusing someone of rape is no fun for anyone. You need a pretty extraordinary motive to make that up, and we already know that a large number of real victims choose to stay silent.
In a court of law, absolutely. If a woman came to me however, saying she was raped, my instinct would be to believe her.
Anecdata: When I was in grad school my friend and I each had an apartment on the top floor of a converted house. I wake up one morning to hearing her screaming in the back parking lot and a man was on top of her and she was struggling, on the ground. I screamed her name out the window and he looked up and ran away.
I called 911. The first thing the dispatcher said 9after I described the whole scene, including her screaming) was "is that her boyfriend?'. :dubious:
[When I said no and then described it as a black man, she immediately cut me off and sent the police. :dubious::dubious:] So, no, even in an emergency the response was not to believe that an assault was going on.
Cite?
The amount of stuff a woman has to go through when accusing someone of rape or even just claiming to have been raped makes it fairly unlikely someone would do all that if it weren’t true.
My inclination would be to believe her if the claim was made to the police and disbelieve her if it was not.
I don’t know the people involved, their personal histories, the facts of the case, the quality or quantity of evidence, or anything that any rational person would need to believe either the man or the woman. Therefore, I have opted for secret choice number 3; I have chosen not to have any opinion one way or the other. Since any opinion I may have is going to be completely uninformed, I will choose to think about something else instead. It seems to me that sometimes people forget that this is an option.
Generally believing a person’s claim that they were the victim of a crime seems like a reasonable first assumption. We don’t presume to think that other crime victims - say, those who robbed or burglarized - are probably fabricating their stories. Nor is a claim conclusive evidence that a crime has been committed, either.
Furthermore, taking a claim that a crime has been committed does not mean that that the presumption of innocence of the accused is somehow reversed. If I claim that Bob stole my TV, I would expect that an investigation be started on the basis of the claim, and that Bob not be convicted unless the evidence meets the legal burden of proof. I do not think it is fair to disbelieve my claim at first blush.
I neither believe nor disbelieve when so little information is provided. Pretty much the same for any claim of being victimized without any other information.
It’s not possible to answer the question.
Context is essential. If it’s a friend confiding in me, I believe her. If I am commenting on a public accusation, I take the position that any person making any claim has the burden of persuasion, and I need more than a bare accusation. If I am a lawyer defending the accused, I certainly am skeptical. If I am a juror, an accusation without proof means a not guilty verdict. Etc etc.
Neither. I can be supportive and empathetic without believing or disbelieving, and the first inclination we should have should be to be empathetic, not to start evaluating the believability of the story.
Since for me it’s not actually a hypothetical, the answer is, I don’t make any judgment, that’s not my place. I see whether or not there is prima facie evidence to support her allegation and then call the appropriate authorities. Which basically means, make sure its not an impossible thing, like the woman who claimed she was raped by Donald Duck (she was not right in the head).
[QUOTE=kayT]
The amount of stuff a woman has to go through when accusing someone of rape or even just claiming to have been raped makes it fairly unlikely someone would do all that if it weren’t true.
[/QUOTE]
:rolleyes:
Yes, because no person ever has claimed consensual sex to have been forced, for a variety of reasons, since in the circumstances she (or he) felt that was a bitter outcome for them than admitting to consensual sex.
And no person has been raped/assaulted and identified the wrong person by mistake.
And no person has ever been raped/assaulted or abused and targeted an innocent third party to protect the actual perpetrator.
Of course all those blacks lynched for sex crimes in the American South were guilty as sin.
I’d appreciate it if you would tell me something about this link. Not keen on clicking on anonymous links I’ve never heard of. Thanks.
I carefully did not say it never happened. I said “fairly unlikely” which means I will believe until further details are forthcoming.
It’s a Let Me Google that For You link, not much use as a cite.
That is just a “Let me Google that for you” link which brings up a Google.com search page, types in “Rape DNA Innocent”, then clicks on search and you see the Google search results.
You can just bypass that, go to google.com, paste the above in, then click on search. Interestingly what came up in that search (in addition to my discussed innocent people) was a link toward the bottom which said someone was incorrectly found guilty due to DNA testing! (Learn something every day!)