When I was younger, I would have automatically believed the woman. Now I’m older and - I hope - modestly wiser. So I defer judgement.
I have yet to vote: the options do not allow a third way.
My inclination would be to get more information before deciding. I would take the charge seriously, if that’s what you mean, but I’d be reluctant to make a decision without knowing more.
Rape isn’t falsely reported any more than any other crime (and usually less - statistically less than 4% of sexual assaults are later proven to be false).
I would believe her, but I would also tell her I believe her. the investigation will go on to gather evidence because that is what an investigation does, if someone chooses to confide in me, my job is not the investigation, my responsibility is to support.
Initially believing the woman does not imply that you would want any action taken based on her word alone. I took the question as a survey of isolated first impression. I could list detailed circumstances that would change my answer either way.
I like this answer, and Ravenman’s answer, but I think that it still ignores the context.
It’s easy if, say a friend (who I generally know not to be a fabulist) comes to me and tells me she was raped by some other person I don’t have any prior knowledge about. Of course I believe her.
But, what if she instead says that the rapist was a friend of mine. A friend who, if a stranger had made the accusation, I would have stood by 100%. At that point, what? If I believe my friend who says she’s been the victim of a rape, do I ask the other friend about it? Or does doing so indicate that, well, I kind of don’t believe her? Do I ask the friend making the accusation for details, to see how I could somehow have misjudged the other friend? What if I’m going to hang out with the accused later that day? Should I go? Should I treat him differently?
I don’t think that the judicial presumption of innocence gets us very far here. Certainly, I would refuse to associate with a person who I legitimately believed to be a rapist long before I’d wait for it to be proved in a court of law.
So friend A claims friend B raped her. How do I treat friend A and B? Certainly, I don’t think I could reasonably tell friend A that I believe her and would stand by her, and continue associating with friend B with no change.
So, yeah. Context. It’s easy to believe a statement about a crime when you don’t really have any connection to one of the participants. Once you do, then it gets pretty messy.
Yep, this is my answer. I’d say in my experience there are only a few percentage of people whom I’d tend to not immediately believe if they said they were the victim of this type of thing (although I certainly would not be so callous as to say as much if they confided in me), which pretty much coincides with the percentage of fabulated crimes in general (not even including rape).
AK84, this matches up surprisingly well with the typical police estimates that about 30% of rape accusations are false (Scott Alexander mentions that with several citations about midway through the post).
Having said that, if we assume that about 25-30% of rape accusations are false, that still means that knowing nothing else about the situation the accusation is between 2-3 times as likely to be true as not, so my prior would be to believe the accuser. It just wouldn’t be an extremely strong prior, and it could easily be overturned as more evidence came in.
Because I tend to take people at face value and not automatically assume they are lying whores, I would believe her. And I’d hope very much that the accused is someone I don’t ever have to associate with.
The second part of your statement is true (plus or minus a bit), but it doesn’t actually prove the first part, since a lot of accusations end up with no firm conclusion being drawn either way or not even making it to the police.
Believe. Yeah - false reports happen; but not very often.
I’m mostly inclined to believe the woman unless the man is, I dunno, running for president or something. When the stakes are that high, and there are so many people who have the 9-5 job of character assassination, you better believe someone will accept $1,000 to kinda sorta remember something happening long enough ago that it’s impossible to refute. That goes for all big elections, worldwide.
Then there’s the celebrity bandwagon accusations. “She seems to be getting a settlement, so why not me?” That happens from time to time.
But with regular people making regular accusations, I’d presume she’s telling the truth, at least as she sees it.
I’ve lost the link but IIRC there was a study done of reports of rapes occurring at one American university and 50% were found to be false. Granted that a university isn’t an average environment.
Here’s an article from 2006 which gives figures varying from 2% to 50% and discredits the 2% figure.
And pretty much every UK police officer will tell you that complaints of rape that are later - usually very quickly - withdrawn used to be - and maybe still are - very common when dealing with the underclass.
Again, we need to distinguish between rates of exoneration between cases where DNA tests were ordered on convicts and those of all rapes cases. In the former, the results are going to be skewed by the fact that the cases where the powers that be agree to permit retesting are going to be those where there already existed doubts as to the safety of the conviction and therefore the liklhood of the convict being exlcuded was already high.
