to worry about the accused?

[WitchWay]

DLT for example. How is anything going to be proven? Are people jumping on a bandwagon or am I very wrong to even think that? I don't condone abuse - far from it - but surely they can't all have been sailing along in JS's wake - can they?

Suzanne - you are hilarious.

Politician?

No SuzanneUK.

You mentioned false rape allegations in your post of Tue 21-Jan-14 10:21:57 this was hours before I had even joined the thread.

You were amongst the several other people who introduced the subject of false allegations before I joined the thread.

You posted;

SuzanneUK Tue 21-Jan-14 10:21:57

Hope you don't have daughters.

And I hope you never have a son accused falsely of rape.

I can see that you are not going to apologise decently for saying that I introduced/brought up/whatever! the rape myth of false allegations being a concern, so perhaps we can stop this tedious hijack now. The thread is there for anyone to scroll up and see.

Rennard won't say sorry either, Beach.

Does anyone else find it slightly ironic that Beach and Suzanne are so wound up about being "falsely accused" of something so trivial on this thread, it shows just how much having your name cleared matters, even if it's just on mumsnet, doesn't it?

You want to afford special protection to people who are accused of rape, that you would not afford to those accused of other very serious crimes such as murder, torture, terrorism etc. The only possible reason for this stance is a belief that women and girls routinely lie about rape, and thus men must be afforded special protection when accused of that crime.

This approach is backed up in the way Ched Evans - a man convicted of sex offences - is described. Those who "believe" he is guilty and those who "believe" he is not. So if conviction in a court of law is not enough to believe he is guilty, then what on earth possibly could be.

You patently believe that most men accused of sex crimes are not guilty, and that most women and girls who report such crimes are lying. Your perspective is very easy to see and understand. It is however entirely abhorrent to me and as you can see most other posters on this site.

So there you have it.

I always think, on these threads, about the enormous numbers of posters who have been assaulted one way or another, and have been put off reporting, and are put off reporting, by people like you.

Well, quite, Sabrina.

I will admit that I PMSL at this comedy gold I tried to make it clear that although you brought up the subject at an advanced point in the thread, you certainly did not introduce the subject to the thread.

Most excellent doublespeak!

I don't think anyone has said most men found guilty are actually innocent or that most women who accuse are lying!

ITA with NiceTabard.

Suzanne says:

"If we believe the evidence against DLT, then we believe he groped, felt and otherwise generally touched-up a good many adult women in decades gone by.

That's almost certainly true because I've yet to meet a heterosexual male star from the music/TV/radio industry that didn't grope, feel and generally touch-up a good many adult women at the peak of his career.

Unfortunately for DLT, some of those women are now coming forward to say they weren't happy about it at the time.

One thing's for sure, if the Jimmy Savile had affair had never blown up, the police would have told all the women in the DLT case that there was nothing they could do about it after all this time.

And another sure thing is that if every woman who was groped, felt and generally touched-up against her will in the late 20th Century came forward now, there'd be a queue 10 miles long outside every police station in the country."

And that sums it up really.

She thinks it very likely that he did what he is accused of, based on her personal experience.

She thinks it unfortunate for DLT that people are now coming forward to report him for assaults that he committed when they were younger women / girls.

She thinks that if it weren't for Jimmy Saville, the police would have told these women that they weren't interested and go away. This is true, obviously. Would it be better for their complaints to be dismissed out of hand? I say not.

She also appears to believe that it is a bad thing for women and girls to report sexual offenses as it would take up lots of police time. Also true. But discouraging people from reporting is not the answer. Taking all the information in, collating it, seeing the same names come up and patterns of behaviour, with the end result of a firm case to take a serious offender off the streets. That's a good thing, I think. People should report sex crimes, even if minor. Sex offenders tend to escalate - that is well documented. Why wait until they are at the end of the road, why not try to identify them & prosecute if possible earlier.

Nice

I think it's perfectly fair that you disagree with Suzanne, but it's fairly disgraceful to misrepresent her position as wildly as you are.

