Why are people so defensive towards alleged rapists?

And lilac, what about giving toad a hand by actually responding to the points made, rather than bickering?

I have no interest in finding evidence. My thoughts - shared, I am sure, by many, many people - are that rape carries a stigma. If toad would like to challenge that she can be her own evidence monkey and show that it doesn't carry stigma.

Evidence might be a good thing for her - she seems to be defensive to the point of Making Things Up.

Toad is asking you to back up your thoughts. Not because she's interested but because otherwise it's just your opinion and not fact.

She's not your evidence monkey. Find it yourself!

toad

Where did I say that I am assuming accusations of rape to be false more often than other crimes? You made that up.

What we need is a social scientist - there are probably studies into the impact of being accused of rape as opposed to other crimes. I'm not invested enough to search but google scholar might have something if you're genuinely interested in finding evidence, toad.

And why are you assuming that an accusation of rape is more likely to be false than an accusation of any other crime? What evidence is there that there are more false accusations of rape than false accusations of other crime?

I have no evidence toads. I would include child abuse in this too, actually.

Why do you need evidence? Why do you care, anyway?

No idea where that random question mark came from

gone what evidence do you have that being falsely accused of rape is worse than being falsely accused of any other crime? What evidence do you have that being accused of rape carries a bigger stigma than being accused of say, I don't know, child abuse or animal abuse or arson or assaulting the elderly?

I keep asking this but nobody has shown me any evidence?

jacques See my second post.

This is particularly the case in light of the 'I believe you' campaign. I'm not saying the campaign is a bad thing at all, but one consequence of saying 'I believe you' is saying 'I believe the accused party is a rapist'. We don't have that attitude towards any other crime, which perhaps is why being accused of other crimes isn't so devastating for the person being on trial.

For many people, feminist or not, there is a feeling that 'he/she must have done it'. This isn't a bad thing because the pendulum needed to swing away from the cynicism that accusations of rape have traditionally been met with. But it has implications in a court of law and what is newspaper reporting, if not an informal echo of the 'court case' where everyone gets to have an opinion?

Perhaps they did do it but why not weight until there is a verdict before the entire country has the opportunity to respond in this way?

Gone

Do you believe in anonymity for all accused?

Why wouldn't you want someone who may or may not be guilty to carry the stigma of rape for the rest of their lives? What's to be lost if their anonymity is protected?

People want to retain anonymity until found guilty because rape, quite rightly, carries a huge stigma. It is a stigma that should be attached to rapists only, not people who may be innocent. Someone who is accused of rape, whether they are male or female, are often punished by society from the moment the accusation is made, whether they are guilty or not. It may not look like that from supportive comments on a facebook page. But particularly in a small community, employers, family and prospective girlfriends will all view a rape accusation (as distinct from a rape conviction) very negatively.

By all means, throw the book at guilty rapists. But punishments should be reserved for those who are guilty. Because of the nature of the offence of rape, being associated with it in any way is a punishment. And punishments should only be for people who have been found guilty.

YY choc.

I am just so skeptical and quite frankly pissed off with what gets classed as a false accusation and this is no different.

We don't know whether the accusation was false. The only people who know for sure what happened is the boy and girl involved and he's dead now so can't give his side of the story.

But of course she withdrew the complaint and that automatically makes it a false accusation apparently . Because of course there is no reason for anyone to withdraw a genuine complaint of rape .

That along with the fact he killed himself just seals it as a false accusation in most people's minds. Because of course criminals never kill themselves and have never killed themselves...

Again I am NOT saying that he is guilty. I will clarify again; nobody knows whether he raped her or whether the accusation was false because neither scenarios have been proven.

What I am saying that you can't point fingers at the girl and start accusing her of a crime (falsely accusing someone of a crime is a crime in itself but I think people seem to forget that) without any proof either. Innocent until proven guilty should apply to everyone and that includes people who are accused of making false allegations.

Doh. Sorry, internet wobbles

We can never know if he was innocent because the accusation was dropped, and now he has sadly killed himself.

The people accusing the girl of making a false accusation are vile.

The grown uncle wanting to have a go at the girl is vile.

We are not vile for saying that we can't know the truth.

Someone has started a thread in AIBU about their husband's friend trying to kiss them last night (he actually grabbed her breasts) and people are all over it minimising the assault and 'what if she responded?' And 'but what about false allegations?'.

It's awful.

We can never know if he was innocent because the accusation was dropped. The people accusing the girl of making a false accusation are vile. The grown uncle wanting to have a go at the girl is vile. We are not vile for saying that we can't know the truth.

I'm still waiting for evidence that being falsely accused of rape is more damaging and more likely to lead to lives being ruined than being falsely accused of other crime however...

Of course there are exceptions but generally accusations of rape (false or otherwise) do not ruin lives.

99% of men accused of rape go on to live completely normal lives.

This post from HairyMoose was ignored so I'm reposting.

"Or it can work the other way like it happened to my DP who was wrongly accused of rape which has destroyed his life as he's got PTSD and his bipolar progressed from the stress of a three year court case when he didn't even do it. He was obviously found not guilty but it was such a traumatic experience for him as well as for her as she had to try remember her story and he would have faced 15 years in prison if found guilty. She had to live with that but she couldn't retract what she said as she was too afraid of the consequences as it went so high up. He can't even work in his profession anymore as he cant cope with any stress now."

And the list earlier naming people "convicted" of sexual assault contains at least one person who was found not guilty. I've reported as it's clearly libelous, but found not guilly but still thought of as a rapist 20 years later tells it's own story.

he doesn't know whether the accusation was true or false.

Peggy I clearly said in my post that I don't feel comfortable talking about it as the boy is dead so it seems a bit disrespectful to speculate either way.

Where did I attempt to pull apart the name and character of the boy? I never said he was a rapist. The point I was trying to make is that nobody knows what happened.

People are just going to assume that because the allegation was withdrawn and he killed himself that the accusation was automatically a false one which isn't necessarily the case.

Even the boy's uncle doesn't appear to know what really happened. He did say he would like to speak to the girl to hear her side of the story which implies that even he doesn't whether the accusation was true or false.

Alan Johnson and all the other high profile rape cases recently

Adam not Alan. Alan Johnson (to me anyway) is a hugely respected Labour MP.