A very compelling reason not to report rape

The majority of thee women were raped.
The police punish them for recanting.
They recant most of the time because the rapist threatens to kill them or their family.

I'm also going to highlight the very first sentence, which you seem to have misunderstood or ignored: I knew a girl (yes, she was a girl, very young) In this forum, we use the word "woman" to refer to adult female humans and "girl" is reserved for female human children. Thr poster has made it clear that she means "female human child" when she writes "yes a girl, very young". You are treating a child who lies as equivalent to an adult rapist in terms of accountability.

@thebewilderness, I haave another rule of misogyny for you: Whatever a woman or girl does wrong, no matter how minor it was or what the mitigating circumstances are, is automatically deemed to be as bad as the worst things that a man or boy does.

@iloveirnbru: No, I wouldn't, because rape and lying are not even remotely comparable crimes. One is a physical and sexual assault against another person's body, the other is untrue words.

I knew a girl (yes, she was a girl, very young) who was jailed for this. She was living in a homeless shelter at the time, had a long history of abuse and neglect from when she was a baby and had severe mental health issues. She did lie about things, maybe even compulsively, but there is NO WAY anyone will ever convince me that jail was the place for her.

Would you say the same for a rapist who had an abusive childhood and MH issues?

Sorry for the repetition there.

It's horrific.

I was witness for the prosecution in my friend's rape trial - who had been subjected to marital rape for years. What she went through in court was Hell on earth. Having experienced this, with her, I would be very unlikely to report rape myself.

She did get a conviction - and thank god, because I am convinced that had he been found not guilty, he would have brought a private prosecution against her for false accusations/perjury. He is a vindictive fucker who used every nasty trick in the book to discredit her, and he has a lot of money, enough to fund a private prosecution.

Having experienced this, with her, I would be very unlikely to report rape myself.

It's only a couple of steps away from stoning a woman for adultery if she reports being raped by someone other than her husband, isn't it

There is evidence of severe and enduring mental health problems, backgrounds of abuse and prosecutors that don’t appear to know their arse from their elbow.

This is the case with most crimes, I believe. Prisoners kill themselves at the rate of two a week.

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/26/prison-suicides-in-england-and-wales-reaches-record-high

Read the article before commenting on a thread about the article. The thread is about this article. Not an excuse for you to vilify lying women.

Ok if most women who lie are actually mentally unstable then I feel compassion for them, and prison isn’t the right place for them.

This is the point of the article which you would know if you'd bothered to read it. CPS guidelines say it's not in the public interest to pursue prosecutions of mentally unstable women. Police and prosecution services are acting in opposition to their own procedures...

Ummm this isn’t a lecture it’s a discussion, and did you mean to be quite so goady? I’m only really familiar with the case up until the point she killed herself, and like I said upthread it’s very sad she chose to do so. I pick up as much to think about from these threads as I contribute and I neither position myself as or think I am an authority of any of this. Hope that helps! :)

Read the article MRA it's pretty obvious from your comments that you haven't bothered to do so.

Lecturing women on a thread about an issue that you have zero understanding of? Doesn't sound like something an MRA would do...

I’m always up for getting vulnerable people the help they need. Perfectly happy for such people to get help.

I knew a girl (yes, she was a girl, very young) who was jailed for this. She was living in a homeless shelter at the time, had a long history of abuse and neglect from when she was a baby and had severe mental health issues. She did lie about things, maybe even compulsively, but there is NO WAY anyone will ever convince me that jail was the place for her. She needed help, therapy, treatment at a trauma centre...I am not even convinced she was lying about the rape - she was used by many men at that shelter.

I can understand a desire to bring your accuser to justice, but it does sound like disproportionate malice on his part. Especially going after her father.

Alexander Economou, 36, allegedly bombarded David de Freitas with letters, emails and YouTube videos as he tried to "silence" the father's media campaign following the death of his daughter Eleanor in April 2014.

Economou created a website, called www.eleanordefreitas.com, which described her as a prostitute called Goddess Porsche and showed CCTV footage of the pair buying sex toys in Anne Summers together.

Gross.

He wasn't found guilty of harassment, but it's a fact that the website existed. Why do this to the bereaved family? If he wanted people to think he was a nice guy who wouldn't harm anyone, he was taking a strange approach to it.

I would have thought that was obvious @GoldenWonderwall falsely reporting an insurance claim won’t wind up with a potential innocent person being deprived of their liberty.

AE has popped up on here before. He may get wind of this thread.

I don’t anyone thinks all women are liars, I certainly don’t! Besides I think we all know men as a class are violent enough to the point that we all (women & non-violent men) have to be wary.

I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive to condem rapists and those who lie about being raped. Ok if most women who lie are actually mentally unstable then I feel compassion for them, and prison isn’t the right place for them. Nevertheless they do need to be either off the streets or medicated so they don’t pose a threat.

In the same way I have every sympathy for schizophrenics who wind up stabbing people to death because of their own fractured view on reality, but I’m also sympathetic to their victims and would rather they were out of circulation for both their own sake and their victims.

Blast! First ever bold fail. That'll teach me to post in a fury.

*People who lie cannot damage someone else's credibility - it takes a biased attitude towards one sex to do that.

One woman lies = all women are liars, and all liars must be punished.
One man is violent = Not all men are like that, don't discriminate against all men because of the actions of a minority.*

^^This. So much THIS!
And I'm so fucking tired of it.

Alexander Economou, incidentally a very wealthy and powerful man, did more than 'want to clear his name'. As you pointed out, no charges had been brought against him. Even so, he brought a prosecution against de Freitas which led to her suicide; and then afterwards tried to sue her bereaved father for defamation. The judge struck that out, saying 'Mr Economou has pursued this case not with sincerity but, as I find, in anger and with elements of vengefulness'. Economou was also charged with harassing the bereaved father. Police said afterwards that de Freitas should never have been charged.

Independent - libel case struck out

Guardian - harassment of Eleanor's father

Guardian - she should not have been charged

The thread title is accurate. Rape is not an easy crime to report or prosecute. Not getting a successful prosecution does not mean the complainant lied.

The thread title should be "A really compelling reason to not make false rape accusations"