Daily Fail at it again. (Trigger warning - men not guilty of rape framed as victims of false accusations)

[JemimaLovesHamble]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4935148/These-young-men-accused-rape-cleared.html

An article on some of the many men who are cleared of rape, ignoring the very real possibility that some of them are rapists. Anyone with half a brain should know that it's very hard to know if a rape took place merely on a physical examination and no witnesses.

Sometimes I feel they are a hair away from campaigning to have the women in these cases jailed...

[rosy71]

I saw this. Some of the comments do say the women should be jailed!

Not guilty means it can't be proved beyond reasonable doubt that rape took place. Not that the women obviously made false allegations.

[JynOdan]

Bwahhahaha, I'm sure these menz all appreciate the Mail bringing it up and showing their faces again.

[pilatesofthecaribbean]

A not-guilty verdict doesn’t mean they didn’t commit rape - it merely means they weren’t convicted. Doesn’t even mean there was insufficient evidence to convict, often enough, given how appallingly low the conviction rate is.

The rate of so-called false accusations (which include a range of things that are anything but, from misidentification to women withdrawing the charges due to pressure or in fear of their lives) is 0.6%. That means the rate of true accusations is 99.4%, and that’s only the rapes that are ever reported and acted upon by authorities. Actual false claims are vanishingly rare. Rape is basically the crime men get away with all the time.

[Nibledbyducks]

I struggle with this issue massively. DS1's best friend who I have known from birth and calls me mum was falsely accused. Yes I am absolutely sure it was a false accusation and the while thing is utterly tragic. The young lady concerned if very troubled and had 6 cases going through court at the same time. The court case finished 2 years ago and she was warned by the courts not to continue to make the accusation public. We had to call the police 2 days ago as he was staying with us and she pulled up outside my front door shouting abuse at him including calling him a rapist. Her boyfriend sent messages threatening violence. She is 17 and the boyfriend is 27.

He was in care for 7 years and planning on studying health and social care and to become a child protection social worker. He couldn't attend college and now he's a janitor. She is still making accusations about every young man she has been in a relationship and both her parents and the state are failing to safeguard her.

I don't know what the solution is but in cases where the allegation is undeniably false at least there should be some mandatory therapy!

[Shadow666]

I see they've changed the picture, but the one earlier was just a row of baby-faced, young, white men in suits. There was something really creepy about it. I guess the Daily Mail thought so too.

The "writer" of this article should be ashamed of themselves.

[bambambini]

I've often seen comments/posts of if they don't get a guilty conviction - it's a false accusation and the accuser should then be prosecuted. Also if someone makes a report and it doesn't go anywhere, doesn't get prosecuted - another false claim. It's fucking depressing. The women/girls i know who told me of their rapes never went to the police - that's the reality.

[QuentinSummers]

That is a horrific article. On more than one case they were cleared at retrial - suggesting there was some convincing evidence.
And sentences like this "His accuser became angry at the attention he was receiving and went to the police."
What a load of shit.

[Xenophile]

Let's hope they do a balancing article with women who have been raped and never seen their attacker brought to justice.

Of course, that would entirely fill the newspaper for several weeks, so I doubt they'll bother. It would also go against their 'all women lie' rhetoric.

[QuentinSummers]

nibled that is odd because the police only disclose unproven allegations on an enhanced if they believe them to be relevant and truthful, so seems unlikely the allegations against your friend would fall into that category.
Because it was a malicious allegation he can apply to have it removed from police records so it isn't disclosed

www.olliers.com/news/will-old-arrest-show-on-dbs-check/

Suggest you mention that to him as it's had such an impact on his life

[Grumpysocks]

I saw that article too. It's so depressing.

I'm sure that there are false allegations like with any crime.

But the number of rapes that go unreported, don't get to court, and end in not guilty, must far outweigh the number of false allegations.

Besides this, surely it's obvious that just because a verdict is not guilty, this doesn't mean that rape didn't take place, it could simply mean it can't be proven. If we presumed every not guilty/not taken to court outcome was a false accusation we'd have a lot of women in prison.

So why do the media always focus on false allegations instead of the bigger problem.

