Summary: As the MeToo hysteria spreads, many Americans have abandoned the principles of due process and innocent until proven guilty (as described yesterday). That’s bad, since women often make false accusations. That ruins the narrative, and so is seldom mentioned in the news.
“I interviewed the victim twice, and I believed her.”
— District Attorney Denise Lunsford, explains why she ignored evidence showing that Mark Weiner was innocent (from Slate).
Off duty when it comes to false accusations of rape.
In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird
A fine example is Mark Weiner, who on a rainy day gave a woman a ride to her home – a good deed ending in a sentence of eight years in jail for abducting a woman with the intent to sexually harm her. There was almost no evidence of his guilt. There was considerable exculpatory evidence (some of which was not disclosed to his attorney). Of course, none of that matters to the true believers who increasingly run America. This happened in Charlottesville, home of the infamous fake rape publicized in last November’s Rolling Stone.
“During the sentencing phase of the hearing, {District Attorney} Lunsford reminded the court of previous incidents in which Weiner had made unwelcome advances to two women and called it a ‘pattern of behavior.'”
— “Unwelcome advances” are an indication of criminality when done by a beta male. {Source.}
A fit conclusion to this story of injustice: the Judge sentenced Weiner to 20 years in prison (with 12 years suspended). In July, after two and a half years in prison, a judge vacated his conviction.
This sad story was covered in detail by journalist Lisa Provence (who deserves a career boost from it). Also see this article at Slate by Dahlia Lithwick. The story received desultory coverage from other news media, such as this from NBC. No wonder news media companies are laying off reporters and watching their profit evaporate, when they ignore such a hot story of injustice.
Not the justice you see on TV in “CSI”
Why did the DA behave so badly? She believed that rape victims tell the truth, and that this subjective reality trumps evidence. Even at the cost of a man’s life.
“When a reporter asked Lunsford about criticism she’d received for not pursuing justice in this case, the prosecutor said, ‘Sometimes it comes down to, do you believe the victim? I believe her.'” {Source.}
“Lunsford has said all along she believes the victim and she’s still not backing down. Instead she says this case is a prime example of why the job’s so difficult: ‘Sometimes, and often in these cases, it’s one person’s word against another so the decision of how to prosecute and whether to prosecute isn’t an easy one. I believed her in this case and that’s why I went forward with it. I felt she was telling the truth and I felt it was a community safety issue.'” (From Slate.)
After years of propaganda, this is a common belief. Sophie Hess, general manager of the campus radio station WOBC, said this about the rape accusation made by Lena Dunham (actress, writer, and director) …
“Asking whether or not a victim is telling the truth is irrelevant. It’s just not important if they are telling the truth.” {Source.}
Even senior government officials have moved beyond concern about truth. Ideology rules! No evidence needed.
“Not only do women like Dr. Ford, who bravely comes forward, need to be heard, but they need to be believed. They need to be believed.”
— Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) at a press conference on 19 September 2018.
Some high-profile false accusations of rape
Things women do lie about: what they ate for lunch. Things women don’t lie about: rape.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) August 4, 2017
In the past, police ignored rape accusations that looked suspicious (sometimes in error). Or they lost interest after investigating them. Now police aggressively pursue accusations. But false rape accusations are too seldom investigated or prosecuted; guilty verdicts produce sentences far lighter than men get for rape.
If we should always believe the woman, why have so many high-profile rape accusations been proven false? Such as these …
- The 1987 rape of Tawana Brawley by 3 men (including a police officer), uncritically accepted by journalists (ironically, Bill Cosby was an early supporter) – but fake.
- Wanetta Gibson’s false rape accusation in 2002 put football star Brian Banks in prison for 5 years. She recanted in 2011. The verdict was overturned in 2012. Details here. After exoneration, he played with the NFL for 5 months.
- Journalists went into hysterics from Crystal Mangum’s accusations of rape by the Duke Lacrosse team in March 2006. District Attorney Mike Nifong sought re-election through their prosecution. It all collapsed, eventually.
- The 2009 rape of a Hofstra coed by five students; she recanted in a few days when questioned by the police.
- Buzzfeed and others hyped the 13 October 2013 story of a sexual assault on an Ohio U coed. A Grand Jury found it quite false.
- “UVA, Ferguson and Media Failure, op-ed at the WSJ by Bret Stephens: “Narratives and allegations are not facts, despite what the media would have us believe”. It points to “A Woman’s War” in the 18 March 2007 NYT Magazine, telling how Amorita Randall was raped twice while serving in the Navy, then told by her commander “not to make such a big deal about it.” The key supporting details proved false; the NYT had not allowed the Navy time to verify the facts before publication.
- We might never know the truth, but the Columbia U “mattress girl’s” story fits the “believe the girl despite the evidence” script. See this early coverage, and this with more evidence.
- “Lena Dunham ‘Raped by a Republican’ Story in Bestseller Collapses Under Scrutiny“ at Breitbart, 4 December 2014. A follow-up reports that “Both Dunham and her publisher Random House have apologized to “Barry One”, offered to reimburse his legal expenses, and have agreed to edit future copies of Dunham’s memoir in a way that will ensure he is not misidentified as her rapist.”
Other false accusations of rape
Here is a typical story of brutal rape – by Black men!
