To be angry about the Oritse Williams rape case?

[prettyinpink23x]

He's been found not guilty today by a Jury.

So many people on twitter are saying 'name and shame the woman, she's lied' 'she deserves a prison sentence'. This is infuriating! Do these people not realise that 'not guilty' does not equate with innocent and it doesn't mean she's lied?

Is it unreasonable for me to be angry about this?

Having known 3 falsely accused men I think YABU

HAHAHA. OH MY GOD. You CAN’T be that naive surely??

Because it’s much easier to penetrate someone who’s severely intoxicated than to be penetrated by someone who’s severely intoxicated - this is a fact of nature. It’s not impossible and I’m sure it happens but do you think it happens often

It’s a false equivalency because of the power imbalance between men and women and the fact that the overwhelming majority of sexual assaults / rapes are perpetrated by men.

But how do we know how often it happens if it isn't reported? And you say that it's not as easy for women to have sex with an intoxicated man - but surely that depends on how intoxicated he is? And many people argue that a woman is unable to give consent if she is drunk, not unconscious or falling down drunk, so how many women are having sex with drunk men? I reckon that's a lot. How can a drunk man consent if a drunk woman can't?

I think we put the onus on men to obtain consent without making women see that they are equally responsible for obtaining enthusiastic consent from their partners too. I was watching an interview over the weekend from a man woken up at college by his girlfriend having sex with him. He felt that he had been assaulted but was laughed at by the police when he reported it - so actually I do wonder how prevalent it is. Probably very common and just not reported because of the attitude that men should think themselves lucky.

Having known 3 falsely accused men I think YABU

Aye right!

Were you present at the time of the alleged offences? Have the accusers been prosecuted and found guilty of falsely accusing? How do you know these men?

Far far more likely that at least one IS a rapist and entirely possible all 3 are.

A lack of conviction doesn't make that less true.,

Lots of "whataboutery" on this thread

What about false accusations - when we know these are extremely rare

What about boys/men assaulted by women -slightly more feasible but still vastly outweighed by huge number of assaults by boys/men on girls/women.

It's distraction and doesn't mean that the current system isn't woefully inadequate at prosecuting rapists and sexual abusers.

Having known 3 falsely accused men I think YABU

You know 3 cases personally where it was proven that the accuser was lying? Wow, that is quite something!

Nothing could be less in the interests of justice than naming women who say they have been raped when the alleged rapist isn’t convicted. No woman would ever come forward again.

Rape is notoriously hard to prosecute and false allegations vanishingly rare. For those reasons alone no woman should be named where an alleged rapist isn’t convicted.

Remember that we also live in a society where more and more men are getting away with murdering women because 'she liked it rough m' lord'.

I can't believe people think the system is stacked against men!

What about boys/men assaulted by women -slightly more feasible but still vastly outweighed by huge number of assaults by boys/men on girls/women.

Surely that depends on how you are defining "assault"?

Do you think a drunk woman can consent to sex? If so, how drunk does she need to be before you consider her incapable of consenting?

I think there are lots of people, men and women, having sex with very drunk partners. Do no, don't think the numbers are low, they just aren't reported.

I also keep seeing on here that the number of false accusations are low - how are these statistics collected? How are false allegations determined?

I think we put the onus on men to obtain consent without making women see that they are equally responsible for obtaining enthusiastic consent from their partners too. I was watching an interview over the weekend from a man woken up at college by his girlfriend having sex with him. He felt that he had been assaulted but was laughed at by the police when he reported it - so actually I do wonder how prevalent it is. Probably very common and just not reported because of the attitude that men should think themselves lucky

Sexual crimes against anyone are horrific and should be prosecuted, and if I had my way we’d have a much more effective way of convicting people.

But you are absolutely full of shit if you think it’s “probably very common” for women to sexually assault men - based on what? We know how common sexual assault against women is. Why do you want to believe that sexual assault by women on men is “very common” when there’s no evidence of that?

