I’ve been insanely busy with class and work lately (UGG! My finals are in a MONTH!), so in an effort to contribute to my duties as a blogger and still keep my life spinning, I’ve decided to do a cop out post. This post will not be moderated, beyond the automatic spam (or if you are REALLY bad).
False Rape Accusations, while unfortunate, are not on the same level of rape. The current system that we have in place is sufficient to dissuade people from filling them, and false rape accusations should not have penalties beyond any other false reporting of a crime.
Go!
Bird, to the unamerican, I added a little smiley. I was kidding. Regardless, in the United States we (used to be) are proud of how we believe in innocent until proven guilty.
You ask me to believe a lot of anecdotal evidence. And a lot of stories of survivors.
And the thing is, I do believe in that.
But when we ask you to consider the stories of those who were falsely accused, especially those who were maliciously accused, that’s when we reach the impasse.
We all have our studies of false reporting — the FBI says that rape is no different from other crimes, and has a rate they believe is about 8%. 8% is way higher than our Blackstone ratio of 1%. And at 8% it is guaranteed through statistics that the lives of the innocent have been ruined, and almost certain that some may have died in jail (but not before the beatings.)
It’s very hard to compare apples to oranges. But it seems amazing to many of us how modern feminists, who are concerned about the terrible effects of a hostile environment, where that hostile environment may be just a poster on a wall, are so quick to dismiss the impacts on a person’s live and their psyche of being falsely accused.
Lisa says she doesn’t know anyone who has been falsely accused, so she finds it hard to believe there is a real problem. In my 5 decades, I have never met anyone who has been raped or told me she has been raped. Do you think I don’t think rape is a real problem? I am hear to tell Lisa that I have been falsely accused, and maliciously falsely accused to as a way to game the custody system. And though no evidence of my guilt was ever brought forth, and though I even heard the court psychologist testify that the plaintiff’s accusations were not believable, I also heard the same court psychologist say, “though the accusations are not believable, they are serious enough accusations that I think the proper course of action is to grant the change of visitation four another six months.”
Lisa, the false accusations against me were bogus. They were recognized as bogus by the court. And they worked. They changed my visitation with my kids away from the court psychologist recommended 50/50 joint custody to zero custody. They were recognized as bogus and my ex wife was never punished for that.
And they didn’t last for six months, there are aspects of the visitation that I have never gotten back (specific holidays, and school vacations.)
No matter how much Bird and other feminists wants to dismiss the impact, while letting abyss2hope make some weird claim that it is feminists fighting false accusations and not MRA’s, I am here to tell you they are real. They impact real people. They impact the innocent and they impact children.
And that if you actually were interested in justice regardless of gender, you would be interested in justice regardless of gender.
Oh yeah, the charges against me are all in the public record, where I am identified by name and where they are regularly found by potential employers, during security clearance checks, and if I had ever had the ability to run for office which I’ve wanted to do…
As so many other people have said, where do I go to get my name back?
And as others have said, what happens to the rate of malicious false accusations when people learn they are very rarely punished?
Anon, while it’s awful that that happened to you, one piece of anecdotal evidence is not indicative of an epidemic of false rape accusations, which is what I was asking. I don’t doubt and never have that there are such things as false rape accusations; of course there are. I do doubt that it’s a pervasive problem. However, I’m more than happy to view evidence that, like the stat that MRAs love to hate about women and rape, anything remotely like 1 in 4 men is accused, to the police, and arrested for, a rape based on a woman’s malicious reporting of him as such.
I never took a statistics class in college; I am six-sigma trained, for what that’s worth (not much–I know the veeeery basics about statistics and how to use one specific statistical software package to analyze data). Clearly I don’t know enough about ‘em to be able to “get” them in the context you describe, though.
My point is that it is a serious issue, and that the few people have studied it have come up with figures that from 25%-60% of all initial reports are “unfounded”, it’s pretty obvious when someone doesn’t want to admit this is an issue that needs to be studied further. It’s also ridiculous to point to statistics about something else entirely, then claim it shows false accusation is not a problem.
You may not believe it’s pervasive (I personally don’t either, although I DO think they make up a substantial portion of rape accusations), but really Lisa, Bird, et al….how many men do we allow to be destroyed like this, to avoid a “chilling effect”? Before it’s OK to admit it happens regularly without feeling like it takes away from women somehow? Before people actually begin to be concerned with such weird concepts as equal protection under the law?
I don’t believe anything coming from this “side of the aisle” will ever be done to benefit men (in any way really). I don’t think it’s in the nature of people involved in this movement, and I have not seen evidence to convince me otherwise. Conversations like this have made it obvious.
I don’t doubt and never have that there are such things as false rape accusations; of course there are. I do doubt that it’s a pervasive problem.
If you would put Glenn Sacks on your rss feed, you’d see a whole lot of anecdotal evidence of malicious false accusations, and often, usually much worse than occurred to me.
But no study means you think there isn’t a pervasive problem. And the many studies out there that Sacks references are somehow not relevant. Kanin, Air Force, WaPo, DOJ, FBI, and reading them doesn’t persuade you that false accusations are any sort of problem.
Well, would you be willing then to sign a petition and ask other feminists to sign a petition to fund such a study?
Regarding once more type i and type ii errors, the wiki page is pretty good, and the section on Usage Examples states what I have been saying: Type I and Type II errors are linked. If you try to reduce one type of these errors, you will necessarily increase the other type of these errors. So the best tests and efforts work to reduce both.