“Last March {2017}, investigators with the Denison Police Department received a call from a man who said his fiance, Breana Harmon Talbott {18}, was missing. The man told police that Talbott’s car had been found in the parking lot of an apartment complex. When officers arrived, they discovered the driver’s door was open, one shoe was on the ground and her phone and keys were sitting near the console.” {Oklahoma 4.}
“{Several hours later she} stumbled into a church clad only in bra, shirt and panties, bleeding from cuts and claiming to have been abducted by three African-American men in ski masks. …Social media lit up with angry demands for vengeance.” {Miami Herald.}
“This is going to be a brutally honest post. Today my daughter, Breana Harmon Talbott was taken by force by 3 black men. 2 raped her and she is cut head to toe by a knife.”
— Posted by her mother on Facebook.
Very “credible” (since it is in the news)! But the rest of the story took a different turn.
“Breana Harmon, 19, pleaded guilty to two counts tampering with evidence and two counts of tampering with a government record in Grayson County district court last month. …She faced up to 2-10 years in prison along with a $10,000 fine. … {She was} sentenced to 8 years probation, over $8,000 in restitution, and to pay another $2,000 in court fines on Tuesday.” {From KXII-TV.}
Such stories are quite common.
- “Here Are 8 Campus Rape Hoaxes Eerily Like The UVA Rape Story“ in the Daily Caller, 14 December 2014 – Some of these involve innocent men falsely accused for political gain.
- “German teen admits she lied about migrant gang rape” by UPI, 2 Feb 2016. Too bad about the riots sparked by this false rape accusation.
- Nikki Yovino wrecked 2 men’s lives with false rape accusations (to gain sympathy from a prospective boyfriend) – details here. She pled guilty to two counts of second-degree falsely reporting an incident and one count of interfering with police, all misdemeanors. She will serve 4 to 6 months in prison. She rolled her eyes during sentencing, when listening to the harm she has caused.
- Mary Zolkowski, 21, was sentenced to 45 days in prison after pleading guilty to falsely reporting a felony. She had claimed she was attacked by an acquaintance, an African-American man, in February 2017. See Newsweek’s story.
- “Stalker who tried to ‘destroy’ a care worker with false gang rape allegations ‘because she was left out of a trip to the zoo’ is jailed” at the Daily Mail. Her trial was still in progress as of September 21 (source).
- Sarah Campbell told Clemson U police that a man she did not know sexually assaulted her at the Delta Chi Fraternity House in January 2018. Clemson immediately prohibited any social activities at the universities fraternities. On February 28 she was charged with filing a false police report. More details here. Nothing on Google since then.
- Nicole Marie Hosmer, 22, on May 2 told Ocala police that she had been kidnapped. By her account she was driving when the man got into her vehicle (he was armed), forced her to take him to two gas stations and a fast food restaurant (where he got food, cigarettes and cash), then tried to rape her after removing her pants. Her alleged attacker denied it. “Hosmer eventually told police she doesn’t know why she lied and that the man did not make any sexual advances.” She pleaded no contest to giving a false report of crime to law enforcement, and was ordered to complete 50 hours of community service and pay slightly more than $500 in court costs.
Even false accusations of sexual assault that do not claim sexual assault are costly and potentially ruinous to men: “Two Students Hooked Up. It Was Clearly Consensual. He Still Spent $12,000 Defending Himself.” by Robby Soave at Reason – “A brief romantic encounter at UC-Davis triggered a Title IX investigation after the female student changed her mind about it weeks later.
DNA is uncovering old false rape accusations: “Two men exonerated in 1991 rape claim.”
Update: Even those falsely accused of rape genuflect to the MeToo Movement
From AP and Fox News – A woman said she was sexually assaulted while intoxicated in a suite at the Wynn Las Vegas resort. Four dentists were charged with kidnapping and sexual assault. Fortunately, they recorded the encounter on a cell phone. Charges have been dropped. But even after a close call with years in prison after a women’s perjury, they genuflect to MeToo. They released a statement including this incredible paragraph.
“We are so grateful to the justice system for recognizing that we were the victims in this case. We knew when the facts came out that the vicious allegations would be exposed as lies and our good names would be cleared. … “At this sensitive moment in our history, we believe that women should be respected and heard and believed.”
Expect more men to record their relations with women. It is the only protection to claims made days or years or decades in the future. Falsely accusing a man of sexual assault is probably the safest crime in America. It is a only misdemeanor in most (all?) States, and seldom prosecuted (because that would discourage women from reporting these crimes). Even if proven in court, perjury is seldom prosecuted.
More about false rape accusations
“It is a nonsense for our daughters to be more frightened of penises than than our sons are of knives or guns. …Raped women will be told not only that they are irrevocably damaged in soul and body but that if they do not acknowledge this they are in denial.”
— By famous second-wave feminist Germaine Greer in her book On Rape(2018).
(2018).Slate has a well-written but superficial article with some sad stories: “Crying Rape” by Cathy Young — “False rape accusations exist, and they are a serious problem.” Also see these articles by Francis Walker, rich with links and analysis. She takes a hard look at the soft foundation of the numbers about false rape accusations.
- Anatomy of a Scary Statistic
- Professor Twitter and the Problem of the Low False Rape Narrative
- What do we know about false rape allegations?
- Narrative in search of a statistic
Also see the Washington Examiner article about the not peer-reviewed and undeservedly famous “MAD Study” by End Violence Against Women International. The money paragraph …
“From all of this one could determine that 15.6% of reports could reliably be determined as false, another 17.9% weren’t actually crimes and just 1.2% (or 2.2%) could be reliably determined as true. The remainder would fall into a “we’ll never know for sure” category. …And beyond all of this, none of this data can be applied to reports of campus sexual assault. There is no data available on the number of campus sexual assault accusations that turn out to be false, as it hasn’t been studied.”
See these for more information about false reports of rape.