Papers like The Mail always go on about men's lives being ruined, what about all the women's lives that have been ruined by being raped, yet nothing gets done in the large majority of cases.

Why aren't people talking about this?

[whoputthecatout]

So, if they are implying that being acquitted of rape means the woman has not been raped does that mean that If a person is acquitted of murder the person they are accused of killing is not dead?

[Nibledbyducks]

@QuentinSummers it's not that he couldn't apply now, it's because he was unable to in time to start the course while he was still in the care system and had financial support :(

[SpaghettiAndMeatballs]

From the description of another article following on from the one in the OP:

Criminal barrister Cathy McCulloch advised why men should avoid running the risk of a rape claim.

Not 'avoid running the risk of raping someone' but 'avoid running the risk of a rape claim'

Cos that's what's important, not the raping of someone (probably a woman), but the fact that you might get accused of it (lets face it, you're unlikely to be convicted anyway)

[DeleteOrDecay]

Oh I hate this shit. For some reason when a man gets found not guilty of rape that automatically means the woman is lying yet with pretty much every other crime where someone gets found not guilty our justice system is ‘too soft and lets criminals roam free’.

What is it about rape that makes people have such a weird reaction to it? The presumption is always that the woman is lying and the poor man is having his life ruined. Doesn’t happen with any other crime. Such a load of bollocks.

[Collidascope]

Yeah, Delete. I think part of it is that a lot of men are very unscrupulous in what they will do to get sex, and in their minds, there's nothing wrong with that. They think there's no issue with asking again and again when she's already said she's not in the mood. They think there's no issue with being a bit forceful because they've seen the 'alpha' men in movies do it. They think there's no issue with sticking it in without asking, because she's already consented to other stuff. In short, when they think of rape, they think of the stranger hiding in the alley. I know when I used to go out, even when I was pretty drunk myself, I was always horrified by the way you could see men thronging around the drunkest girls because they clearly thought that was where the best chance of getting sex was.
I think most men know they're unlikely to be accused of breaking into a house or murder, but they know that rape is no longer treated as just something strangers do to women in the bushes, and they know it now is something they could be accused of, because they often haven't been bothered about whether a woman really wanted it, or considered whether she felt too scared and trapped to say no.
Other reasons are, of course, that women for centuries have been depicted as manipulative, devious, capricious creatures (by certain men, because they want to fuck us and then blame us for enticing them) who lead men on and change their minds, going from the whore at night to the wannabe Madonna in the cold light of morning.

[Collidascope]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4952864/Ex-Arsenal-footballer-30-friend-cleared-rape.html

And another one. Cue lots of thick dickheads, who don't understand that most rapists won't see the inside of a court let alone a cell, claiming that the girl must be a liar and should be named and shamed.

[DeleteOrDecay]

Some random on Facebook blocked me because they said false accusations happen all the time and I had the audacity to point out that that statement was factually incorrect.🙄

[SmilingButClueless]

I think there's an argument for allowing men accused of rape to remain anonymous until convicted. But I object to the insinuation that not guilty = the woman lied. It's so difficult to get a conviction when there is unlikely to be much physical evidence in many cases.

Maybe the English courts should allow a not proven verdict?

[QuentinSummers]

I think there's an argument for allowing men accused of rape to remain anonymous until convicted
Only if you are happy for serial sex offenders like John Worboys and paedophiles like Rolf Harris (and many less high profile ones) to be much harder to catch and stop.
I was sexually abused as a teen by a man who'd abused prepubescent/teen girls over a thirty year period. Myself and most of the other victims only told people what had happened when the police came to ask us about the offender and if he'd done anything to us.
If there was offender anonymity the police wouldn't have been able to have that conversation with me and I may never have reported what happened.
Offender anonymity is a bad idea.

[SmilingButClueless]

I was thinking more in terms of media / public identification. No issue with the police knowing or continuing to make enquiries where they think that's relevant.

[BingoFlamingo]

Sometimes I think men accused of rape should be considered guilty until proven innocent.

If they've been accused and can't prove they didn't do it, that's suspicious enough for me to say lock them up.