Usage examples
”
Statistical tests always involve a trade-off between:
(a) the acceptable level of false positives (in which a non-match is declared to be a match) and
(b) the acceptable level of false negatives (in which an actual match is not detected).
A threshold value can be varied to make the test more restrictive or more sensitive; with the more restrictive tests increasing the risk of rejecting true positives, and the more sensitive tests increasing the risk of accepting false positives.
”
MRAs wish to call attention to false positives, and how the lives of the false positives are ruined.
Feminists and MRAs wish to reduce false negatives (non-reported rapes, rapes not taken seriously).
But only feminists seem to make the unscientific, unrealistic argument that false positives are not a problem worth taking seriously, and they combine that with the other argument, that being a false positive is really not a big deal and that it is shameful to compare being a victim of a false accusation of rape with being a rape victim. These are sexist and terribly insensitive arguments which seek to justify the destruction of innocent lives.
What’s also interesting is how many times in these discussions we hear feminists admit to knowing someone who knowingly made a false accusation but still the problem is trivial and ignorable and women just don’t do that.
I thought I’d go ahead and check out the Sacks references. We have:
!. Eugene Kanin, who did one study fifteen years ago on 109 rape cases over a 9 year period in one small town.
A search for other articles he has written or any unbiased (ie, non-MRA) evaluation of his work produced nada in terms of unbiased evaluation–nobody but MRAs ever mention him–and the following as articles he has written:
Kanin, E. J. (1982). Female rape fantasies: A victimization study. Vietimology: An International Journal, 7, 114-121.
Kanin, E. J. (1985). Unfounded rape. Paper presented at
the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences annual meeting,
Las Vegas, NV
Kanin, E. J. (1985). Date rapists, differential sexual socialization, and relative deprivation. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 14, 219-231.
Kanin E. J., & Parcell S. R. ( 1977). “Sexual Aggression: A Second Look at the
Offended Female.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 6:67-76.
Also, three or four other similarly titled articles predating 1977, which I can’t cut and paste because they’re not html.
So, the great bulk of his work is over twenty years old; his “study” was amazingly unscientific in its structure, and he clearly has a…unique perspective, being that the absolute only study he did that really looked at women was to look at “female rape fantasies.” (God only knows how that study turned out.)
Verdict: Not very impressive. Sorry.
2. A Washington Post article that found that less than 25% of rape accusations were unfounded. Unfortunately, no matter what I try to search under, I absolutely can’t find the article itself to be able to weigh in on it…for instance, how did they “find” this? A study? (Somebody should start encouraging Glenn to link to things he cites as “proof.” I’ve already noticed in the past, when I’ve wanted to check his sources, that they can be very hard to impossible to find.)
Verdict: Not enough information.
3. 1996 Department of Justice report. I found that on the internet, plus someone who had already done the work of taking it apart for me. To wit:
“The origin of this and similar claimed figures is this Department of Justice Report, which says in pertinant part:
Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained (primarily by State and local law enforcement), the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing. Specifically, FBI officials report that out of roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases since 1989, about 2,000 tests have been inconclusive (usually insufficient high molecular weight DNA to do testing), about 2,000 tests have excluded the primary suspect, and about 6,000 have “matched” or included the primary suspect.1 The fact that these percentages have remained constant for 7 years, and that the National Institute of Justice’s informal survey of private laboratories reveals a strikingly similar 26-percent exclusion rate, strongly suggests that postarrest and postconviction DNA exonerations are tied to some strong, underlying systemic problems that generate erroneous accusations and convictions.
The exclusion rate here is 20% or 25%, depending upon whether or not you include non-conclusive tests…More seriously, this does not stand for the proposition that 20% (or 25%, or whatever) of rape convictions have been overturned or are false. Rather it refers to “sexual assault cases referred to the FBI”. Most of these will not be convictions. Some of them won’t even be rape. Further, the authors themselves reject the contention that this figure can be extrapolated to the actual false conviction rate:
Some already have used the cases discussed in this report to argue that hundreds more innocent defendants are in prison. They contend that the current “exclusion” rate for forensic DNA labs — close to 25 percent — suggests that a similar percentage of innocent defendants were wrongly convicted before the availability of forensic DNA typing. Unfortunately, too many variables are contained in the “exclusion” rate to draw any meaningful conclusions from it. Furthermore, nothing about the cases reviewed here necessarily supports such a conclusion.
In fact the authors of this report were able to find just 28 cases in which “convicted rapist[s] have been exonerated by DNA testing”. which is undoubtedly several orders of magnitude less than 33% of the total number of rape convictions over the period.
Moreover, only one of those cases – that of Gary Dotson – was a result of a false accusation…i.e. a fabricated complaint. The others were convicted for a variety of reasons:
…Mistaken eyewitness identification, coerced confessions, unreliable
forensic laboratory work, law enforcement misconduct, and ineffective representation of
counsel, singly and often in combination, remain the leading causes of wrongful convictions.
Even a single case of false conviction based upon a fabricated complaint (or for any other reason) is, of course, a disaster for the individual concerned. However it is a gross distortion to cite this report (or a figure derived from it) as supporting the contention that false rape convictions are common or that false accusations are common, or that the latter are a significant cause of former.
http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2006/06/06/are-33-of-convicted-rapists-exonerated-by-dna/
Verdict: Completely debunked.
4. A guy named Craig Silverman who used to be some kind of law enforcement officer who has expressed his opinion that half of all rapes reported are false.