- “The Truth behind Legal Dominance Feminism’s Two Percent False Rape Claim Figure” by Edward Greer at the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, April 2000.
- A review of the literature: “False allegations of rape” by Philip N. S. Rumney in The Cambridge Law Journal, March 2006 — gated, open copy here.
- “False Reports: Moving Beyond the Issue to Successfully Investigate and Prosecute Non-Stranger Sexual Assault“ by Dr. Kimberly A. Lonsway et al at the American Prosecutors Research Institute, 2009.
- “How Often Do Women Falsely Cry Rape?“ by Emily Bazelon and Rachael Larimore in Slate, 1 October 2009 – “The question the Hofstra disaster left dangling.”
- I have not checked this, but it looks interesting: “Ten reasons false rape accusations are common” by Jonathan Taylor. The ten reasons look reasonable.
- “Does India have a problem with false rape claims?‘ by Joanna Jolly at the BBC.
This post is a follow-up to MeToo = Salem Witch trials 2.0 — see the similarities.
Posts about the Kavanaugh hearing
- The Kavanaugh hearings’ warning: the Court is so powerful that extreme measures are appropriate to take control of it.
- Hidden knowledge: false rape accusations by women are common.
- Lies are a useful and appropriate tool to use for political conflicts.
- The Kavanaugh hearings: lawfare used against us.
- The heart of the Kavanaugh hearing is our false confidence in our ability to tell lies from truth.
- Important: A surprise end to the gender wars: men stand together.
For a different spin on rape
See “Today In Rape Apologia, Ayn Rand Edition” by Scott Lemieux (Asst Prof of Political Science at College of St. Rose) at Lawyers, Guns and Money. Ayn Rand is a feminist by many standards, yet the sex scenes in her books often glorify rape. That was considered normal in her day. Such scenes, albeit toned down, are still common in chick lit (Fifty Shades of Grey
Other posts in this series
- MeToo = Salem Witch trials 2.0 — see the similarities.
- Hidden knowledge: false rape accusations are common.
- The astounding story of false rape accusations in England.
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about women & society, about rape, about MeToo, and especially these…
- It’s time to forcibly re-shape America to fight the campus rape epidemic! Even if it’s fake.
- The University of Virginia “rape culture” story crashes and burns. Will this become a story of failed agitprop? Or a win for the Left?
- The University of Virginia shows how change comes to America: through agitprop and hysteria.
A classic about false rape accusations
To Kill a Mockingbird.
by Harper Lee (1960).
Also see the 1962 film
“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
From the publisher …
“A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee’s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man’s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.
“One of the best-loved classics of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It has won the Pulitzer Prize, been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, and been made into a hit film. It was also named the best novel of the twentieth century by librarians across the country.”
I guess like many things in life its a two by two matrix, and to be clear about the underlying facts, which is the pre-requisite for determining the public policy implications, we would have to know numbers and percentages . How many are committed and not reported to police? How many false reports are there? How many true reports are there?
Then there is the prosecution and conviction issue. How many false convictions are there, and how many false acquittals, and how many correct convictions? I have read that the conviction rate in rape cases in the UK is very low, much lower than for other violent crimes, but I don’t recall any convincing explanation of why that is.
That there are false accusations and convictions is indisputable – the UK cases seem to be well documented. And that at least some of the false convictions are due to misconduct by the prosecution in not taking account of all the evidence and making it available to the defence also seems indisputable. That is, there never was a case, if all the evidence was considered. But the prosecution went ahead regardless.
That there are rapes, probably a lot, which women decline to report also seems indisputable to me. I know of one actual and one serious attempt. In the actual case it was by an acquaintance, the woman in question had known the guy for a while. But when the opportunity arose, she was attacked without warning. Many, many years later that episode still marked her.
I don’t know what advice one gives. To be very wary of being alone with men? Or to be very wary of being alone with women?
I also don’t know how common the impulse to rape is among men. I know I have never felt it. But this isn’t something that people talk about, and if they did, I doubt they would talk honestly outside a therapeutic context.
George,
You immerse yourself in unknowns, then become confused. That’s a common affliction these days. It makes us easily manipulated, easily led. It removes an incentive to act, desirable for peons.
Read the section about Britain. Read yesterday’s post about the similarities between our current hysteria and Salem 1692. If no public policy reforms occur to you, perhaps reading about current events is not an effective use of your time (unless you do so for entertainment).
Sorry about the long comment and I hope you think it’s on topic and useful. I thought some more information on what’s been going on in the UK may be interesting. There’s an official group called the “Crown Prosecution Service” they’re more or less the equivalent of the DA’s office in the US. It’s their job to gather police information and decide to prosecute or not. They’re supposed to hand copies of all the evidence gathered to defence lawyers.
There were common features in the rape case, that led to the review:
1. The police didn’t examine mobile phone messages/photos footage that would have exonerated the alleged perp. The phone was in the possession of the police, who with the CPS, repeatedly ignored requests to hand copies to defence lawyers over a long period of time.
2. The police,CPS didn’t communicate vital evidence that would have exonerated an alleged perp.
3. Cases where the police simply didn’t dig deep enough and the investigative work was left to the defence team.
I don’t think that there’s a suggestion anything was deliberately suppressed, but that it was incompetence combined with people not having the tools/personnel/inclination to them trawl through thousands of text messages. At least that’s the official story. I’m sure attitude played a part though…
It happened in enough cases to make people twitchy. After the fiasco of the Metropolitan police investigations into the organised abuse of children in which someone called ‘Nick’ reported several politicians, former politicians, celebrities and senior members of the armed forces for operating paedophile rings. Initially a member of the Met. made a statement to the press that Nick’s statements were ‘both credible and true’. It turned out that precisely *none* of it was true. The Met had egg on their face and have had to pay damages and make a series of humiliating apologies. Lives were ruined, including one MP Leon Brittain who died before the police finally bothered to vindicate him. Had they put more pressure on ‘Nick’ they’d have seen the cracks in his ‘story’.
