To think that people accused of rape should be given anonymity until proven guilty?

[DaleyBump]

Controversial.

I don't mean to start a bunfight, honest! Am I the only one that thinks that people accused of rape should be given the same anonymity as the rape victims until they've been proven guilty? By all means, once they've been found guilty, feed them to the dogs but being accused of rape publicly and then being found not guilty still has a major effect on someone's life.

I'm not saying rape victims should be outed at any point, by the way.

Following on from that and taking up FairPhyllis's points, in addition, to point 1) people would actually know how prevalent rape is if we really took it seriously. Most people have no idea that 25% of all women will experience either a sexual assault or a rape in their lifetime. People are staggered when they find that out and immediately think you're lying or making it up or have misunderstood the figures. The figures are staggering, if any other group than women were being subjected to this systematic threat there'd be a royal commission to find out why and what we can do about it as a matter of urgency. But we don't know about these figures. We also don't know how few women report and how very rare false allegations are. All of which indicate as FP says, that our society doesn't find rape quite so awful as everyone pays lip service to.

2. To come at this from another angle, the reason there's such a strong belief in the prevalence of false rape allegations, is precisely because most rape is reported by women or children. Women and children have always been thought of as particularly untrustworthy / unreliable and in fact that implication was built into our legal system because men built the legal system and they generally believed women to be unstable, hysterical, weaker vessels who could not be trusted to own and administer their own property, sit on a jury, vote or indeed take any real part in exercising genuine power in society, which is why they made sure they didn't.

Judges used to tell juries that however credible the witness was, juries should remember that women made false rape allegations all the time for no particular reason - this was based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever, it was just pure, unadorned misogyny, a myth invented by men to enable them to rape women and get away with it. That misogyny, that belief that women are intrinsically less trustworthy than men, is what lies behind the constant implication that any allegation by a woman against a man, of violence of any type (whether domestic or sexual) is less likely to be true than any other type of allegation by any other group against any other group, and that therefore the group accused of rape - men - need special protection because the group accusing them -women - are so terribly liable to be mad liars.

Every time people demand anonymity for men accused of rape, they are tapping into that old, old misogyny.

Yeah, it's sort of a vicious circle of misogyny - the association between 'untrustworthy women and children' and rape allegations works both ways - women historically thought of as liars, thus rape allegations being thought probably false, has turned into people just blindly accepting that most rape allegations are dodgy without examining the inherent misogyny in that belief, and then proposing (as here)

fwiw, I don't know anybody who has been accused of rape, falsely or not. But given the prevalence of rape, I am sadly certain that I must know some rapists.

For anyone who's determined to misread my above paragraph, this doesn't mean I think all men are rapists. Everything I've ever read about this suggests it's the case that actually a relatively small percentage of men are serial rapists and by themselves are responsible for the majority of rapes. But they get away with it because they mostly select victims who are acquaintances and don't always use violence. These are factors in how 'credible' a victim is deemed to be by prosecutors and juries.

"fwiw, I don't know anybody who has been accused of rape, falsely or not."

I know one example of a false rape allegation, and the man involved has lived his life just fine since.

But I know a hell of a lot more people who have been raped but where the rapist hasn't been convicted. In fact no one I know who has been raped/sexually assaulted has ever seen their attacker face justice, and the victims are the ones paying the price.

Tricky one.

I would've said YABU to this without a doubt. Until I met someone who has been accused of rape when he did no such thing.

The case was thrown out and she admitted she had made it up to get at him.

His story is heartbreaking- it devastated and tore apart his friends and family and he lost his job due to the near mental breakdown he had- and the admission by her made little difference to the damage already done.

As repulsive as rapists are, this woman was equally as repulsive imo.

She admitted she made it up because she knew exactly what havoc it would wreak. That havoc, that she desired to create, simply wouldn't have existed had name suppression been in place.

And Worboys and Stuart Hall wouldn't be in prison if name suppression did exist.

Hard cases make bad law. We cannot base our legal system on a tiny tiny number of hard cases, we have to base laws on broad legal principles and the greatest good for the greatest number. I'm always surprised that people are so willing to be swayed from a principle by the hard cases which we all acknowledge will always be there, but it's not a perfect world and you can't have everything.

Also I'd like to know more - this woman who admitted she'd made it all up - who did she admit that to? How do you know she admitted it? Did she admit it to you? Was she prosecuted for perverting the course of justice? People always say "she admitted she made it up" but then when you probe further, you find there's no hard evidence that she actually admitted she'd made it up, just some sort of vague implication that that was what happened.

Someone who admitted she'd made it up, would have been guilty of perverting the course of justice and should be prosecuted for doing so. And of course, we'd all hear about it because the media is more interested in covering that tiny molehill of rare cases, than the mountain of real rapes which go unpunished.