Put into the anecdote pile. According to my opinion, well over half of women are raped or seriously threatened with rape at some point in their lives, based on my expertise of being a woman who has known closely and well at least one hundred women during her lifetime to date. That’s definitely just as valid. And also, only two will involve the authorities, and they won’t even be the ones to call the cops–other people who see them afterwards will.
Verdict: As meaningful as any other anecdotal opinion.
Overall verdict: What do you think I’m thinking right now…and please, honestly…if this was all I had to offer you to contend that rape is a problem, would YOU be wowed and convinced here..?
Factory wrote (directed at me): “From my perspective, you don’t care at all about all the men having their lives ruined on what amounts to nothing more than an accusation sometimes.”
From your assessment of the My Turn Rapist as wrongfully convicted then of course from your perspective I don’t care about all of those “innocent” men. But there is a difference between men who think what they did wasn’t a crime and wasn’t rape and men who didn’t in fact commit a crime and didn’t commit rape.
I do care about the second group and don’t want to see them convicted. Rapists who think that giving someone a choice between consent and violent rape is a way to get legal consent don’t get any pity for me when they are questioned, arrested and convicted. Those are rightful actions on the part of the victim, the police, the prosecution and the jury. Those are not unjust actions.
Your position loses all credibility when you turn 2 rapes proven in the criminal justice system (1 guilty plea, 1 jury conviction) into consensual sex acts.
Anon quoted me: “they want to keep down the falsely accused of raped but show no interest in keeping down the falsely accused of filing a false police report.”
And then responded: “Abyss2hope, what does this mean? I have no idea what you are saying, would you please clarify?”
To make it clear, I am saying that you are misusing statistics to justify allowing injustice against rape victims. You put forth a false dichotomy and a false cause and effect linkage.
FYI I’m familiar with statistics and have a minor in math and a major in computer science.
Reducing injustice against rape victims doesn’t cause an increase in injustice against those who are not guilty of the charges against them.
Sloppiness contributes to both types of injustice. Ditto with unethical police practices. Investigators who will coerce an innocent rape suspect into a false confession instead of doing a competent investigation will coerce an innocent rape victim instead of doing a competent investigation.
What you list as a Type II errors often include wrongful criminal accusations against crime victims. If being falsely accused of the crime of rape is a Type I error then so is being falsely accused of the crime of filing a false police report yet this error is dismissed as being a lessor error. By refusing to see these as 2 Type I errors, you setup or support one injustice to justify another.
http://www.cmrlink.org/CMRNotes/cmr-pa 092105a.pdf
A paper on military issues regarding rape accusations. Excerpts below.
“Unsubstantiated or exaggerated allegations have been known to destroy careers. 9 A
five-year survey of sexual assault in the U.S. Army found that reports of sexual abuse
that proved to be “unfounded” after investigation tripled from 48 to 157 between
1999 and 2003. No explanation for the increase was given. 10
• Every alleged offender is innocent until proven guilty, but some believe that guilt is
directly proportional to the seriousness of the charge. This attitude is demoralizing to
all, and sometimes extremely so. 11
• Unsubstantiated or recanted accusations sometimes occur for a variety of reasons.
These include remorse after an impulsive sexual encounter, an attempt to escape
accountability for behavior that violates Academy rules, jealousy, the desire for
attention, or revenge when a romantic relationship goes sour. 12 The services do not
need officers who have engaged in sexual abuse or rape. Nor do they need officers
known to have made false accusations that unjustly destroyed the careers of others.”
In today’s politically correct climate, I am not surprised there has not been an explicit study looking at false accusations of rape.
“Men do not structure their lives around the threat of false accusations. Men are not taught what not to do if they don’t want to be accused of rape (although they should, with the focus not on avoiding accusations, but on avoiding raping someone, but I digress). Men don’t have to alter their lives in any fundamental way because false accusations exist. This is true regardless of how much equivalence you want to draw between the impact on the life of the person accused, wrongfully or rightly, of rape, and the impact on the person raped.”
Shira, you are either willfully blind or simply ignorant (more likely, since you are probably not a man) of what men are taught or of how we alter our lives to avoid rape allegations. but here’s a test that can give you soem idea of the scope of men’s avoidance – ask ten men if they would pick up a lone woman hitch hiker. I for instance would not, under any circumstances, whatever the conditions.
You are also probably white if you think that men do not alter their behavior and dread false rape accusations. Here’s a shortcut for you – read Richard wright’s “Native Son”. The story hinges on a his accidental killing of a white women he was helping, based on his fear of a false rape charge. It is only literature and not solid evidence, but what is evidential is that his readership obviously thought such a story line was completely plausible, based on their “lived experiences.” As an alternative, you could google “lynching.”
As for that remark upthread that my question about prefering incarceration to rape was threatening, it is threatening only to perjurers, or to weaklings.
I don’t think that false rape accusations deserve soem kind of special punshment. They don’t. They should be prosecuted like any other form of perjury. Unfortunately perjury is rarely prosecuted, and perjury in rape cases is almost never prosecuted. The Duke lacrosse 3 accuser cited abouve is an exmaple of this. Factory, perhaps you can dig out some stats on perjury charges aaginst false rape accusers.