But ‘Nick’ came about in the semi panic that followed the exposure of serial paedophile activity of Jimmy Saville and several others including a well known MP Cyril Smith (who received a knighthood). In all cases, some of the children reported their rape to their parents, most didn’t believe them, and those who did and went to the police weren’t listened to. Smith preyed largely on children in state care who didn’t even have parents to turn to.
Then there were the cases in Rochdale, where children (girls) were groomed and used as prostitutes. The social services and police both knew the girls were under age and prostitutes but never bothered to check *why* even when the girls explained how they’d been groomed.
The entirely understandable outcry over all this led for calls that people who report sexual offences should be believed to be telling the truth. Which is where ‘Nick’ came in. Indeed, several current MPs made trenchant statements in supporting the allegations ‘Nick’ made. See this Guardian article. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/28/tom-watson-interview-no-doubt-one-politician-abused-kids Tom Watson is currently deputy leader of the UK Labour Party.
Personally, I think it’s the police job to believe no-one, but to diligently investigate *all* allegations to the point at which they feel they can determine their veracity. If you ‘believe’ someone to be telling the truth, isn’t that the same as believing the other party is lying?
Steve,
I think you’re making this too complex. All of the miscarriages of justice you mention had political roots. It requires tightly closed eyes to believe those things “just happened.”
“Personally, I think it’s the police job to believe no-one”
Obviously the people running the police and CPS disagree with you.
George First, below, mentions prosecutions in the UK for rape are low, but about fifty per cent of cases sent to court end in conviction. The ones that do not reach court, do not do so, one supposes, because there is no evidence that a rape has taken place. Would we want it any other way?
What is certain, is that the police and CPS have been under enormous pressure in recent years to increase prosecutions, mainly from the women’s groups, who have convinced them that large numbers of rapes are taking place. I have heard 80k per annum mentioned. But where is the evidence for this? I think it is based on polls extrapolated to the entire country (to included rural villages that have not had a rape in centuries) and, moreover, polls in which people do not have to provide evidence for the claims that they make. Also, I would suggest. those claiming to have been raped, might very well be including offences – if they actually took place – that would not be defined as rape. I agree with George First that there are unquestionably rapes not being reported. But I don’t see how we can arrive at any reasonably accurate figure for these.
What is undoubtedly happening is that the figures for false accusation are being manipulated down. First of all, as I understand it, cases where the allegation is quickly dismissed by police are not being recorded at all. Secondly, about 14% of claims are being shunted into “no crime” figures. These are cases where the woman has claimed she was raped, where the police have investigated, and where they have determined – WITHOUT DOUBT – that a rape did not take place.
Then there are the cases where the police do not record the offence for one reason or another. In the famous de Freitas case, which was immediately recorded as a rape, and where the accused was luckily wealthy enough to be able to prove his innocence, the police, when asked by the young man to reclassify the case as a false accusation, simply refused to do so. In another cases recently, where the woman was proven to be lying, and was also found guilty of another offence, the detective, when asked why the case was not recorded as a false accusation, but as something else, said: “The other offence is more serious.” So, there are two false accusations not recorded as such.
It seems to me that false accusations are a major problem, and the recent claims by an American sheriff and a German police force that most claims of rape are false suggests that that is the case. I cannot agree with Steve Crook that the reason for the police not looking at exculpatory evidence was due to incompetence, or any reason other than deliberate policy. They have been told to get more convictions, and their next promotion and their next pension increase depends on it. So, to hell with innocent men.
Wisemanner,
“I cannot agree with Steve Crook that the reason for the police not looking at exculpatory evidence was due to incompetence, or any reason other than deliberate policy. They have been told to get more convictions, and their next promotion and their next pension increase depends on it. So, to hell with innocent men.”
More broadly, the obvious conclusion is that the police and prosecutors in Britain are subservient creatures of their political masters, and will do whatever they are told to do.
The reaction of peons to this is too throw up their hands and say “it is soooo complex.” I am constantly amazed at how the vibrant (sometimes rowdy) citizens of the UK and US have become docile sheep. Perhaps the 1% are correct, and they are best suited to rule us.
Perhaps we can prove that they are wrong. Perhaps the current hysteria about meToo, the campus rape culture (and the resulting kangaroo courts), and such will radicalize men into action. I can’t see that happening (see an upcoming post about that). There is no institutional or intellectual foundation for such action.
Except one: Conversions to Islam will reshape the West. If so, it probably won’t be as extreme as this (before and after photos of secular and Islamic Afghanistan). But it won’t be pretty.
Islam is tempered in western nations simply because their leaders don’t have the political confidence to impose Sharia law.
It took centuries to get the Roman Catholic Church to tone down its “kill the infidels” fire-breathing rhetoric. We should take a lesson from this more immediate experience to resist and push back the Muslim hordes.
The secularization of Turkey by Kemal Atatürk in 1923, following the collapse of the Uthman (Ottoman) Empire as a result of its defeat in WWI, shows strong signs of returning to its Islamic fundamentalist roots.
Other Muslim countries are moving toward more Islamic fundamentalism.
