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?

"And the 3 % of men whose lives are ruined are...what? Unimportant? A necessary sacrifice?"

Of course not. But without anonymity for victims far more rapists and a users will not even be charged! let alone convicted. And with anonymity for the accused far more guilty people will go free.

Can anyone come up with a solution that's better than the imperfect one we have?

3% of the male population is not falsely accused of rape BTW. You are just posting nonsense.

Do you lot think that the accused of all crimes should be given anonymity? Or is it just for those accused of rape that you get so indignant?

Do you campaign for those accused of violence against children, or against the elderly or those accused of stealing from their employers? Or for any other crime come to that matter saying as how false rape accusations are no more common than false accusations for all crime in general?

For those of you who don't understand why the accused isn't given anonymity please Google "The Moorov Doctrine"

"
Do you lot think that the accused of all crimes should be given anonymity? Or is it just for those accused of rape that you get so indignant?"

Well I believe their counter argument would be, and it's not one I agree with, in other crimes the victim is not granted anonymity so you're comparison is not valid or like for like.

Beachcomber I didn't say that 3% of the population was accused of rape. It was an example of how the argument is reading.
Yes, I think all parties in any trial for any crime should be given anonymity, even with regards to the jury.
Caitlin Moorov has already been quoted. It still doesn't change my opinion.

Do you worry about the fact that the thousands of sexual offenders never even get reported, let alone officially accused of anything?

I imagine this must be a really high prority for certain posters here given the huge concern they have over false accusations which are very rare, do not happen more for rape than for other crimes and are generally quickly detected by the police as they tend to be brought by people with mental health issues.

www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/11/male-female-rape-statistics-graphic?intcmp=239

Between 2009/10 and 2011/12 there were an estimated 78,000 victims of rape per year in England and Wales - 69,000 females and 9,000 males.

Over the same period there were an average of 1,070 convictions per year for the offence, though offenders and victims may nor relate to the same cases, since a single case can take years to be concluded.

My concern Beachcomber is for all victims, not just the majority of them.
The reason why rapes and sexual assault needs to be addressed and worked on.
Women do come forward believing they are the only one. What is the difference between them and others?
We need to help victims but not by creating more.

Yes, I think all parties in any trial for any crime should be given anonymity, even with regards to the jury.

Oh well, there is no point my discusing this with you any further then if you do not believe in the open justice system.

Have you really not thought about this at all, or are you just saying the above so that you cannot be accused of only caring about alleged perpetrators of sexual offences...

This thread will just go round in circles until it disappears up its own bumhole.

And the 3 % of men whose lives are ruined are...what? Unimportant? A necessary sacrifice?

I absolutely love this statistic. False and utterly meaningless at the same time.

3% of men who are accused of rape, not just 3% of the male population. You don't have to be very good at maths to see the difference there.

And that daily fail article linked is hardly a good example given that the women was convicted herself and sentenced to 6 months, she then apologised and it came to light that she was suffering from serious mental health problems and the real problem was all the senseless twats in their community who like to think of themselves in a special light and think it's A-OK to go around making death threats because their mate John from the pub heard that this bloke raped so-and-so. So yeah, she shouldn't have made that claim, and he is right to be upset about that, but it's not her who sent death threats or hounded him in the street. And even if he had remained annoymous (legally speaking) she sent those messages straight away and doesn't seem like the sort of person who might think 'oh, I can't name my attacker because I might get in trouble'. So it wouldn't actually help the accused at all.

And I LOVE that the daily mail managed to get a nice sad faced photo of the man and his partner who had cancer, dressed demurely and in black, and the only picture they could use of his accuser was of her in hotpants, tiny vest and high heels. Not one to hammer a stereotype much, are they? Clearly the woman was a slutty slutty slut. Not someone suffering from mental health issues, in the middle of a breakdown. She was punished for what she did, but you know, still a slutty slutty slut.

*And the 3 % of men whose lives are ruined are...what? Unimportant? A necessary sacrifice?

I absolutely love this statistic. False and utterly meaningless at the same time.*

Oh do fuck off dear. You have no need to explain statistics to me.
3% of the men who are accused of rape. I in no way said '3% of the male population' and if you'd followed the thread and the comment/context in which i'd replied you would have realised that.

I suppose that's not as interesting as deliberately misunderstanding though?

For the last time, NOBODY that is right NOBODY said 3% of the population have been falsely accused of rape.
It's not difficult to read properly, if in fact, you are reading the thread at all.
It's all getting very tedious now. . . . .

Arrivederci, look forward to debating with you ladies on another thread.

The problem with the "statistic" is that a false accusation is supposed to automatically mean that a man's life is ruined.

she then apologised and it came to light that she was suffering from serious mental health problems

If this had been posted about a man convicted of rape, people would be screaming that you were a rape-apologist.

But because it's about a convicted woman, of course there must be reasons she falsely accused, poor her etc etc.