“Your position loses all credibility when you turn 2 rapes proven in the criminal justice system (1 guilty plea, 1 jury conviction) into consensual sex acts. ”
Normally I’d agree with you, but in this specific case, the victim flat out stated that if it didn’t hurt, she would definitely not consider it rape. In fact, she flat out gave her permission with that one singular clause, as in explicitly. SHE doesn’t even dispute this fact, how you can is beyond me.
The crime occurred precisely 5 seconds before he withdrew. That was the case made, those were the facts presented, and the facts he was convicted on.
And yes, it’s a great place to illustrate the dangers of both false accusation and misunderstanding (on ALL of their parts).
I am sure I am not alone in having had more than one occasion where things get going with two of the three people hanging out, and the passion just boils on over. Hell, I’ve known several girls who LOVED threesomes. It’s not out of the “normal” range of behaviour for this girl to have wanted one. So how is this guy supposed to know? Ask?
He did.
Make sure it’s consensual by asking again?
He did.
Complying with a request to end the intercourse?
He did.
His only crime, ACCORDING TO THE COURT, was that he took too long.
Those are the facts of the case.
That is also how I presented it. How does this make me a “rape apologist”? What if the point of bringing this case up was to point out the glaringly scary aspects of this crime (and it’s punishment), and the impossibility to safeguard yourself as a man from having these accusations leveled at you.
See…you can’t even be sure of it if you ask, then confirm, then comply. You have to be “quick” about it too. I wonder how long a guy gets? Is there going to be an olympic timer by every bed?
See, in this here case right here, the one that “proves” the guy is a rapist (hell, he was found guilty by a jury, and the other confessed (uncorruptable sources they are)). Except the whole, entire case rests on whether or not she felt he complied quickly enough, and whether the court agreed.
Nothing, absolutely nothing else in this case is in contention.
So what’s a guy to do? Even if you ask, confirm, and go along with her every wish….you can still be successfully prosecuted IF she feels like it.
And I’m not supposed to be scared of this? Give me a break. I don’t share your misconception that this sort of thing is rare. I’ve seen it happen, a couple times.
Of course, in your eyes that just means two rapists got off…right?
Amen to that, Jim2. We very carefully structure our lives, and the law punishes those who don’t.
And if you’re a black man – well, God help you. Bias heaped upon bias makes you a target for every racist and/or man-hating woman out there.
Jim, the most “arduous” sentence I know of is a woman in Nevada, who was convicted of perjury for submitting a false report of rape, as well as inciting her boyfriend to murder. He didn’t go through with it(told the cops), but the perjury added 90 days to her sentence.
If you look at some of the quoted stories I have linked here, as well as the multitude of stories at Glenn’s Blog (in the Archive pages), you will find that the only time women tend to be charged perjury or the like is when a substantial amount of the State’s money is wasted, and that is the primary reason why false accusation is bad in their eyes. “Creating a chilling effect” is usually close behind.
No one seems to care about the guy whose life has been left in tatters, or the money HE had to spend….
Maybe the true vector for dissuading false accusations is in the civil courtroom….? Who knows?
In this day and age of women getting parole for murder (since it was her husband), I’m surprised they’re charged at all….
But….I’ll see what I can dig up.
(Are you enjoying the irony of someone asking me to research something Lisa?)
Hey dudes, want to know a pretty good way to ensure you’re not accused of rape? Don’t do it unless your partner fully, freely and enthusiasticly gives consent and is an active participant. If you have to persuade her, that’s coercion and is not considered consent. If you make or imply threats, then that’s not consent. If she’s drunk or high, that’s not consent.
Honestly, don’t be a fucking perpetrator and stop looking for legal loopholes to excuse rape. You’re not fooling anyone. If you have to fumble around and find legal wiggle room to excuse an action, that’s a pretty good sign you shouldn’t be doing it.
Oh, and that “caught up in passion” thing? No excuse. People can stop having sex. If someone burst in the door with a gun, would you tell them to wait another 30 seconds? Not likely. I don’t buy that for an instant.
Let me put it this way. If someone was beating you with a stick, would you want them to stop when you said so or 30 seconds later when they felt like they were done?
I’m tired of playing nice about this. Every day, women, children and men are victims of sexual violence. The crown prosecutor I spoke with yesterday estimated that out of those cases, maybe 3 in 1000 see a conviction. I have a hard time believing that there’s a crisis of wrongful convictions in the light of those numbers.
It sucks when the wrong person goes to jail. I can think of cases such as David Milgard and Stephen Truscott as prime examples of how prosecutions can go terribly wrong. However, for every one of those there are hundreds of perpetrators walking free, many of whom will never even see charges laid against them because their victims know that the deck is stacked against them before they ever walk into a police station. Only 8% of sexual assaults are even reported to the police (Statistics Canada, “Criminal Victimization in Canada, 2004″), and of those, the vast majority will never hit the prosecutor’s desk, not because they are lies, but because there’s not enough evidence to take it forward.
So yeah, if I sound callous, I have some basis for that. See, I work in a place where we spend every day helping people put their lives back together. And for those who think I’m a man-hater, I can tell you that the male survivors we see are often the most shattered of all. And guess what? Most of them were assaulted by heterosexual men.
Factory paraphrases Bird:
If you don’t want to be a rapist, or get charged with rape, make sure she not only wants it but “enthusiastically” supports the idea, and has absolutely no reservations about it after the fact. No, express consent isn’t good enough if she changes her mind, even after the fact, it’s rape and you’re a total bastard! No, men have no assurance they won’t be charged, there’s no acceptable and commonly held code of conduct for him to follow to ensure he’s within socially acceptable bounds (other than…again…her feelings on the matter), she can decide to charge him at any time after the fact, and he can even show that he not only got permission, but complied when told to stop….it doesn’t matter because IF SHE SAYS IT’S RAPE THEN IT IS!
