to think these vile girls should be named and shamed?

[LadyBuzz]

There have been 4 serious sexual assaults in the last 2 weeks in the small city where i live which is generally quite sleepy and quiet.
In the local news paper tonight it has been reported that 2 of these attacks are complete fabrications and the girls in question have been arrested for it.

AIBU to believe that they should be named and shamed for this. The 2 women who have really been assaulted must be going through such a traumatic time at the moment and to have this made a mockery of must be a kick in the teeth for them.

I am amazed that anybody would make something like this up!

YABU because it would be very detrimental to victims of rape or sexual assault thinking about reporting to the police.

But I can totally understand the OP, about not being able to comprehend how someone could make up something like this. This is a small city, these woman will be outed, its a small community, people talk. Then when they are convicted, they will also be named.
I hope they can live with themselves.

mathanxiety, you make good points but surely one of the reasons there are so few convictions is that the police/juries etc know that accusations can be false because of examples such as this. These women have damaged the chances of other women seeing justice done. That makes them wicked, not just silly.

No, I don't think they should be "named and shamed". Not least because I am a bit sick of our justice system being treated as some sort of sideshow for tabloid-obsessed gossip-mongers. Reporting is often spectacularly inaccurate and almost always heavily biased. I would be more than happy for every single criminal trial to take place under strict reporting restrictions until there is a conviction.

Furthermore, while false rape/sexual assault allegations are relatively rare, they do happen and people are aware that they do happen. Highlighting high-profile instances will only serve to make people think they are far more common than they are which will have a huge impact on genuine victims who are struggling with the decision as to whether to report or not, and potentially on the likelihood of a jury convicting a genuine offender.

Having worked on more than one case where there has been a provably false allegation, I think it is a horrendous, life-destroying thing to do to anyone, but in those cases the complainant's personal circumstances were very far from being "normal" and naming and shaming would not have helped anyone.

I agree with grovel. Woman like these do damage the chances of genuine victims of rape, having the courage to report the crime, being believed and getting justice.

As the OP mentions, 2 other women in this area are victims of sexual assault, how many people are starting to doubt their story because of the 2 women who made up allegations.

something like this happened near where I live the story was far fetched and then turned out to be a hoax the whole area was cordoned off for days, pretty much been forgotten nowc I think tbh naming and shaming gives shocking behaviour more attention than it deserves.

In every single case of rape that does not involve some really disreputable male stranger snatching a vestal virgin as she brings calves foot jelly to the poor of the parish on a Sunday afternoon, dragging her into the bushes, and treating her brutally, the assumption of police, prosecution and juries is that the accusation has some ulterior motivation.

It is not so long ago that men were legally entitled to rape their wives. In fact the idea that a married woman could be raped by her husband was unthinkable to legal minds.

The chances of any woman's claim being taken seriously are already slim to none, basically because of the assumptions that rape is about sex, and that men are entitled to sex when they feel like it, from which flows the assumption that women 'ask for it' and therefore there is no culpability on the part of the rapist. It is the media salivating about these particular women who could damage women's chances further, not whatever they themselves have done (and I think any woman who does a thing like this needs help and not the wrath of the town or the DM).

Women's stories of rape will always be doubted. This is fuel on the fire, true, but it is only so because some editor has taken the story for reasons of his (?) own and decided to run with it. And the story only flies because people are willing to swallow such tripe.