The numbers I have been able to find from England and Wales 2016/17 are:
England and Wales
Reported 41,150
Prosecuted 5,190
Convicted 2,991
Any way you look at it, these are extraordinary numbers. If there are that many happening, with so few prosecutions and convictions, that is extraordinary and would certainly alarm any rational woman. But if there are only as many happening as are being either prosecuted or convicted, then that is equally extraordinary. what are we to say about the rest, in this case? Is it really credible there are this many false accusations? That would alarm any rational man.
This is a mess. However much of a mess it is, it is not going to be improved by abandoning the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty. But having a society in which men and women can associate freely without women feeling at threat of sexual abuse, well, its essential. I do not however see how to get there from here.
George,
What is your source for these numbers?
I should also have added to my post, that, at the recent men’s conference in London, one of the speakers, a proven to be falsely accused man was able, using WOMEN’S and POLICE figures that the number of false accusations in one year was 20-30k. This compares to one years figures for rape convictions that I looked at of about 3k.
If you assume the only ones that happened in England and Wales are the ones that were prosecuted, or only the ones where a conviction was secured, and that the remainder were false, that is the implication of the numbers I posted. I cannot believe that is the case however. The implication would be that something like 85% of accusations are false. Do you really believe that?
Certain things seemed to have been happening. Firstly, the police have tended to believe the women’s groups claims that about 85k rapes are committed each year. This is why they have been desperate to increase prosecutions – with disastrous results for some innocent men. Secondly, police records show that about 41500 rape claims were made in one year. (These are the figures used by speaker Patrick Graham at the recent men’s conference in London – the figures come from the women’s groups and the police – in other words they are THEIR OWN figures.) Moreover, the women’s groups claim that only 10% of rape victims go to the police (=8500).So, 41500-8500 MUST equal 33k false accusations. There is no other way of looking at it.
I would make some observations. I do not see how the women’s group figures for the number of women raped can be correct. As I understand it, they are extrapolated from polls into a much larger population. None of these polls would have asked people to back up their claims with evidence, and, almost certainly, as we have seen with women’s figures many times before, “rape” could cover an awful lot of “offences”. In my view, and I cannot prove this, of course, the number is very much lower. And how, of course, do they know that only 10% go to the police? Thus, the figure for false accusations could also be very much lower.(But still very high!)
I think, however, one thing is certain. The number of false accusations, as I’ve explained elsewhere, is being manipulated down. Almost certainly quite substantially so. This is the conclusion you get if you look at the figures closely, and is borne out by what the few law enforcement people who have spoken out say.
Incidentally, whenever feminist writers refer to the “vanishingly small number of false accusations”, they always use the figures for the number of false accusations prosecuted. But only a tiny number of false accusers are prosecuted.
Wisemanner,
Here are the numbers for the year ending March 2017, for sexual assault of females in England and Wales. See the report and the data. I thought the report was misleading. These paint a different picture than do the news media.
They give numbers from both their survey and police reports. Some of the survey questions gives astonishingly large numbers
Table 1: Rates of sexual assaults on women 16-59 in 2016-17.
Rape or assault by penetration (including attempts): 0.9%
Indecent exposure or unwanted touching: 2.7%
Table 25: Survey data – What was the outcome?
Outcome of police investigation of rape or assault by penetration (including attempts) experienced since age 16 by adults aged 16 to 591, by sex of victim, year ending March 2017.
Note that that these are from self-identified victims, from surveys.
14% – Police warned the person who did it
43% – Police arrested the person who did it
30% – Police charged the person who did it
11% – Police took some other action
07% – Police tried to take action but were unable to locate/identify person who did it
19% – Police took no action
04% – Too early to say
Table 25: (same as above) Did the case come to court?
64% – Yes
35% – No
01% – Not yet
Table 8: Police data – number of rapes of females, by age of victim, in year ending March 2017
All:…………32,286
Over 16:….26,464
Under 16:….5,822
Under 13:….4,369
Table 8: Police data – Change in the number of rapes of females, by age of victim
Age…………..since 2008-09….since 2012/13
Age 16 or over:….348%…………274%
Age under 16:……240%…………208%
Age under 13:……294%…………184%
Table 10: Survey estimating rate of rape of adult women (using traditional definition of actual or attempted penetration) in 2017-17
All adults: 2.9%
White:……0.8%
Mixed:……3.4%
Asian:……0.3%
Black:……1.6%
Other:……1.7% (mostly Arab)
13% gave no ethnic group.
As often seen in these reports, the numbers in table 10 don’t make sense. The rate of rape for all females is higher than for the subgroups (only 1.3% of the sample self-identified as “mixed”).
Note they do not ask about the ethnicity of the perpetrator. That would be wrong, a violation of political correctness! Best not to know.
Larry, the figures don’t make sense to me either. But that survey is, as I understand it, merely a questionnaire with no evidence sought to back up claims. Thus, the women can say anything. The big increases over recent years certainly look suspicious. I had thought offences were going down; the rise of feminism may be one reason why they have gone up! But that’s a guess. I don’t have the time or the interest to look into the report in depth.
Incidentally, I can’t post this as a reply to your reply.
Wisemanner,
“The big increases over recent years certainly look suspicious.”
I agree. Some of this is demographic — an increase in the number of young men in ethnic groups with high rates of sexual assault. Note they do not ask about the ethnicity of the perpetrator. That would be wrong, a violation of PC!
“I can’t post this as a reply to your reply.”
You need to know the WordPress secret! The reply button is beneath the first post in that thread. The subsequent comments do not have reply buttons, but replies appear in chronological order. I guess this is obvious to the programmers.
Thanks. Got it. Only one thing is certain to me – that is, that false accusations are being kept artificially low. As for the rest, I suppose it needs a lot of interpretation!
