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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To wonder how we determine if a rape accusation is false?

197 replies

FlinchGirl · 24/03/2017 13:34

It seems just about everyone I talk to about this "knows" someone who was definitely falsely accused whilst their accuser apparently got away scott free.

But how do we determine whether an accusation is false?

A claim being withdrawn or charges being dropped or a not guilty verdict being reached does not mean the accusation were false, surely? But those are always the responses I get when I ask how they know the accusations were false. Occasionally the accuser apparently admitted they made it up but then when you probe further it becomes apparent that there is no evidence such a confession took place; it is just what people perceived to have happened and is now being repeated as fact.

I can't say I blame women in being reluctant to report rape Sad

OP posts:
RufusTheRenegadeReindeer · 28/03/2017 22:14

But i am not giving you this one

noone who of normal cognitive functioning can reach adulthood without hearing at least one case. There are a couple every month in the newspapers and if you are including america because quite a lot of people seem keen to cite stats from there then there a lot more

RufusTheRenegadeReindeer · 28/03/2017 22:14

As dh does not have a fucking clue

RufusTheRenegadeReindeer · 28/03/2017 22:14

And he is normal...ish

Graphista · 28/03/2017 22:14

"I have never in real life or read about a genuine case of false accusation"

Every case I have heard/read of where an allegation has been made that the initial accusation was false there has been no categorical proof that the accuser was lying!

Just for a case to get to trial means there is a fair bit of evidence anyway.

Not guilty is NOT the same as innocent.

OlennasWimple · 28/03/2017 23:09

And every month there are a couple of threads on MN where the poster genuinely doesn't realise that her partner coercing her into sex, or simply having sex with her whilst she is asleep, is rape - even if they are married...

Your point, auntyhiro, is what exactly?

lottieandmia · 28/03/2017 23:32

Auntyhiro - how rude and arrogant.

auntyhiro · 28/03/2017 23:59

OlennasWimple

My point is that she is lying.

To those who think innocent men are never accused

When investigators arrived, the victim told them that her assailant weighed 145 pounds and was 5’6” tall
Barbour was arrested. He weighed only 115 pounds at the time of his arrest. Furthermore, Barbour suffered from a brittle-bone disease and had a pin in his elbow at the time, making rape seem unlikely.

Hair taken from the scene did not match Barbour’s, and tests performed on the semen revealed only the presence of Type A blood. The victim had Type A blood, while Barbour had Type B.

At the trial, the principle evidence against Barbour was the eyewitness testimony of the victim, though he did not match the victim’s initial description, and no physical evidence tied him to the crime. His alibi, that he was watching television with his family and neighbors that night, was corroborated by three witnesses at trial.

www.innocenceproject.org/cases/marvin-anderson/

www.innocenceproject.org/cases/steven-avery/

Avery presented 16 alibi witnesses, including the clerk of a store in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who recalled Avery, accompanied by his wife and five children, buying paint from the store. A checkout tape put the purchase at 5:13 p.m

www.innocenceproject.org/cases/kirk-bloodsworth/
The description of the perpetrator was a 6 feet, 5 inches tall white man with curly blond hair, a bushy mustache, skinny, and tan. Bloodsworth was six feet, had red hair, and was well over 200 pounds.

www.innocenceproject.org/cases/kennedy-brewer/

www.innocenceproject.org/cases/timothy-bridges/
He served 25 years for a rape and burglary he didn't commit, largely based on erroneous testimony of an FBI-trained state hair analyst who claimed that his hair linked him to two hairs found at the scene

www.innocenceproject.org/cases/angel-gonzalez/

www.innocenceproject.org/cases/joseph-abbitt/
He was convicted in large part due to two eyewitness misidentifications, a contributing factor in 75 percent of wrongful convictions.

www.innocenceproject.org/cases/habib-wahir-abdal/
Though Abdal did not fit the description (he was six feet two and did not have a gap in his teeth), he was picked up over four months after the assault. The victim had been informed by police that Abdal was the suspect but she failed initially to identify him as her assailant. The victim then viewed a photo of Abdal that was four years old and eventually identified him as the perpetrator during a “show-up” procedure.

brasty · 29/03/2017 00:11

Those are not false rape allegations though. They are cases where a woman has been attacked and raped by a stranger, and then the wrong stranger has been identified.

Graphista · 29/03/2017 00:57

Omg! They DIDN'T Lie about being raped!

And mistaken identity is common in ALL crimes and is part of the human experience it is NOT proof a victim is lying!

