109 women prosecuted for false rape claims in past 5 years

Destiny. Stop comparing the experience of being raped with the experience of being accused of rape. They are not the same or equal.
A hell of a lot of men are accused of rape because there are a lot of rapists and they never get punished because of our shit police and courts and their lives are not ruined. I know of many men who have been accused who live unaffected lives and people defend them and talk of the horrible bitches that accused them, these women are their victims!
I also know rape victims whose lives will never be the same again and who nobody believes! Because they are 'slutty' or drunk.
Stop comparing them.

Destiny

There have been cases in the UK where a woman has reported being raped or assaulted by an unknown attacker and gone to prison for perverting the course of justice for "inconsistencies" in her testimony:

www.theguardian.com/law/2011/aug/12/layla-jailed-after-reporting-sexual-assault

So the police/CPS are quite OK with subjecting someone who has alleged a violent sex attack to an adversarial trial by jury (even when as in this case they had actually lost or compromised potentially vital evidence), with all its known failings where rape is concerned.

How is such a prosecution possibly in the public interest? I go to report a rape, the police for whatever reason (systemic rape myths, personal prejudice, or just because they're a bit stupid) think there's something fishy even though they don't really have any grounds for it beyond a lack of positive evidence and their own speculation - I refuse to withdraw my allegation and they charge me with a jailable offence just because?

How does that help rape victims? Isn't the thought of possibly facing jail after the details of your rape have been picked apart by unsympathetic people who have a vested interest in casting doubt on your version of events enough to put anyone off reporting in the first place?

That case is a scandal and should horrify any decent person.

DH was in a job as a teenager and a girl there accused him of putting his hand up her skirt. Luckily records showed he was off sick that week! So he is a bit on the neurotic side

sorry, x posts

In all honesty I don't think we should belittle men's worries about the matter, is that productive? I mean, there's a lot of things that I worry about that aren't common.

Exactly Grey. If we trivialise false allegations of rape and make it easier for accusers to walk away having put a man through hell and with a 'mud always sticks' attitude to live with, we are making real rape victims face a level of disbelief which they would otherwise hopefully not.

If they know the consequences or their actions are severe then they are less likely to do it. It's hard enough getting rape convictions and I am sure there is a lot of prejudice against certain victims, so let's not condone adding to their victimisation.

Of course they should be prosecuted.

and not just due*

Ditto re multiple posts

I'm just trying to say rape should be taken very seriously which it isn't at the moment, but also destroying someone's life with false allegations is a serious issue.

With rape now used as a weapon of war in various countries, and sexual exploitation of young girls and an increasingly sexualised society I think that rape itself is becoming trivialised. This to me is the greater issue.

I am sure if DH lost his job, family and everything he has worked for while the woman hides behind anonymity how can that be fair. To me that is just as much a 'devastating life altering crime'.

I don't think questioning women being convicted of false rape claims (obviously if there is evidence, and just due to forced recant) is helpful in trying to help rapists convicted.

Obviously I understand why this is such a big issue. I understand that we have massive issues in getting rapists convicted. But I also believe that we cannot allow this to intrude in wrongdoers, ie false accusations, from being dealt with.

It upsets me that it's false accusations like those documented that make it harder for women to continue with cases against their abusers.

Sometimes I think I'm in a parallel universe!

How on earth can a woman be found guilty without any evidence whatsoever. Please give me one scenario a jury would accept.

War cites only American incidences if I am reading it correctly.

Surely it doesn't matter what the proportion is if you maliciously lie to discredit and have an innocent man imprisoned you are wrong.

If the police don't take rape seriously that is the issue to be tackled.

At the moment DH is telling me about a married woman in his office who is constantly taking breaks at the same time. Leaning over him with paperwork and making it clear she wants a relationship with him. DH is like a rabbit in the headlights in case she makes allegations. Not because he will assault her but because he is rejecting her. I'm sure if something happened to your DH or DP wrt false allegations you would not be so forgiving.

Or would it be that DH won't be believed either?

sorry for multiple posts

just trying to get what I'm trying to say phrased so that it makes sense!

Because they are going to be jailing a massive % of women (and men) who falsely accuse others of rape, and we know that they are only imprisoning 6% of men who they get reports about. That's before you look at the non reported rapes.