Great piece, though.
Source was here: {The Mirror}. Go down the page till you come to the “Top 10” areas table. The bottom line is for England and Wales. The Mirror is a British Tabloid, with all that carries, but in this case they say they are reporting Crown Prosecution figures so I have no reason to disbelieve them.
If you go to here. There are a lot of other sources with much more detailed stats, which I have not (yet) checked. Coincidentally, the Guardian has a story today: “Revealed: less than a third of young men prosecuted for rape are convicted.” To give an idea of its approach:
George,
I suggest you go to the comment above, in which I show the figures from the actual British govt website — which The Mirror isn’t (it is a long-standing liberal newspaper (e.g, Labor in a British context). While it nice to hear the theories of good SJWs, I suggest starting with the actual numbers.
George,
Your comments are quite amusing. To give an idea of the Left’s approach, let’s look at the evidence they present – but more rationally.
You might no longer believe in due process, trial by one’s peers, and so forth — belonging to the Left’s return to its totalitarian 20th C roots. But many of us do, and will fight to preserve them.
The use of aggregate statistics presents all kinds of logical and epistemological issues. The aggregate numbers in themselves allow for multiple interpretations and, as presented, cannot support a particular explanation. The reality is that any particular rape case can fail (or succeed) for a variety of reasons. Unless the cases are systematically and objectively analyzed in terms of those actual reasons I see no way to determine whether it was a weak case, poor education of the jury, attack on the victim character, youth of the accused, etc. The disparities in the numbers certainly suggest that more detailed analyses are needed on a case by case basis.
Bernie,
Yes, that’s the logical conclusion. But, of course, that’s NOT the media narrative.
People like Activists such as Julie Bindel want trial by jury for sex offences to end. And with the Labour party in the grip of feminists, and Corbyn saying the next Labour government will run the country for the benefit of women (I thought that was the case already), there is a very great risk this will happen.
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Readers might be interested in this study, which revealed a false allegation rate of 41% based on documented police records.:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8135653
Miguel,
This is 24 year old study based on an unreliable sample of only 45 cases. Unfortunately there are many such studies, with varying results, all with questionable methodologies. What we need is a study of accusations made to police (unscreened) – and some basis to determine how many are real.
We know that a large fraction of rape accusations are false because we have a useful sample: the ones that get in the headlines. Such as the Rolling Stone article, an accusation that the experienced journalists at Rolling Stone considered valid. But we don’t know what fraction of rape accusations are fake.
There is a more serious problem, one almost never mentioned in this context: the definition of rape is radically different than it was in 1994. For example — two people get drunk, go to his or her home, then the woman has regrets days, weeks, or years later — it is rape due to the new definition of “consent.” Bingo, jail for the guy!
This makes the past number, imo, more of a lower limit than a guide to current numbers.
The offence of rape has been replaced with the offence of “sexual assault” in many jurisdictions. The definition of “sexual assault” varies widely, from common-law rape to an inadvertent brush against a woman’s breast (which is not a sexual organ) or buttock (which is not a sexual organ) on a crowded tram or lift.
Or nothing. A woman can accuse a man who she has never met by picking his name out of (we used to say, “phone directory”) a Facebook post, etc. Or she can accuse a general description of a man and let the police choose who to arrest, destroy, charge, from those who have no ironclad alibi – walking his dog in the forest, etc.
“False rape accusations, even when they don’t result in a conviction, teach men a lesson.” – feminist SJW doctrine
Of course it doesn’t teach “Asians” (leftist codeword for “Arab Muslims”) not to rape. Raping…umm, using infidel women sexually isn’t rape: they are for the followers of the Prophet (pbuh) to take, to enjoy as they please.
It’s their culture.
Henry,
All sad but true. These trends are more advanced in Europe. As Julian Assange learned from the bogus rape charges, later downgraded to value sexual assault charges. He said, she said crimes are playgound for higher status groups to oppress lower status ones.
The second point you made points to the great oddity of the Left. They are eager for demographic changes that will make people with their views into a minority – and create a nation with a large fraction of people who hate Leftist views. The extreme case is their desire to bring into the US and Europe large numbers of people from conservative Islamic nations – people who believe the Left’s ideas about religion and feminism to be evil. Good luck with that.
Hence the belief of some that the Left is motivated at some deep level not to build a nation with their ideology but by hatred of our culture. This gives them an immense advantage, since it is so much easier to destroy than to build.
“I’ve had men attend rape education seminars with the sole purpose of learning how to protect themselves from manipulative, blackmailing, vindictive women who would “play the rape card,” as one Michigan State University student wrote a few years back. As the Craig Fry case demonstrates, it happens. This is a valid fear.
But is it a realistic one? In Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will, she says that only 2% of reported rapes turn out to be false, the same rate as other crimes. In other words, there’s no more reason to fear a false accusation of rape than there is a false accusation of car theft.
Some people question that figure. So-called “Men’s Rights” organizations often sponsor and publish studies that show 50% or more reported rapes are false. Careful reading shows these studies to be highly inflated. For instance, they rely on police statistics regarding unfounded reports. However, unfounded includes those reports which the police decide are not strong enough to press charges and make an arrest. It doesn’t mean the accusation is false, simply that there isn’t enough evidence to move forward. Unfortunately, given the nature of rape, this is a common occurrence.
A report in the Columbia Journalism Review finds the rate of false reports to be closer to 8%, according to the FBI (Haws, 1997). Let’s go with that number, roughly one in ten, as a nice middle ground.