Honestly Bird, did you not catch the fact that permission was verbally given, twice! I can tell you right now that verbal permission at all is rare, so sure that makes me think the situation was bizarre for the boy, or her, or all….but it was STILL GIVEN….ahem….twice.
AND the boy complied when asked to stop.
And yet, there he sits, convicted of rape…because she felt like she was…..
As for the David Milgaard case, I live in Saskatoon, the alley where Gail Miller was found was three blocks away from the place I used to live in, and I’m passing familiar with the facts of the case. Prosecutorial misconduct, outright bias against “Hippy Freaks”, and ….ready for it?…. PUBLIC HYSTERIA were responsible for that extreme miscarriage of justice. The very forces I and many other MRA’s complain about in this area of jurisprudence. (well, OK, except the Hippy Freak part)..
You contend that hundreds of rapists go free each year, and that only 8% of sexual assaults are reported…. I checked the 2004 GSS, at your link, and found nothing to support that contention. From the highlights page (which is most certainly where a conclusion like that would be reached) I can find only this…
Perhaps you could tell me the heading this information is under so that I may verify your contention?
Overall verdict: What do you think I’m thinking right now…and please, honestly…if this was all I had to offer you to contend that rape is a problem, would YOU be wowed and convinced here..?
So I would say this evidence, some old, some anecdotal is a good indication there may be a real problem here and it needs further and real study.
As I said above,
Well, would you be willing then to sign a petition and ask other feminists to sign a petition to fund such a study?
I note in many of your conversations you have a tendency to ignore anecdotal information that comes from MRAs but place a great deal of faith in anecdotal information that comes from women.
One of the first steps in formulating a hypothesis of course, is examining and listening to the anecdotal information.
In this case a significant number of researchers report that false accusations is a real problem. Newspapers report all the time on the problems of false accusations. Men and women are also telling you of the problems of false accusations.
Since you are interested in justice and human rights, well, Well, would you be willing then to sign a petition and ask other feminists to sign a petition to fund such a study?
Also, as you know if you examine it, many feminist studies rely on 20 year data as well. One of the problems here is getting the funding to get newer data. This is hard in the current environment and is a real reason why it would be good for feminists who claim to be interested in false accusations and human rights to state we need studies in the issue of false accusations.
By the way, it is to feminism’s credit Lisa, that during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, many feminist advances towards how we deal with rape victims was not by studies, but by listening and respecting the women telling their stories of what happened and how they were treated.
Not just rape was effected, but the use of anecdotal story telling was taken up by womens studies departments and even anthropology departments.
It is disheartening to see you dismiss so many men telling you what has happened to them.
And it poses a nice Catch-22.
Lisa: I won’t believe your anecdotal stories until you provide me a study.
Lisa: I won’t believe your studies because they are old.
Lisa: I won’t fund your new study because I don’t believe your anecdotal stories.
How convenient!
Well, it’s kinda silly for an MRA to complain about feminists not being interested in funding studies on false rape accusations when MRAs are patently uninterested in funding studies on increasing the rape reporting rate. Clearly feminists have their focal interests, and MRAs have theirs. I’ve said this before, but…it’s like getting pissed off at pediatricians for “discriminating against adult health.”
“By the way, it is to feminism’s credit Lisa, that during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, many feminist advances towards how we deal with rape victims was not by studies, but by listening and respecting the women telling their stories of what happened and how they were treated.
Not just rape was effected, but the use of anecdotal story telling was taken up by women’s studies departments and even anthropology departments.”
Emotions do not equal facts. Did feminists also listen to and respect men’s stories?
No, instead patriarchy “theory” was ( and is) used to vilify men just for being men *sigh*.
Feminism often seems to give more credence to feelings than to facts, a factor in many of the misandrist domestic violence and civil laws that continue to plague our legal system. Institutional sexism by feminists is sad and damaging.
Factory, I have the report sitting here on my desk. Statistics Canada – Catalogue no. 85-002-XPE, Vol. 25. no. 7.
And no, the word “yes” does not mean “yes” if someone’s threatening you, bullying you, coercing you, or otherwise manipulating you. Check the Canadian Criminal Code for what consent is and is not, and have a look at case law (particularly the “No Means No” case) for a good idea of how that works.
That still does not help me, I can’t find the stats referenced above in the PDF…perhaps your hard copy has it? If so, could you tell me where the stats on low reporting rates for rape is listed or referenced, because I can’t find it. The most germaine is, as noted before, a stat that lists property crime as the least reported crime, and the figure at 31% reporting. That’s a far cry from 8%, and if the non-reporting rate for a crime as politically charged actually WAS 8%, it would most definitely be on the highlights section, if not the title of the report.
I am asking to see this info because, while I don’t contend it’s an outright lie, I do contend it’s a “factoid” without basis in fact, it just sounds catchy and alarming. Of course, as always, if it turns out I am wrong I will freely admit it.
As to your contention that I read the Criminal Code to define rape, and the contention that sometimes yes doesn’t mean yes (as in, for example, contract law….assent given under duress is not consent). What I am saying to you Bird is not that this does not happen, but that under the current law, there is no way to defend against a rape accusation if the woman “feels” raped, and this case illustrates that perfectly.