AND an 'apology' after an accusation of that sort does fuck all...the damage is done.

InPursuitOfOblivion Tue 21-Jan-14 13:13:12

Why don't we pick 3% of the population at random, accuse of them of any crime they look 'the sort' for and see if we can solve more crimes?

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it?

But that is how the argument appears to be swinging.

If ever there were to be an MN Hall of Strawmen honouring strawman arguments that bolster rape myths and go against the ethos of We Believe You, I will nominate this post for a big shiny prize.

How does that post bolster rape myths?

I'm not apologising for her. At all. She was punished for wasting police time, and rightly so. Apologising and explaining why something happened doesn't diminish what she did. BUT holding her responsible for death threats from other people and everything else that happened to him? It is not her fault that people decided to take the law into their own hands. Given that what actually happened - false accusation quickly seen as what it was by the police, woman charged and convicted and then apologised for her behavior, I don't see how this is actually a good example of the rape accusation ruining someone's life. The issue here is that people like to get their tits worked up about something, and think they can go around harassing people for a crime they didn't commit. And for the daily fucking mail of all papers to be reporting it like this is just a tiny bit hypocritical when they are the first ones to publicly 'name and shame' anyone accused of a crime or even just titillating behavior.

The problem isn't the false accusations, it's the reporting of sex crimes, women and sex in general.

HopALongOn - I wasn't necessarily having a go at you...but more illustrating how one sentence such as you wrote (about apologising/mental health problems) goes largely unnoticed in a thread like this when about a woman. IF it was about a man though, there would have been outcry and allegations of making excuses for him. There IS, to me, some truth in the fact that some women will demonise a man at fault (and anyone seen to 'support' him) whilst completely excusing a woman at fault, in some sort of perverted sister-hood club.

However, I completely disagree with this:
BUT holding her responsible for death threats from other people and everything else that happened to him? It is not her fault that people decided to take the law into their own hands

How would you feel if I said that a rapist was not 'the cause' of a rape-victim suffering relationship problems afterward? Afterall, he commited the crime and paid the price, but it's not his fault if the victims future partners can't deal with the amount of support and understanding the woman needs in a relationship following the ordeal.

That is apples to oranges. You could say that this woman was the cause of the accused man being unable to trust women and then having relationship problems. But she can't he held responsible for the actions of others. It would be like saying that a man who raped a woman was responsible for her getting raped by someone else later on. It's not a logical follow on from what the original attacker did.

And the thing is that generally speaking men don't rape women because they have mental health problems. I'm sure it does happen, of course, but it's generally speaking a case of 'well I thought she wanted it' or a combination of sex as an expression of violence, objectification of women's bodies, men's rights to have sex whenever they want, women being too scared to voice a lack of consent, women not feeling like they are in a position to say no etc etc. If it was genuinely a case where a man was suffering from serious mental health problems and sexually assaulted a woman as a symptom of those issues, and then recognised what he had done, was adequately punished by the law and apologised, I would probably have a certain amount of sympathy for him. In the same way that I would have sympathy for someone who acted in any violent way because of a mental health breakdown, and was aware of their actions afterwards and remorseful. That doesn't mean I'm not hugely sympathetic to the victim of the crime.

If someone breaks into my house and steals my things, it's hugely upsetting and un-nerving, violating even. But if the thief (after being punished) says they are sorry and were in the thoes of a horrible drug addiction and couldn't see a way out, I would be more forgiving. Explaining someone's actions doesn't mean that what they did wasn't wrong and awful and that they weren't to blame.

Suzanne I only know about Scots law but whilst the accused is not obliged to give evidence or to lead his own witnesses the jury is entitled to take account of that. If the Crown has led a convincing case and the accused makes no attempt to rebut it the jury is entitled to wonder why not.

Indeed that is so in England and Wales too.

I said in an earlier post that a defendant is found guilty essentially because the evidence presented in his defence fails to outweigh the evidence presented by the prosecution.

Some bright spark immediately denounced that as bovine poo, saying (as if it helped hos argument) that a defendant isn't obliged in law to present any evidence in his defence.

You can see what I'm up against here.

false accusations - which are very rare

Leaving aside our opinions and sticking to rock sold fact, it is an undeniable fact that nobody on Earth can possibly know how many false accusations are made.

No matter what the crime, genuine accusations can lead to acquittals and false accusations can lead to convictions.

False accusations might therefore be very rare, very common or anywhere in between.

We'll never know, because there's no way we can ever know.

Well it kind of is bullshit. You are found guilty because the prosecution was able to provide evidence that proves beyond reasonable doubt that you are guilty. If you have evidence that provides reasonable doubt of your guilt, then you are found not guilty. Even if you say nothing, the prosecution still has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you are guilty.

Well thankfully we have these great public bodies who can look at all the available information and come up with a rough figure for false accusation.