Of course, only a few rapes are ever reported. The 1999 National Crime Victims Survey estimated that only about one third of sexual assaults are ever reported. Other studies find far lower numbers, but we’ll go with one in three. Do the math. 1 in 10 reported rapes are false. Only 1 in 3 are ever reported. In other words, for every false report of rape, you’re looking at twenty-nine true rapes.
But those false reports are what so many of us fear. Not that the men and women we love have a very good chance of being one of those twenty-nine victims. No, we’re afraid of that false accusation that will ruin our lives.
It’s easier to dwell on the false accusations. Rape is a horrible thing, and it’s not something we like to think about. It’s easier to assume a woman is making it up than it is to think about what she might have gone through.
So we’re afraid. We worry about becoming the next Craig Fry. We cringe inside when we read about all of these rapes on campus, because what happens if some girl gets the idea to punish us that way?
It happens. It’s a legitimate fear. But it’s not one I’ve got a lot of sympathy for. Not compared to the people who lived every night in fear that their father, mother, or some other relative would come in and molest them. Not compared to the women who struggled through fear, violation, and helplessness after a boy they trusted turned out to be a rapist. Not compared to the vast number of men and women who did speak out about their victimization, only to be labeled liars and sluts.
Let me make one last point. As tragic as Craig Fry’s case is, the system eventually worked. He was vindicated, and his accuser was arrested and sentenced.
If only the system worked half as well for victims of rape….”
‘False accusations of rape’ by Jim Hines, xyonline . net
Emme,
(1) Your comment puts you in rare company – people who write long screeds (570 words) without any evidence that they read more than the title of the post. Others standing with you are climate science deniers (on both the Left and Right), lots of extremists (the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, cutting taxes raises revenue), and — my favorite — the “Saddham has WMD’s” folks.
(2) Opening with “Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will, she says that only 2% of reported rapes turn out to be false” sets the tone for your comment. She never provided any supporting evidence, and experts have repeatedly debunked her claims. Even the good feminists at Slate had to admit that “no one has ever tracked down its source.”
Aso see “The Truth behind Legal Dominance Feminism’s Two Percent False Rape Claim Figure” by Edward Greer at the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review (April 2000).
There are some good reviews of the literature, such as “False allegations of rape” by Philip N. S. Rumney in The Cambridge Law Journal, March 2006 — gated, open copy here.
As Romeny and others have shown, data limitations, definitional confusion, and difficult methodological factors result in order-of-magnitude differences in estimated rates of false accusations of sexual assault. “Rape” is not a unitary phenomenon.
What is seldom mentioned, is that the dynamics have changed during the past decade – so that number might have changed. The distribution of kinds of rape has changed. Feminists have broadened the definition of rape and sexual assault so that force is not included (“coercion”). Plus both parties drinking means that the woman is said to not give consent (ie, she loses agency and responsibility for her actions, but he doesn’t). And, showing the extreme nature of this evolution. There are many cases of a hookup, followed by additional friendly contacts, and a report of assault or rape made days or weeks later.
Comparing these with an earlier population of largely forcible rapes will give gibberish results.
(3) “But it’s not one I’ve got a lot of sympathy for.”
That’s why the backlash against radical feminists is coming, as it has in the past against similar revolutions by leftist extremists. Hopefully you will do less damage than they did before you’re stopped.
The American Civil War was over maintaining unity of the United States of America.
The seceding states seceded over slavery but the United States didn’t wage war to free the slaves.
President Lincoln supported the proposed Corwin Amendment, which would have protected the “peculiar institution” of the slave states, supported the power of the territories to choose to be slave or non-slave states when they applied for admission, and protected the right of slaveholders (slaveowners didn’t like being referred to as “slaveowners” – they held them for their labor, not as livestock) to take their slaves anywhere in the non-slave states temporarily or permanently.
The seceded states were having none of it. Along with abandoning secession came an increase in the import duties on the very merchandise they received in exchange for the agricultural products they exported – from 20% to 40%.
President Lincoln and his supporters were very aware that the secession was fomented by foreign, European intriguers to weaken the American Union by splitting it. They feared that if they remained divided that the Confederacy would be not merely a separate country but, once strengthened by Independence, would be a dangerous enemy. It would control the Mississippi River, the main highway to the interior. It would have several of the major seaports, a source of much of the revenue that the United States had, avoiding the politically disagreeable dependence on internal taxes.
And, the Lincoln administration didn’t think that the Confederates would put up such a ferocious fight. They believed that the Confederacy would soon collapse or sue for peace.
That Lincoln was very willing to compromise to get the southern states to come back to the Union was evidenced by his signing of the proposed Corwin Amendment (it’s unnecessary for the president to endorse joint resolutions of Congress – however, it displays his support) and forwarding it to all of the states, including the Confederate states. He was willing to allow the slave states to count their slaves as citizens, which when originally addressed in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 resulted in the ³/5 Compromise (the non-slave states wanted slaves classed as livestock). He was willing to try to get the Congress to drop the doubling of import duties. Practically any concession to persuade the seceded states to come back.
Nothing doing. They believed that the Abolitionists wouldn’t give up. Major Abolitionists were adamant that nothing would be paid in compensation for freeing the slaves. They would not agree to deport freed slaves “back” to Africa. The slave interests definitely did not want the numbers of free blacks to be multiplied, to become citizens on an equal standing with white citizens.
The slave states’ obstinacy, the Abolitionists’ obstinacy, and the Unionists’ determination to keep the southern states within the American Union were irreconcilable differences.