Of course, if you’re bound and determined to think of men as vile, evil beings who “probably did something to deserve” anything that happens…well, there’s not much I can do for that…
Factory, the 8% figure is on page 12, under “Reporting rates for violent victimization remains unchanged.” I quote, “Sexual assaults were the least likely to be reported to the police (8%) (Table 5).
Table 5, which can be seen on page 25 of the report, confirms this information. Out of all victimization incidents listed, sexual assault is the least likely to be reported of all the types of crime listed.
And how often do I have to state on this blog that I am on the side of victims of sexual assault, regardless of gender? Men who survive sexual assault are deeply traumatized and are even less likely to be believed than women. About 1 in 6 men is known to experience sexual assault or abuse in his lifetime, and that number is likely low because men have a very low rate of reporting. Sexual violence affects everyone.
I don’t hate men; I hate rapists.
Even female rapists?
I’ll read the supplied info. Thanks.
Read it, thanks again. One or two concerns.
First, this is a “sexual assault” category, which as we all know is a superset, of which the category of “rape” is an unknown quantity. This would not be an issue, had the definition of sexual assault not been expanded to include behaviours that until VERY recently would never have been associated with the crime of “rape” (for better or worse).
Ergo, someone smacking me on the ass would count as an “unreported incidence of sexual assault”. I am speaking about rape. It is improper to conflate the two.
If you believe, for example, that any unwanted advance is “sexual assault”, and ergo equivalent to rape, then this statistic would alarm you quite rightly. Myself, I am asking questions because I do not, in fact, believe a smack on the ass is equivalent to forcible rape.
Also, as the report states, the number one reason (61%) why the crimes were not reported were because those involved didn’t think it serious enough to prosecute. This would jibe with me not pressing charges for the spank….am I the only one alive that would feel that way?
This is not to belittle anything, merely to point out that “rape” is the word used, because I think a lot of that other stuff was added to the definition to specifically accomplish what you are complaining about….so that calls for higher conviction rates could be had. note the lack of emphasis on “getting the right guy”.
I offered a solution…”get” the false accuser and add that to the “conviction rate”. For every charge there is a conviction…would that make things better? Either the “rapist” or the “false accuser” will go to jail in that case…everybody wins!
Here’s the thing. Expanding the definition of rape, and calling it “sexual assault” means that you have to agree that everything that falls under the heading “sexual assault” is equivalent to rape. I don’t. Sorry, can’t do it.
So, that right there might be a fundamental difference between us.
Well my definition agrees with the Criminal Code of Canada, and that’s what my work entails dealing with in real life.
Up until 1983, under Canadian law, rape was only a crime against a “woman of previously chaste character” or a married woman. Oh, and there was no law against rape within marriage, as spouses were considered to be in a default state of consent. Historic definitions of rape are based on the notion of women as property, and the changes in the law have benefited a wide range of people, including men. Until the law was changed, sexual assault against a man was considered an indecent assault and carried significantly less penalities than rape. Current law recognizes that sexual violence is a serious crime no matter what the victim’s gender.
Also, conflating the numbers the way you have done is problematic here. That 53% stat (not 61%) on why people don’t report refers to all violent crime, not just sexual assault. Sexual assault reporting tends to differ significantly in many ways, including the fact that survivors are far more likely to turn to support agencies (almost twice as often as survivors of other violent crime) and far less likely to turn to informal supports.
And yes, I hate female rapists too. We deal with child sexual abuse cases in my workplace as well as sexual assault, and offenders make me sick, regardless of gender, particularly in the case of children.
The reality is that 97% of sexual offenders are male (against both male and female victims), but that doesn’t change my response to female offenders. Sexual violence is wrong no matter who the perpetrator may be.
While I agree with your sentiments Bird, I don’t think you get my meaning….
If the law is changed to be deliberately vague, to ensure maximum conviction rate….that same vagueness makes analysis impossible.
Incidentally, this is the best I could find for a definiton of Sexual Assault under the criminal code of Canada. If you have a better one to link to, I’d be appreciative if you’d share…
From where i sit, there’s a whole hella lot more than just rape in there…
Bird said: “And no, the word ‘yes’ does not mean ‘yes’ if someone’s threatening you, bullying you, coercing you, or otherwise manipulating you.”
Coercion and manipulation are not rape under any standard. They suffer from the worst kind of overbreadth and, frankly, are replete in every relationship. (If you want to talk about duress — that’s different. Duress negates valid consent in contract formation and in intercourse.) Every man has been “coerced” and “manipulated” to do things he’d rather not do to retain his wife’s or girlfriend’s favor — the equivalent of “rape” I suppose? No reason person would suggest that. Does a man “coerce” a woman, and thus, rape her when he promises to do something for her to have sex? Does he manipulate her, and thus, rape her, when he wants to have sex so reminds her that he spent the last week repairing her mother’s roof? Again, no reasonable person would suggest that.
Persons in a committed relationship do things for each other with regularity out of love and not infrequently only because the other party wants it. When a woman is trying to get pregnant, her partner often has sex out of obligation even when he doesn’t want to — sometimes because if he doesn’t, she’d be upset. Manipulation? You bet. Has he been raped? No sane person would suggest that. And women sometimes fake both “enthusiasm” and even orgasms, often because a couple’s sex drives are not in sync and because she’s more interested in fostering a long-term relationship than having a momentary sexual experience. In such circumstances, if the guy knew the truth, he may or may not want to have sex. Has he been manipulated? Sure. Has he been raped? Again, no reasonable person would suggest that.