IME; across two countries, culture plays a small (but real) role. Socio-economic class OTH was a very good predicator. Generally, middle and upper class women are assaulted less and report less than their lower and working class sisters, who are assualted more regularly and are more willing to report.
(An individual woman should not be believed or disbelieved on the basis of her class, but as a pattern it holds mostly true).
First instinct - believe. It seems strange to me to instinctively assume someone’s lying about something like that.
When it comes to taking action though, then like anything else, the accused is innocent until proven guilty.
Having seen too many of those stories like where the guy gets accused of sexual harassment for calling himself “Hugh Mungus” I’d also, rather uncomfortably, put a certain amount of doubt on the idea of multiple accusations constituting ‘proof’ without any other evidence.
Not easy, when your natural instinct is to believe the accusation, but necessary IMO.
Which several other people said, but you put it very succinctly.
Of course - what other unbiased response is there?
You need a LOT more context. If I’m working the rape crisis line (I have), you ALWAYS believe the woman - at least you appear to even if she sounds like a nutcase telling an implausible story. If its a good friend who I trust, I’ll believe them - accused or victim - unless the evidence says they are unworthy of trust (even if Brock Turner had been a good friend of mine, he’d stop being a friend after his witnessed and proven behavior.
I saw once a documentary about a police unit specialized in sexual crimes. In one part, they showed two cases of false accusations of rape. The motives :
-A domestic dispute in one case (I believe one or the other or both had cheated)
-The accused hadn’t reimbursed some minimal amount of money (something like, say, € 40 or so) he owed to the accuser in the other case.
The first accusation was shown false because the events described were materially impossible, the second recanted when she realized that her accusation was starting a serious criminal investigation (how a woman might not know that nowadays is beyond me but whatever). IIRC, the first one was rational and intended her boyfriend to get in as much trouble as possible, the other was completely oblivious and just intended to exchange the withdrawal of her complaint against the 40 euros or whatever.
So that for “extraordinary motives”.
You must live in a really nice world if you think there will be a lack of people willing to accuse someone else for any number of petty or not so petty reasons. Revenge, covering up one’s own faults, protecting the identity of the real rapist, even simply getting some attention, mental issues, whatever.
It’s true that most women wouldn’t accuse someone of rape, even if there weren’t any bad consequences, and even less so will be willing to go through the ordeal of a rape case (assuming they realize it, contrarily to the woman in my first example). But then again, most men won’t rape, either, there are much simpler and less risky ways to get sex. So you could as well turn around your argument and state that one shouldn’t believe rape accusations because you need a pretty extraordinary motive to rape someone.
(As for the OP’s question, I guess my “natural inclination” would be to believe whoever I personnally know, be it the accused or the accuser, and my intellectual stance would be to assume the accused to be innocent if I don’t know personnally either of them. There was no “other” option, so I didn’t vote).
This needs to be stated again. The fact that DNA has exonerated a certain percentage is not a factor in determining if a rape occurred. There have been cases where the wrong individual was accused. That doesn’t mean a rape did not occur.
The misidentification can occur for the reasons you state including that the victim is dead. But what can’t be ignored is in the vast majority of cases the identity of the suspect is not in question. Most sexual assaults occur between people who know each other. Stranger rape and abductions are relatively rare. I’ve been a SVU detective for almost 7 years now. I’ve only handled a couple of stranger rape cases in that time.
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at least you appear to even if she sounds like a nutcase telling an implausible story.
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I would be (and am) more worried if she did sound like a nutcase, first since that on its own might indicate a need for specialised intervention and secondly since (unsupervised) mental health suffers are extremely vulnerable to sexual abuse in various stripes.
Also a homeless woman; dirty little secret, the rates of sexual violence visited upon female homeless is about 100%.
[QUOTE=clairobscur]
The first accusation was shown false because the events described were materially impossible, the second recanted when she realised that her accusation was starting a serious criminal investigation (how a woman might not know that nowadays is beyond me but whatever). IIRC, the first one was rational and intended her boyfriend to get in as much trouble as possible, the other was completely oblivious and just intended to exchange the withdrawal of her complaint against the 40 euros or whatever
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That’s about right, the two most common reasons for deliberate false accusation FME and in literature I have read.