So basically if you falsely report a rape there is a really good chance you will get found out and done for it. If you rape someone there is an incredibly low chance that you will get done for it.

This is worth highlighting surely, especially when it adds to the body of information around this topic and how the police are faring.

Destiny of course they are connected

They are connected because the police + authorities are renowned for disbelieving women who report rape, and proceeding on that basis.

So a woman goes in to report a rape, the police decide on the basis of their prejudices that she is lying, they gather no evidence about her complaint, and they start investigating her instead.

Clearly this will result in a disproportionate amount of women being jailed for false allegations vs men being jailed for rape.

We know all this stuff don't we.

Destiny there are concerns from charities that women who have been imprisoned for this are not actually guilty.

And the reason for highlighting it is to highlight the difference in approach between real claims of rape and false claims of rape, and what that tells us about the attitude of the police.

War says it is supporting several women who say they were bullied into retracting their rape complaint by police and then told they would be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice.

What's the evidence to say women who make false allegations of rape are pursued more vigorously than rapists? 22 per year doesn't reflect this at all.

Why on earth is everyone going on about this tiny number as though it's relevant to the appallingly low conviction rate for genuine rapes?

The two are not in the slightest bit connected. I don't believe a jury would convict a real victim of bringing a false claim with absolutely no evidence whatsoever. They are quite likely however to acquit a rapist

Nosy. I just can't see what the relevance is of the article about American women being bullied into retracting genuine rape allegations (not prosecuted for making false ones) and rape victims in the UK not being believed having on prosecutions for false claims of rape?

They are all wrong.

We don't have to accept any of the above situations or excuse one in favour of another.

If we are saying the UK is out of step with most countries because we let a tiny number of women who claim rape which didn't happen be prosecuted, rather than slapped on the wrist, is it ok then to ruin men's (and often their whole families) lives? Make true victims of rape less believable? Make the public less likely to believe women who have really been raped? Let someone walk away having lied to the police out of revenge for being rejected. Maybe the world should take rape and false allegations more seriously. I don't think the majority have a mental illness as they would be psychologically evaluated before proceeding.

I just don't see the point of a post saying wrongdoers are right purely because they are women and women are usually the victims of sexual assault. It's not logical. Equality should be a two way street.

Anecdotally an awful lot of women over recent years have said that when they have reported a rape, they have immediately felt that the police were looking for evidence to "catch them out", were investigating them, rather than the crime that they reported.

Obviously women and men who make malicious claims need to get the book thrown at them - for any crime. The stats here though are about adding to an already large body of evidence suggesting that the UK police are shit at investigating rape and are fundamentally not on the side of the victims.

Destiny - presumably you're getting 1900ish by multiplying 2900 prosecutions by "just under two
thirds were convicted". However the full quotation is "Of those cases that completed to the point of guilty or acquittal... just under two thirds were convicted." I wonder if the cases failing partway through (e.g. due to the victim withdrawing a claim rather than appear in court) might account for the difference?

Surely the point here is that women who falsely accuse men of rape are investigated pursued and prosecuted much much more vigorously than men are when women correctly accuse men of rape.

The point isn't not to prosecute false accusers but to look into whether the imbalance reflects a problem in the system in terms of how they approach these situations. (Clue: it almost certainly does)

And that'e before you even get into the stories of women being pressured to retract complaints and then threatened with prosecution, being imprisoned for "falsely retracting a rape accusation" and they left the children with the man and the children had been witness to DV and the police and CPS believed he was guilty of rape FFS, and and etc.

Www.gov.org
^Of those individuals prosecuted, three quarters were committed for trial at the Crown Court, reflecting the serious nature of the offences each was accused of. This proportion has ranged from 69 to 77 per cent over the last six years. Rape accounts for around three in ten defendants prosecuted for sexual offences each year. In 2011 the 2,900 defendants prosecuted for rape were prosecuted, on average, for 2.3 rape offences each.

Of those cases that completed to the point of guilty or acquittal at the magistrates’ court or Crown Court in 2011, just under two thirds were convicted. This is eight percentage points higher than 2005. Over the same period the most common sentence was immediate custody with around three in five offenders sent to prison.^

The figures in the OP imply no more than 750 rape convictions per year. Destiny says about 1900.

Somebody's stats are wrong.

Actually no, after research it's 2 women from my area, and one man