You patently believe that most men accused of sex crimes are not guilty, and that most women and girls who report such crimes are lying

Nowhere has she, or anyone else, said anything that could be interpreted in this way.

And given the nature of this thread - read the title, people - a discussion about false allegations is perfectly fair given the concerns that the OP, rightly or wrongly, raised.

SuzanneUK Tue 21-Jan-14 12:54:30
Granting the accused anonymity would certainly be an excellent way of reducing the level of convictions........................

..........................But granting the alleged victim anonymity is an excellent way of increasing convictions of innocent persons as, for one thing, it prevents people coming forward to say they saw the alleged victim 100 miles away from the alleged crime scene at the time the crime is alleged to have been committed.

Seems perfectly clear to me that even a conviction in court is not enough for you - I could have copied 3 comments along the same lines.

Suzanne most certainly has implied it: by saying that he considers false accusations to be an integral part of any rape discussion - you can only believe this to be the case if you believe that women routinely lie about rape.

Rennard is being a twit. All he has to say is something like "I'm sorry you found my behaviour inappropriate" & he has (a) apologised and (b) not admitted liability. The man's a twit.

You think it's a bad thing for women and girls to report assaults because it would take up police time, Nice?

I think Beachcomber speaks a different kind of English from the one I speak.

I've tried as hard as I can to tell her she's 100% correct in what she's trying to say but she interprets my every attempt to mean something completely different.

As I said earlier, I do try to dumb down for some people but one can dumb down only so far before reaching bedrock.

Perhaps if you removed your head from your arse Suzanne, it would aid communications.

I'm not misrepresenting anything.

I have read her posts, and that is clearly what she believes.

Whether you choose to see that or not, is up to you.

The interesting thing is the total incongruence of the DLT post. For all the "innocent until proven guilty and that is why people accused must be anonymous and even a guilty verdict doesn't mean they didn't do it"... for all of that, is a straightforward yes DLT probably did it and it's unfortunate for him that he's being taken to court.

Erm OK.

The reason for that approach - which is out of step with all other statements is that Suzanne doesn't think that he did anything wrong. She says, yes I think he did that, so what, if it wasn't for Jimmy Saville the police would have told those women to get stuffed, it's a real shame for him that the police listened and it's got to court.

Her attitude is there in black & white for anyone to see.

Bottom line is vast majority of posters think her attitude is revolting, so that's heartening

It should be an integral part of any discussion about how the justice system deals with rape cases. 3-5% might not sound like much - but that's actually quite a lot of people, you know.

Acknowledging that it happens in NO WAY implies that therefore all women who report abuse/rape are liars. That's a false dichotomy of epic proportions.

Hettie I believe that much of the police, Suzanne, and sadly much of the public think that, yes.

HTH.

Oooop, SuzanneUK - your mask is slipping. Careful now

Suzanne

People disagreeing with you does not mean they don't have a brain. Sabrina's pretty smart.

Nice Sorry, but I think you have misrepresented what she's said quite appallingly.

Isn't anyone else amused by SuzanneUK clear misogynist attitude that she tries to dress up and hide behind long words and convoluted sentences, its a shame she holds these views, but it is more of a shame she clearly holds them because she has to, to protect herself.

Interestingly the long words and intelligent is woefully uniformed posts are disappearing and being replaced with straight forward insults which are much more straight forward.

In answer to the first sentence of the Op's OP. When police statements are taken and examined they will look for similarities in offending for example where he did this, what he said, what he did, his Modus Operandi if you like. If several women come forward not having colluded and there are stand out similarities between the attacks then the likelihood is that they are all telling the truth. In historic cases (unless like Monica Lewinski , someone keeps a semen splattered dress for posterity) where there is no physical evidence, it is down to MO and circumstances and then the jury decide on the likelihood of all the alleged victims coming up with such similar details. If the CPS have enough evidence of this sort they decide to push to trial.

With Michael LeVell, no-one else came forward and I think it is considered unusual for a sexual abuser to abuse one person and one person only (although not unheard of obviously) so on the balance of probability he was found not guilty.