And of course, a jury is far more willing to convict someone accused of making up a rape allegation, than to convict someone accused of rape - even though the latter is far more likely to have happened.

See its strange, while sad, that kind of thing happens to victims, losing their job and their mental health, their relationships, all the time.

Apparently then, thats not important.

And some victims CAVE and withdraw allegations under the pressure of going to trial.

the media is more interested in covering that tiny molehill of rare cases, than the mountain of real rapes which go unpunished

I once asked someone on one of these threads exactly the same thing as you: what proof do you have to this false allegation?

She said there'd been a conviction in court but she couldn't remember the details.

I'm a former court reporter and I found that very hard to believe. There's no way you'd let a story like that go because it's highly saleable - unlike rape cases, which are two a penny.

It could have slipped by, because there isn't a reporter in every single court. But the police and CPS are, and they know what makes a good story, and they have close contacts with the media.

And then there are friends and family of the accused man.

I was about to say the press aren't interested in a straight forward rape story - there has to be more of an angle these days.

I think Sabrina nailed it when she said "why rape trials? why not any other sort?"

One important point which has been made upthread but not spelled out is the constitutional role of an open court system and its role in a fair, unbiased political society. Accused aren't named primarily so that other people can come forward to accuse them of more stuff - the roots lie in ensuring that they are protected from being fitted up (by the lord of the manor, the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad - pick the corrupt arm of government of your choice), by ensuring that justice is seen to be done publicly. (Googling Star Chambers, or reading up on Soviet Russia, or reading Kafka give some idea of the sort of thing an open trial system is meant to protect all of us from).

So if there are very good reasons why, from the point of view of protecting an open and free democratic system, you want open and public trials, there had better be a damn good reason for refusing it in certain circs. In this country, family court hearings are held in camera to protect the privacy of the children involved, but there are major question marks over this practice with regards to miscarriages of justice then becoming impossible to publicise and therefore rectify.

Any argument for accused in rape trials being treated differently would have to centre round rape accusations being especially heinous (worse than murder? child cruelty?), having disproportionately bad effects on an acquitted person's subsequent life (what about, say, an accountant falsely accused of embezzlement?), or having an unusually high number of false accusations (when Home Office and police stats suggest the false reporting rate is about the same as it is for other serious crimes). And as far as I can see, none of these reasons apply.

A secret system that announced the names of the guilty afterwards would be far more unfair than our current system.

How do you argue with a justice system that says: ‘He was found guilty; move along; nothing to see here.’

That’s the difficulty with the decisions of the family courts and I truly have no answer to that. I understand the need for secrecy, and hope their decisions are sound, but without transparency, how do I know?

I do find it interesting that some of those who want to open up family courts because they say they're biased against men, also want men accused of rape given anonymity, or alleged victims named following an acquittal.

Is it justice to pick and choose?

I've been with the CPS for over ten years, involved daily in helping prepare Crown Court cases. Every case that is sent or committed to Crown Court in this area comes across my desk to allocate.

In that time, do you know how many actual, proven cases of false allegation of rape we have had?

Two.

Unfortunately I couldn't begin to count the number of cases which are discontinued before they even get to the point of charge, not because the prosecutor making the decision necessarily thinks the victim is lying, but because they know that on the evidence available, there is unlikely to be a realistic prospect of conviction. Many of these cases are discontinued with reluctance, but they are discontinued nonetheless.

I'd say that happens, on average, once a week or once a fortnight. At a (very) conservative estimate, that's 260 potential, even probable, victims who will never see justice.

That's before you even get to the cases which are charged but which, for one reason or another, don't reach trial stage or result in acquittal. We all hope that acquittal means innocence; in some cases it undoubtedly does. That still doesn't mean the victim was lying. They may have been abused but been genuinely mistaken as to the identity of their attacker, especially if the offence(s) happened some time ago.

There are too many other cases, however, when a not guilty verdict simply means the jury couldn't be certain beyond reasonable doubt. I'm not suggesting that is the case for Michael Lee Cell but it would be naïve to think it doesn't happen. I've been in court and watched credible witnesses be so traumatised by the experience of the trial, or be shredded by a skilled defence barrister - who only has to introduce a doubt in the jury's mind - that they have looked less certain in their testimony, less secure in their memory of events and hey presto, acquittal.

I've been in court and watched the defence apply successfully to have a particular piece of evidence suppressed. Sometimes that has left the prosecution with no option but to withdraw the case. I've watched juries look at the clean-shaven, well-spoken, suited and booted defendant and then at the victim, who has confessed to having been drunk and been chatting to him earlier, who might have a couple of visible tattoos and an uneducated way of speaking, and I can see the prejudices forming before my eyes.