Well, Factory, that’s when case law and precedent come into play, as in any criminal proceeding under the common-law system. I think you will find most legislation to be similarly dense and open to vague interpretation. Our legal system is composed not only of legislation–precedent is a huge part of the picture. You need to look at significant landmark decisions to get the real sense of the history. May I suggest canlii.org?
Certainly, but my point was that the category of “Sexual Assault” contains such crimes as “indecent assault on a..” and “attempt to commit rape”, which are open to quite a bit more interpretation than rape…because quite literally smacking my ass IS indecent assault….and it’s not likely I’m going to have you thrown in jail for doing it….ergo, it’s not just likely, but Probable that this is what leads to low conviction and reporting rates.
I am aware the law is mutable….that’s why there are other guys in my movement focusing on legal challenges. I am merely pointing out that unjust law is still unjust, even if it IS law. Especially when it’s based on falsehood and misconception.
Factory, cases like the “butt grab” as our local Crown called it are generally settled by summary conviction, not indictment. The process is very different between the two, as are the sentences. A summary conviction carries a maximum penalty of 18 months or $2000 fine. And a guilty plea to that type of offense is likely to merit a fine, nothing more.
And that level of assault is the least likely to be taken forward to prosecution at all. Most people settle that sort of thing in other ways and choose not to report it. Even if it is reported, the police tend not to lay charges because there’s not enough evidence to convict in most cases. The times when those charges are carried forward is when they are part of a larger set of charges surrounding a sexual harassment case, which is a whole other conversation altogether.
The stats I’m discussing also do not cover indecent acts or other sexual offenses, generally. They specifically relate to sexual assault. So we’re not talking about the “attempted” cases. And I personally think that if someone tried to rape me but didn’t actually achieve penetration, I’d still be pretty horrified and want them charged.
You’re also ignoring the varying degrees of sexual assault covered in the law and the different sentencing standards and means of prosecution involved.
I’d also like to note that according to Stats Canada (85-002-XIE, Vol. 23, no. 6), the proportion of cases stayed/withdrawn or acquitted is the same for sexual and non-sexual violent offenses. It would appear that the court system functions no better and no worse when it comes to trial outcomes in sexual assault cases as compared to other violent offenses.
Bird, you’re making my case for me. “Sexual Assault” as a legal term includes all of the above described behaviours. And yes, they are more likely not to be prosecuted.
Which is exactly what I’m saying.
And what I’m saying is that the violation of one’s sexual boundaries is never okay, whether there is penetration involved or not. I was cornered and groped by someone who was a trusted friend when I was in my teens, and it was extremely frightening and still turns my stomach to recall. As far as I’m concerned, that’s still violating and still not okay.
We also have different categories of physical assault, ranging from a slap in the face to a brutal beating that leaves someone nearly dead. However, all these crimes are considered to be assault.
Yes, and I was repeatedly cornered in the darkroom in Graphic Arts class, and yes it’s a violation. what it isn’t is rape. To group all of these things together and then take the “lack” of reporting as indicative of lack of reporting for actual rapes is dishonest at best.
If statistics on that particular crime were desired, I’m positive they could be done more clearly. The report supplied to indicate that rapes are only reported 8% of the time indicated the category of “sexual assault” as the 8% statistic (with a caveat to “use with caution”). The definition of sexual assault used for this report includes all those little subgroups, which completely invalidates the 8% reported on rapes theory unless you equate a smack on the ass with forcible rape, which I gather none of us are prepared to do.
At no point did I use the term “rape” to refer to that study. I don’t like drawing a distinction between rape and other types of sexual assault because it trivializes the experiences of people who have experience serious violation but not in a way that meets the classical definition of rape (forcible vaginal penetration by a penis).
The difference, to me, is that I feel all forms of sexual assault are serious and should be treated as such under the law, and so I (and people who work with me) don’t talk only about rape. In fact, under Canadian law, there is no crime called rape because our legal system has recognized that sexual violence of all kinds is a significant problem.
http://wcco.com/crime/lied.to.police.2.861586.html
A woman who lied to police about being kidnapped has been given credit for 30 days at a psychiatric center and has been put on probation.
I see, so instead of making clear distinctions in the law, which could keep otherwise innocent men out of jail….we “err on the side of compassion”. When it comes to defining the severity of offense, we “refuse to minimize the experiences” of a victim, and make the punishment part of the same offense.
So, now we have a non-definable definition of rape, which is then further mixed in with “sexual assault” which can be anything from looking at a woman in the “wrong way” (in NZ) right on up to holding a knife to her throat while forcing yourself on her.
Which, put another way, means that any man who has sex with a woman who causes her to “feel” raped, or “assaulted”, automatically and by definition equates that man with a serial violent rapist.
Yeah. Good policy.
There are a lot of ideas and emotions going on in this thread and I do not know where to start.