Geez have you never even seen the krypton factor where contestants try to ID actors MOMENTS. After watching them in a scene WITHOUT a trauma/shock to deal with?!!!

Have you never heard of change blindness?

In at least one of the cases the witness/victim was misled by police manipulating a photo spread.

All of which means NOT false rape allegations.

Plus the innocence project is not without criticism having used techniques they criticise when others use them.

Re Dna evidence - it is NOT infallible AND relies on good quality evidence collection, storage and testing.

Nobody's guilt or innocence should be determined purely on one type/piece of evidence.

I watched the Louise Woodward trial in full - there's no way she should have been convicted, as she was, on basically one witnesses flawed evidence.

Look at all the parents convicted of killing their babies through shaken baby syndrome, the main dr who testified in a lot of uk cases of this got it massively wrong, there's now a lot of research coming through that strongly suggests there may even be no such thing as shaken baby syndrome or that it doesn't happen as was thought.

RufusTheRenegadeReindeer · 29/03/2017 07:53

auntie

I take it back

I apparently do have have a clue

That is not a case of a woman lying as brasty said

RufusTheRenegadeReindeer · 29/03/2017 07:54

No one said that innocent men are not ever accused

auntyhiro · 29/03/2017 17:20

There are people in here who suggest that men should instantly be jailed, that any notion of an accused man being innocent is erroneous!

Yet here we can see that men can have dozens of people as alibis, no DNA evidence, not identified by the victim and still end up in front of a judge.

Then should they by some divine providence escape there are numerous people claiming that it is a disgrace.

If these accusaations that are not true then these are:

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/jailed-nurse-who-falsely-accused-9964306

www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/news/local/officers-spent-up-to-20000-investigating-womans-rape-claim/

metro.co.uk/2017/02/23/woman-facing-jail-for-false-rape-allegations-against-her-ex-6467549/

OlennasWimple · 29/03/2017 17:24

What do you mean by "people in here" Auntyhiro? Posters on this thread? Where??

RufusTheRenegadeReindeer · 29/03/2017 17:36

You haven't been googling all this time have you?

RufusTheRenegadeReindeer · 29/03/2017 17:36

And again no one has said that there are no false claims

Graphista · 29/03/2017 19:03

It's partly BECAUSE they're SO rare they make big news when they do happen.

Wtf does 'people in here' mean?

AskBasil · 29/03/2017 20:22

"There are people in here who suggest that men should instantly be jailed, that any notion of an accused man being innocent is erroneous!"

No, there are not.

Nobody has ever said that a man should be instantly jailed.

Why do you think someone has said that, when nowhere on this thread or anywhere else, has anyone ever said that?

What's in it for you, to make up lies like this?

AskBasil · 29/03/2017 20:24

I'm genuinely interested btw. I realise that may have come across as aggressive. But it is a lie to say anyone here has said men should be jailed without a trial for any crime, rape or otherwise.

Or did you think that's what the posts meant? Are you not lying, just misinterpreting? But how can you have come to that conclusion, is it that you didn't read the posts properly?

I'm just fascinated by how someone can make such a massive claim based on no evidence whatsoever. It really derails any thread, because then people start denying that they think that, which is unnecessary, because they never said it. Is that the purpose of false statements like this?

RufusTheRenegadeReindeer · 29/03/2017 20:42

And it gets requoted later basil as fact

" some feminists on another thread were saying that men should be instantly jailed in cases of rape, there is no such thing as an innocent man"

Fact!!

RufusTheRenegadeReindeer · 29/03/2017 20:43

Then it will be on that reddit thread about mumsnet

"Mumsnet think men should be jailed for all crimes with no trial"

Fact

WeDoNotSow · 01/04/2017 10:49

AskBasil it's a typical straw man logic.
There's no logical argument to the actual point, so I'll just create another unrelated point, that I do have a logical argument for...
It doesn't make sens, and just distracts from the discussion

TabascoToastie · 01/04/2017 13:47

There are people in here who suggest that men should instantly be jailed, that any notion of an accused man being innocent is erroneous!
How can you flat out lie, and invent such massive, obvious lies? What on earth is wrong with you??

Yet here we can see that men can have dozens of people as alibis, no DNA evidence, not identified by the victim and still end up in front of a judge.
Because of poor policework, not because women are vengeful lying bitches who fake rape. It's a million times more likely a legit rape case will never come to court due to police/CPS unwillingness to prosecute even with evidence, than an innocent man end up in court despite no evidence.

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