In my early days I've worked with prosecutors who wouldn't even have authorised that last sort of case to be charged in the first place, because unfortunately rape myths have been alive and well within the CJS just as they have in society at large. It has improved, with the training of specialist rape lawyers and the requirement for peer review of pre-charge cases, but I have no doubt that rapists have walked free because the victim was the person being judged.

So yes OP, YABU, because anything that has a chance of ensuring more victims achieve justice must be preserved. I don't mean to belittle the effect a wrongful accusation has on the unfortunate small number of men who experience it but that's partly the point - it is, in the scheme of things, a tiny number. One high-profile acquittal does not mean our entire system of striving for open, transparent justice should be dismantled.

Le Vell Apologies for autocorrect.

YABU

I think it's going to happen, partly due to a "We believe you" campaign. If you believe all the accusers you can't believe any of the accused. You end up with the situation you have on here where many people consider anybody found not guilty of rape, to have got away with it.

Thank you, SelectA.

Tiggy, We Believe You doesn't say there are no false accusations. It's a campaign of support for victims. Many many posters helped by it will never go to the police - it's the level before that for those who, say, were told off by their mothers for "putting out" at a party when their boyfriend's friend decided he had a right to what his mate had. WBY is about any kind of unwanted sexual contact, not only rape.

Thanks for that post, SelectA. Very informative.

TiggyD the WBY campaign is first and foremost a campaign to encourage more women to report. It is a mythbusting campaign to combat the victim-blaming, the myth that 'women often lie about rape' or that women are somehow partially responsible for their rape by their behaviour.

It is not a campaign that is targetting how the accused are dealt with in court, or to say the accused is automatically guilty, other than to abolish those rape myths that are so prevalent in society and that are semi-responsible for the poor conviction rate.

TiggyD. Have you read the We believe you" campaign details lately. I had a good read of them a week or two ago. They seem quite a bit pared down from the original. There are only about 5 points on it, all seem ok to me.

FairPhyllis. There is a probelm with your point 1 from Monday, as far as I can see. [I am a poster from near the start of the thread who has had a nc since].

If you find out that someone has been charged with murder, torture, terrorism and child abuse, you can quite likely tell from looking at them, that it could be the case. And they generally happen in large towns or cities where no one knows anyone much. And quite frankly, if most people were accused of those crimes, most people would just laugh. They are not crimes that really happen much in large parts of rolling countryside of rural Britain for example. If most people were accused of torture or terrorism in the rural villages of Britain, where people often know each other better, they would be laughed at.

But, the crimes of rape and even child pornography. could be done by your next door neighbour. It isnt a matter of being worse, it is a matter that it is much more plausible and can happen anywhere.
So, it isnt a matter of it being a special category, but it is most certainly an important matter of being a different category.

So if average Joe was accused of the crime of terrorism or whatever, ha ha
But if average Joe is accused of rape, not ha ha at all.

"You end up with the situation you have on here where many people consider anybody found not guilty of rape, to have got away with it."

That's either a misunderstanding or careless reading of posts or a deliberate misrepresentation.

No one thinks anybody found not guilty of rape are actual rapists who got away with it.

Just that most men accused of rape who are not charged or found guilty of it, are actually guilty and have indeed got away with it.

The stats bear that out, it's not an unreasonable thing to believe.

But nobody thinks that every single case is a "got away with it" scenario - you won't find one post ever, which says that.

You would think, wouldn't you, that people who are so concerned about the reputation of wrongly accused men, would actually want the rape conviction rate improved, so that that tiny minority of men who are accused of rape and are actually innocent, can walk away from the allegation with a credible probability of being innocent and therefore accepted as such, because otherwise there's a good chance they'd have been charged and found guilty, just as with every other crime. Funny how the "let's get anonymity and make the conviction rate even lower" crowd aren't interested in that.

"Just that most men accused of rape who are not charged or found guilty of it, are actually guilty and have indeed got away with it"

That may be true of those not charged, you are on dodgy ground, very dodgy ground to say that about people who have been found not guilty.
fwiw, me personally, of course I want the conviction rate improved. Lets have 100% please. I am a realist though. It is never going to happen.

Why do you say that FavouriteThings? Why is it dodgier ground?

I have realised that some people are judge, jury and executioner.

Why do you say that Favouritethings? You haven't answered my question, you've just posted some kneejerk, undirected comment which I'm not sure if you want answered. My question is a genuine one. Do you know of any research which indicates that men who are actually tried for rape, are more likely to be innocent of it, than men who are accused of it but never tried for it? For all I know you do, I'm interested to know why you said what you said.

I know you are going to try and tie me up in wordy knots. I am not going to allow you to do that. My post of 09.28am still stands.