To not automatically support my male friend (potentially triggering!)

[User14356]

Agh this is keeping me up tonight, sorry if it’s a bit rambly

My very close, male friend (totally platonic) picked up a woman last weekend at a club. I had left earlier in the night, from what I was told, they were drunk, she had a screaming argument with her friend and then he took her home. Things were done but they didn’t have full sex.

Cut to today and I get a worried message from my male friend saying he has been contacted by this girl saying he took advantage, he is a sex offender and that she’s going to go to the police. This text message was sent at 4am and badly spelled so the assumption is that she was drunk.

I want to believe my friend, but I’m now massively morally split, between not wanting to call this girl a liar, but then not being there for him if the accusations are blown out or false. For now, I’ve been supportive. Is there any way to manage this situation without taking sides- AIBU to have doubts about my friend?

Shatners

I think my response is rather obvious.

If it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt...?

But I do think that legislators in the U.K. need to be rather careful. In my homecountry a female politician accused a male one of rape. The medical exams were inconclusive, the hospital messed up etc.
She continued to be very open about what had happened (in her opinion...)

He then threatened to sue her for defamation, ruined her career etc. He’s still a rather successful man. Her name is mud / she’s a national joke.

As for your question about anonymity. I have often believed that the identity of everyone involved should be protected in cases like this. At least during the trial.

This would protect real victims of rape (in the case of the rapist not being sentenced) from an in some cases extremely vindictive public and it would also protect people wrongly accused of rape.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that I’d support what one might call a ‘gag order’ / think that the people involved shouldn’t be allowed to talk to the press, btw.

Rufustherenegadereindeer1 I didn't mean to be patronising and was speaking generally. Many apologies if it appeared that way.

ReanimatedSGB years ago is not now. Besides, look at the numbers not the percentages. At the very minimum it's hundreds of lives affected. How many is too many? Emma Beale may be the exception but she accused 15 men before she was held to account. Are you saying that it's OK for men to have their lives ruined because it isn't enough of them, and that those so affected just have to suck it up?

AssasinatedBeauty it's the CICB and statistica are only useful if they record whatever it is that statisticians wish to scrutenise. No-one in authority is interested in false accusations per se. They are only interested in getting prosecutions, hence the recent revelations regarding disclosure. Apparently 40% of trials have disclosure issues. That hardly inspires confidence. The DPP pointed out that not every person found not guilty is innocent. True. But the opposite must also be true - that not every person found guilty is guilty.

You do know the police do not have to hand evidence over to the defense? automatically the defense team has to ask for everything (they cannot ask for things they do not know about).

The prosecution has access to everything and make judgement calls on what to pass to the defense, forensic evidence is tested in the same lab (if using the provided for law Representative) so if the lab made an error they are likely to make it again (no law saying a different technician has to do the procedure or even that it has to be run several times as error can and do occur).

This sort of thing highlights the main problem for me about we believe you campaign, as we believe you are telling the truth so no matter what the person you have accused is guilty and then people start saying that false accusations are rare etc (yes they are not common) but cases of mistaken identity are far more frequent as witness testimony as in facial reconsecration is sketchy at best and has been proven the case numerous times and i have been involved with cases based primarily on witness statements no physically evidence and in one case i had which looked like he was going to be found guilty it came to light that he was over 10 miles away at the time of the crime as CCTV put him somewhere else and if that footage had not come to light he would of been convicted as she was sure it was him the jury / prosecution/ police all thought he had committed the crime but thankfully he was lucky and proven innocent.

I feel sorry for the victim as she was raped no doubt about it just the person she had identified from a line up was not the person who had committed the crime so she would no get justice for her ordeal (the police thinking he was guilty did not bother to get the CCTV form were he said he was it took the defense and judge to force them to act, this was nearly 10 years ago and i still see the police / prosecution not doing their job fully (as in the more recent cases of not handing over the damning texts which proved beyond doubt it was consensual).

So while she had not lied about being raped she could of identified the wrong person and without physically evidence its nearly impossible to prove guilt never mind innocence which is far harder to do (hence why our courts is that to prove guilt not for the defendant to prove innocence).

worried I never subscribed to the MN "I/webelieve you" thing. It infers something potentially dangerous. What I felt it should have been is "I am/we are listening" and ensuring that those reporting an incident are treated seriously and that themselves feel that to be the case.

There's simply not the political will to charge for it. False accusations only get charged in the more extreme circumstances (i.e. the suspect ends up in custody or lots of time and money is spent on investigating multiple allegations) There are many many more which don't fit this bracket so are not charged and don't count in the statistics.

The former DPP insisted that all prosecutions for false rape/dv allegations were sent to him for a charging decision! It doesn't get any more political than that.

And before anyone calls me a rape apoligiest or someother such nonsense i was just high lighting the current problems with the justice system be it the police not being through with there investigation, the CPS not passing key evidence to the defence team (as in why should they, if it calls into doubt their entire case the are more likely to burial it then pass it on and be found to have wasted a lot of tax payers money) or the forseinc teams that can make errors as no test is 100% perfect be it human error or system error, and cost cutting means that it gets muddeir as all tests a only carried out by the same lab (no longer being sent to mutilpy labs).

Its not so simple problem.

I never subscribed to the MN "I/webelieve you" thing. It infers something potentially dangerous. What I felt it should have been is "I am/we are listening" and ensuring that those reporting an incident are treated seriously and that themselves feel that to be the case

100% agree

The DPP pointed out that not every person found not guilty is innocent. True. But the opposite must also be true - that not every person found guilty is guilty.

Yes. But there is imo a big ‘but.

Being found guilty is about the likelihood of the accused being guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Being found “not guilty” however is not about there being no reasonable doubt in regards to the accused’s innocence.

If this was a question about being proven to be guilty vs being proven to be innocent (in both scenarios with the same threshold...)? that argument would be extremely convincing imo.

But this isn’t how modern justice systems work. It’s not a system of exhonoration or in ‘dubio pro victim’ (I haven’t had Latin in ages...)

Please may I just say thank you to everyone for such a reasonable and reasoned discussion. I am so often shot down in flames for daring to even think that women and girls lie about such a heinous crime. It's a refreshing change and I really appreciate it. :-)

Please may I just say thank you to everyone for such a reasonable and reasoned discussion. I am so often shot down in flames for daring to even think that women and girls lie about such a heinous crime. It's a refreshing change and I really appreciate it

They haven't got safety in numbers yet. Give it time.....

So you doubt the statistics due to the reasons given. Does this lead you to believe that false allegations are more common than these flawed stats tell us, which means in this example where no one knows what actually happened it is equally likely that this woman is lying? Or perhaps more likely that she is lying?

The point of "we believe you" was that this is what happens in all other crimes.

Assassinated So what do you feel should happen to those who accuse someone of rape when it is proved they were lying (as opposed to mistaken identity)?

The same as for any other crime.

I don't see the accuser of Liam Allen being named or prosecuted. She's still anonymous.

Other crimes generally have other evidence. What do you think would happen if I walked into a police station to complain about a theft but couldn't say what was stolen? Or if I accused someone of arson but nothing had been burned? Would anyone find themselves in court just because I said so? Can I get someone prosecuted for harassment without some evidence of communication with me? All a prosecution for a sexual offence needs,especially an historical one, is a statement from me, should I choose to make it. 'We believe you' doesn't apply in all other crimes, not by a long shot.

I never subscribed to the MN "I/webelieve you" thing. It infers something potentially dangerous. What I felt it should have been is "I am/we are listening" and ensuring that those reporting an incident are treated seriously and that themselves feel that to be the case

But how do you guarantee that’s the case without saying ‘I believe you’? Surely ‘we are listening’ is just another way of saying ‘you better get your facts straight or that’s your chance gone’?

Do you have the name of the compensation scene for victims of sexual assault Megs? I haven’t heard of this before.

I not once said they were lying, i said that mistaken identity is far more common than false accusations, its why witnesses are perviced to be so unreal able because its a proven fact that the vast majority of peoples reconistion of things is sketchy at best numerous experiments have proven this (though there are people can remember every detail but theses are rare).

So using the we believe you implies that the person they accuse / identify as the perpetrator are guilty no matter what (which is dangerous as it plays into the myth no smoke without fire bull crap which IS nearly as damaging as rape myths, as why bother having a trail in the first place someone accused him of something they MUST have done it if he was found not guilty he is just a rapist that got away with it).

If there's enough evidence then the cps will no doubt start a prosecution. She can't be named until then.

I'd put money on them not prosecuting, just as they didn't in the de Freitas case mentioned up thread. In both cases, there was irrefutable evidence. Unlike in the actual cases against the men they accused.

@Megs4x3 do you know of many cases that have made it to court simply because a woman says that a man has sexually assaulted/raped her? Just on her statements alone? Do those cases usually lead to a guilty verdict and compensation for the victim?

Are you privy to the irrefutable evidence @ShatnersWig? You'd think that the CPS would be up for an easy win if that was the case. Where do you think the political will to avoid prosecuting lying women comes from? Is it from within the CPS, or is it from government?

Meg highlights why rape will never get the same conviction rates as other crimes because a lot of the time the evidence boils down to he said / she said sceniro and unless we go down the route that i have seen some people sprout (that in court the woman's word equals more that the blokes as she has undergone examination etc).

In court theft is so hard to prove in cases were there has not been physical evidence of force able taken (aka dna on a broken window) someone will not be convicted of theft if someone simply said person A stole this piece of property, person B says that person A gave them said piece of property and no phyical evidence supporting ether said they will not be convicted.

So like for like example (i really hate comparing Rape to theft but i needed a good example to show that no one for any other crime is convicted for someones word alone and i don't want it ever to be the case).

So using the we believe you implies that the person they accuse / identify as the perpetrator are guilty no matter what

No it doesn’t - it means they have to prove they are innocent, just like in any other crime.

And Megs, that metaphor isn’t accurate - if you had sex with someone there would be evidence that sex had occurred. Your metaphor only works if you say your laptop was stolen but then have to convince the police that you didn’t want it to be stolen.

Assassinated I quoted it earlier in the thread with regard to the recent Liam Allen case. A text sent by the alleged victim herself to a friend admitting the sex was not against her will, followed by many texts to Allen after he had allegedly raped her asking him to meet up for more sex. It's in the public domain.

I don't know where the decision are being made. I suspect there is concern that prosecuting these women would put genuine victims coming forward. They already feel they will be doubted because of the low prosecution rate; now they may feel they could be prosecuted if the defendant gets off.

Pumper No. The justice system is based on guilt being proved, not innocence being proved.