These differences had to be settled on the battlefield. That the Constitution did not prohibit secession and did not grant any power to prevent secession was of no consequence to the Republicans and to the Lincoln administration: “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”
The United States of America preceded the Constitution and was not dependent on the Constitution for its existence. The United States of America had come into legal being by the Unanimous Declaration (of Independence)(1776), had existed with no written constitution until the Articles of Confederation (1781) and had replaced the Articles with the Constitution (1789).
How would you define crazy making? How about,
1 in 3 American women worry frequently or occasionally about being raped (Source: Washington Examiner).
1 in 2 American women will have rape fantasies and/or attempt to act out a rape fantasy (Source: care.com).
.
.
Ed Note: Sources for the above.
“One in Three U.S. Women Worry About Being Sexually Assaulted” by Gallup, 17 October 2016.
“Women’s Rape Fantasies: How Common? What Do They Mean?” by Michael Castleman at Psychology Today, 14 January 2010 – “Rape or near-rape fantasies are surprisingly common.
Mark,
That’s harsh. A large fraction of American women sometimes or often are in potentially hazardous situations, where there is a risk of rape. Not all women spend their lives in Greenwich.
As for fantasies, everybody has them – and they shouldn’t be judged by the standards of real life. The rape fantasies in bodice-ripper pulp novels have almost nothing in common with getting raped in a dark alley at knife-point by a thug.
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Here is some icing on the cake for you…. 1 in 3 American women worry frequently or occasionally about being raped (Source: Washington Examiner) and 1 in 2 American women will have rape fantasies and/or attempt to act out a rape fantasy (Source: care2.com). Now put that in the formula and the final result will be the definition of crazy making.
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“…all-white jury convicts an innocent black man of raping a white woman in a small 1930s southern town, despite the efforts his lawyer who defies the town’s lynch-mob mentality and proves the victim’s story to be false.”
Never mentioned is that the all-white juries that falsely convicted black men of rape in the face of evidence exonerating the accused were all DEMOCRATS.
The DEMOCRAT Party was opposed to outlawing slavery (of black people). The DEMOCRAT congressmen voted 100% against restoring the rights of citizenship to black Americans, rectifying the UNCONSTITUTIONAL decree of DEMOCRAT SLAVEOWNER Supreme Court justice Roger Taney stripping the rights of citizenship from black NATURAL BORN American CITIZENS.
The DEMOCRAT Party opposed granting the vote to otherwise qualified blacks. When the REPUBLICANS overrode the DEMOCRATS and removed “race” as a disqualifier for voting, the DEMOCRAT-KU KLUX KLAN Party fought to keep blacks away from the polls for the next CENTURY.
When the REPUBLICANS granted the right to vote to WOMEN, both white and black, the DEMOCRATS fought them tooth-and-nail.
When REPUBLICANS prohibited failure to pay the poll-tax being used to deny the vote to blacks, the DEMOCRATS opposed the measure to the very end.
EVERY Civil Rights Act was opposed by the DEMOCRAT Party until Lyndon B. Johnson explained how, since the Democrats were losing this battle, he could guarantee the “n****r” vote to the Democrat Party for the next two hundred years. The Democrats then took over the REPUBLICAN Civil Rights Act and, claiming it as a Democrat measure, passed it.
So, since the Republicans defeated the Democrats in the Civil War, freed the blacks, restored their citizenship rights, granted them the vote, removed the poll-tax, and fought the Democrat KKK for a century to guarantee the rights of black American citizens, introduced and passed every Civil Rights Act*, blacks overwhelmingly vote for Democrats! Go figure.🤔
Since the Republicans granted WOMEN the right to vote in the face of heavy Democrat opposition, women overwhelmingly vote for Democrats! Go figure.🤔
* The 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced as the Civil Rights Bill of 1963 by the REPUBLICANS.
By L.B. Johnson’s advice, the Democrats took it over as their own, watered it down to where KKK Democrats would be able to vote for it and get re-elected, and claimed it as a victory over the Republicans, who wanted to return the blacks to slavery, as the Democratic Party, founded to secure slavery in the slave states and the western territories, lost the Civil War, and whose members founded the KKK of 1866 and re-established the KKK of 1924, alleged.
There exist simple remedies to dealing with rape accusations. Rape laws should be enforced like other laws. The government need not consider reporting by victims, as long as it provides a means to reporting.
Only 25% of thefts are reported. Groups that use rape to manufacture contrived InjustIces should be ignored. They do not seek justice, but rather seek to aggravate the problem, because rape is a feminist recruiting tool.
It is known intuitively that the female signals her desire and consent to the male, by uncovering her body. This is scientically confirmed fact. Science and mathematics are not subject to judicial and legislative fiat.
A famous instance in the Idiana State Legislature demonstrates how laughable the attempt is. The State Assembly passed a bill that legally changed the value of pbysical constant, ‘pi’.
Similarly, legislating biology in conflict to itself will always open a path to evil. Reproduction is nonverbal, instictual, and involuntary in the male. Female consent is understood in terms of nature, not law. No matter how many times it is proclaimed to the contrary, uncovered skin causes the male mating response.
Drunkenness causes girls to assume unnecessary risk. The average person judges Immodesty + intoxication of the female to produce predictable results known to all, and to be entirely voluntary. By teaching women that rape cannot be prevented, many more frivolous cases occur, and juries simply ignore the law if they deem the victim was at fault.
There is a known method to prevent rape: llve a Christian lifestyle. All this hoopla to avoid the obvious is just silly
Brian,
“The State Assembly passed a bill that legally changed the value of pbysical constant, ‘pi’.”
That’s an urban legend. The bill was introduced, which means nothing, was widely mocked, and did not pass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill