Cell PhonesFollow

for some reason this made me laugh.

Fixed.

True, but it's tough to think of another major crime that is as easy to fake. I mean, with murder there's a death, with assault there's obvious physical harm, but with rape it can often times be that the sum of the proof is just he said/she said.

Ahh rape, the most ambiguous of evils.

I disagree, since one of the fundamental principles of our "justice" system is to avoid imprisoning an innocent man, even if it means letting the guilty go free, imprisoning women who come clean after a false report would create an incentive to continue lying about it, and could put innocent men in jail. Letting them off with a slap on the wrist is a good incentive for liars to come clean and keep false rapes from being prosecuted.

Correct Nexa. But the truely sad bit to all of this is that while this does act as a strong deterrent to actual rape victims, it is *not* such a strong deterrent to someone making a false allegation.

She isn't going to care as much if she's not believed or questioned, since her "goal" isn't about whether someone believes that some trauma she went through happened. She knows it didn't happen. Her goal is simply to make her target's life a living hell. What makes rape victims have a really hard time is that they know that they were raped but are afraid no one will believe them. That fear simply isn't going to exist for someone who's intentionally making a false accusation.


I want to make something clear. I'm not in anyway suggesting that women should not come forward with accusations when they are raped. Nor do I believe we should make it unduly difficult for them to do so in that situation. My disgust with this issue has far more to do with the treatment of rape cases in our media, and the effect that tends to have on the prosecution of rape cases (and in some cases even trickling down to legistlation as well).

My primary concern here is that in the pursuit of "justice" in edge cases (situations where it will be virtually impossible to determine if a rape has occured beyond "he said, she said"), we are damaging the cases for women where there is much more evidence and a better chance of proving the case. I think that it's important to recognize that the issue goes in both direction. While we can talk about how a general trend of not believing the victim makes things painful and difficult for women who have been raped, it also needs to be noted that this lack of belief stems directly from the abuses of the very protections that have been applied over time to make it easier for women in that situation.


What is the right solution? That's hard to say. I think the correct solution is sociological, not legal. We should not be making changes to our evidentiary processes, nor lowering the legal "bar" for cases of rape simply because some women do not find it easy to go forward with those cases. We should instead be focusing on changing societies views towards women who have been raped. I just feel that by approaching the issue in the way we have, while seeming like a quick fix, has actually done more harm then good. It has increased the perception of false accusation in theses cases, ultimately making it harder for women down the line.

Keep the rules and proceedures the same for rape as for any other violent crime, and the perception that false accusations are made so often will fade. The perception will change such that if a women actually gets rape charges filed and a court date set, then her case actually has merit. Today, that is simply not the case because due to the protectionist nature of rape cases (and only rape cases), the defendant often has no way to answer charges until he's actually in court. This has led to some blatantly bad cases going to court, where if the normal evidentiary oversite and disclosure process were in place, they never would have...

People who confess to "any" crime are not directly causing innocent people to go to jail by not confessing. This is the key factor that outwieghs the need for the public to prosecute false reports.

You'd be hard pressed to find any felony assault type charge other then rape in which (dare I say it?) there's no obvious physical evidence that the victim has been harmed.

You're also conflating civil lawsuits with criminal charges. The non-obvious injuries may certainly have an impact when suing someone, but not for filing criminal charges. No one goes to jail for 5-10 years and is tossed into a sexual offender database for getting into a fender bender...



Again. Degree of punishment and degree of the charge is critical to this. While I'm certain that tons of false accusations of the "she stole 20 bucks from me" variety go through our legal system, they also don't cause much harm to those falsly accused. Just looking at the numbers without considering the harm done isn't really doing fair justice to the issue.


I'm just not aware of any other charge that carries a penalty as stiff as rape, that allows for as high a rate of false accusation. We can look at a 5.5% rate and say that's "low", but what is the rate of false murder accusations? Felony kidnapping for ransom? Serial killers (ok, that's murder too I suppose, just couldn't think of anything else that serious)? Cause those are the types of crimes that run in the same punishment range as rape.

I give up. What are they?

And why do you always feel the need to debate via conjectural questions to which you have no answer but you feel will sufficently lead the reader into believing that you're making a valid point?

And why do you always feel the need to debate via conjectural questions to which you have no answer but you feel will sufficently lead the reader into believing that you're making a valid point?

What's his alternative?

You presented a statistic that is utterly meaningless without any context around it.

This is patently false. If the false reporting of murder was 95%, would that somehow mitigate the false reporting of rape being 5% or 85%?

IS that really your thought process? "Oh, well if murder is 20%, then 5% isn't bad, but if murder is 1%, then 2% is 100% worse!"

Your mother locked you in a closet and told you women were 'teh debil' didn't she?

Admit it, you're the inspiration for 'The Water Boy'.

You guys are on crack. We have to ban the death penalty because of all the false accusations against minorities and exonerating dna evidence, but less than 5% of rape accusations are false? ACCUSATIONS, not even CONVICTIONS! Because surveys capture that perfectly. [:roll eyes:] Nobody would lie about making a false accusation to a survey stranger. [:roll eyes:]

Both parties are drunk, guy is charged with rape, girl is not. Girl is white, guy is black, guy is much more likely to be found guilty. Just take a cursory glance at the evidence standard for a capital case versus a rape case should put up a big flag of suspicion. Hell, I'd like to see the number of rape cases on average per year which result in not guilty versus guilty verdicts. I'll bet it's no where close to 5% set free 95% convicted.

At any rate it's illegal and sexist for public institutions to spend X millions per year to help alleged female rape victims without spending the exact same dollar amount to help alleged falsely accused male rapists.

You're all as naive as the lone juror a friend of mine recently had the pleasure of serving with in deliberations who insisted "cops would never lie" (small time drugs + guns parole violation case). Interestingly, the cop in question (a male Hispanic in his 20s) was gunned down while sitting in a car near a Metra station a few weeks later (for those who are familiar with the local news).

Hah! Sorry. Flea posted it.

Same logic applies though. I don't think it's an invalid question to ask whether that 5.5% number is "high" or "low" when compared to other crimes with similar degree of punishment.