I would like to ask if anyone knows about a famous court case. A white woman put a black man in jail for rape. The man was proven innocent a long time later due to DNA testing. People say that she accused the wrong man because of the Out-group homogeneity bias. That is the bias where people outside of your group seem to have the same qualities. The white girl had a hard time remembering facial qualities of her attacker.
im doing this report and its due soon.
thanks
I think that every case is very different and that really to generalize about false accusations and violent crimes doesn’t make a lot of sense. I heed the point about the variety of motivations for making false accusations; the eleven year old who was intimidated by her perpetrator; the psychological disorders; histories of abuse and neglect that might lead up to an accusation which is false. The victim of violent crime should be protected at all costs. I guess what should be maintained for the accused is the premise of innocent until proven guilty, although this is not really possible to provide. Once someone’s reputation is tarnished with an accusation it is very difficult to stop people from forming prejudgments, reacting with anger, and blaming the accused. I also think that for the falsely accused what is most distressing is the extent to which their accuser has elaborated on a story or mixed up details. This can feel very victimizing for the accused. There should be some acceptance that to be falsely accused is an awful experience and as someone else wrote potentially life changing and traumatic. It is difficult not to react with anger. Unfortunately, what does get lost in a false accusation, are the reasons behind why the individual is making a false accusation.
I was rather amused by Factory mercilessly bludgeoning the retards on this blog with his 10 war-hammer of logic.
I think an underlying topic that has been glazed over is the media sensationalism and reporting facts before they are know. Much of the damage caused to those falsely accused (of any crime) is the media coverage and public defamation. Stricter police communication codes and media blackouts aught to be imposed in serious criminal cases. The other possible option for reducing false claims is the one which has been discussed; disincentives the perpetration of fraud (I distinguish a false positive and an outright fabrication) through legal strict legal recourse.
What is it with us and these zombie threads..?
I think we must hit some sort of “Google lottery”. Plus, since lots of us go to different viewpoint and comment (and leave our website there) we attracted Christians, MRA’s, and (I must admit, my bad) bigots.
Antigone and LisaKansas was this discussion useful? Are you going to continue trying to engage MRAs?
I will admit I have not read the entirety of the conversation here, but will throw my experience into the mix, along with my reservations on what statistics are and are not. There are contributions in my local court house to these said statistics, which will have my signature and my ex boyfriends signature on them. Here’s the rub: What the public will not come to know are these facts: 1. That I spoke and wrote letters to him, attempting to address these same issues in the relationship. They were kind and loving letters of serious concerns but given the abuser mentality, also became a cause for the ‘deserved’ nature of my rape(s) as I was speaking “up”. I didn’t understand this at the time. I thought partners in love should be safe to communicate with each other, and work out difficulties together. 2. When he showed himself to be irresponsible, I attempted to open a conversation with his parents over the same situations. 3. When they showed themselves also irresponsible to investigate further, as I caught them covering his lies for him and confronted these, although as lovingly as possible, as I care/d deeply for this family, I took to writing on my computer, I intended in private. 4. The site was made public, although not by my own hand. This man had gone on to break up another man’s family and I came to be in the know of this, and that people were very angry with him, and I made attempt to protect him. To this day, I am unsure of how my site became public, but his response, without having a single conversation with me over anything I had written except to demand that I shut it down and pretense a promised conversation with his parents, himself, and a psychologist(?) which I wanted minus the psychologist, and said I would think about. When I didn’t give him an answer immediately, I was arrested.and the website was shut down After being told I would be home in 90 minutes, they just had some questions to ask me, I spent close to 8 hours in a holding cell. After this, and with threats from a judge to take my daughter away and put her in foster care while I served a three month jail term, I was presented with settlement papers to sign which included a statement that I had falsely accused him of rape. My attorney, who advertised himself as a domestic violence attorney who advocates for victims rights, turned his head and held his hands up in front of his face when I presented a notebook which fully established a pattern of abuse from documentation and conversations in writing over the course of the relationship. Unable to break through the walls placed in front of me to reach resolution in a kind manner, and not wishing to sign my name to a lie, I did the only thing I could under the circumstances while preserving the safety of my daughter and myself: I signed with a signature in which I included u.d. such that it looks like my signature, but retains my integrity to the truth of my experience. Nevertheless, out of this, the courts will have their statistics on orders of protection taken for men who are falsely accused of rape, the appeals court will have their standing statistics, the male v female side of domestic violence abuses will be misconstrued, and on and on. Did I mention that all this came from a person I was in love with? I chose not to get angry with him, as I needed to reestablish good communication in order to convey a warning to him of the other side of his life and serious concerns that existed there. But good communication could not be established because of things he hides from his new wife which I also had the pleasure of getting to be in the know of. I forgave. But dishonest and irresponsible men, which I have found to be consistent traits of rapists and abusers of women, even in the best of situations, cannot free themselves enough of the web they weave to allow help to come in to them. And through the continuance of these behaviors they establish the same lack of integrity to those around them, which includes the system that tries to keep track of the statistics in these situations. If they were to hit hard enough a situation where there exists integrity, either in the system or on a more personal realm, they would have to either crash land their unethical abuses or the destruction of a higher moral character results, ie a victim twice plus. Oh, and did I mention that my guy was a lawyer? Playing the buddy system allows abusive men to continue so, and allows them to put themselves and their family and associates in danger. And out of this, the statistics will continue to be unreliable. As the statistics are unreliable, so the studies will be so, and as the studies go, so to the programs for assistance, and as the programs go, so to the monies and what was once a small falsehood creates a whole system addressing all the wrong places. We end up looking in all the wrong places for the solutions. If a woman feels the need to report a man for rape, I suggest long before that, he had ample occasion and opportunity not only to not rape, but in the case of acquaintance or partner rape, ample opportunity to correct the misunderstanding which put him on the track to punish her, while not being honest about his actions and intentions. She may just have a reasonable explanation for whatever action he is choosing to address this way.