I don't think she deserves anonymity because he has had to face public scrutiny and I can't imagine that has been very nice.

Who benefits from the accuser being named? Unless you think people should be punished for thinking they’ve been assaulted (whether they are right or wrong) and reporting it? Is that genuinely what you’re saying? You think anyone who reports a crime that doesn’t result in a conviction should be publicly shamed? Again, who benefits from that?

Why do most women go back to the hotels of "famous" people?

Wuh?

Next up, comments about the type of underwear she was wearing.....

And while we don't know the details we know she never went back to have a chat

How do you know that? How do you know a chat isn’t exactly what she went there for? Or to have more drinks? Or to use his loo in his room? Or because she’d lost her purse and couldn’t get a taxi home and he offered for her to sleep there? Or she just wanted to lie down for a bit until she felt able to get herself home?

The whole case should never had been made public and 3 years to get to trial is an absolute fucking joke

This is a truly depressing thread. I don't even know where to start. Anonymity for men, no anonymity for (mainly) women who report rape, why do women go back to hotel rooms...

Those of you who are women who have those views, you're like turkeys voting for Christmas.

I've reported rape to the police, case didn't even get to court and of course my ex told anyone who would listen that I was a bitter ex falsely accusing him. The amount of women who sided with him. A bit like on here really, truly dreadful.

I haven't read the full thread.

I don't think anybody involved should be allowed to be named in the media until actually convicted.

Unfortunately some people lie for attention, and some people are of course rapists.

There is a court of law to determine who is telling the truth and that's just the way it works, which can be shit for people wrongly accused or people who have been assaulted if things don't go in their favour.

Just as much as the accuser could be telling the truth, Oritsé could also have been wrongly accused. It's not fair to always assume that the accuser must be telling the truth, because that's deeply unfair to people wrongly accused.

I don't know what the right answer is but it's not fair to continue to vilify a man who has been found not guilty.

You could bother looking at the actual data / studies if you were genuinely curious about these things, other than just attempting to derail threads about violence against women.

Here, I’ll even link you some info:
www.cps.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/publications/perverting_course_of_justice_march_2013.pdf

You’ll notice that a significant proportion of the false allegations weren’t originally made by the alleged victim, but often by a family member / parent.

Also this: www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-men-are-more-likely-to-be-raped-than-be-falsely-accused-of-rape

Undoubtedly, there will be other cases of false allegations being made where there was not enough evidence to bring a prosecution of wasting police time or perverting the course of justice. But we don’t have data to quantify this (and these wouldn’t be going to court or leading to convictions)

Overall, in the CPS’ view, false allegations of rape are “serious but rare”. They estimate that there is one prosecution for a false rape claim out of every 161 rape cases prosecuted. That means — according to the best available data — false allegations make up 0.62 per cent of all rape cases.

And also this from the ONS on how few cases get past the very earliest stage, let alone to a trial:

In the year ending March 2018, a charge or summons outcome was assigned to 3% of the 53,970 rape offences. However, 24% of rape offences recorded in this year have yet to be assigned an outcome. If these are excluded, the rate increases to 5% (HO Table 10). This lower rate for rape offences may reflect that these crimes can be difficult to investigate due to a lack of corroborating evidence or, in cases concerning two adults, where there are complex decisions to be made around consent and one person’s word against another

There were 6,012 rape-flagged cases referred to the CPS from the police that resulted in a finalised charging decision in the year ending March 2018. This is a fall of 599 cases (9%) from the previous year (6,611 cases; CPS Table 2). In comparison, rape offences recorded by the police increased by 30% during the same period (HO Table 3).

But you are absolutely full of shit if you think it’s “probably very common” for women to sexually assault men - based on what?

Based on the assumption that drunk people can't consent. What makes someone too drunk to consent? It isn't being unconscious is it, so how do we determine it? If we say it's just being drunk - then yes, a lot of men and women are having sex with partners too drunk to consent.

As for this case - he was found not guilty and so the speculation has to end there.

If you want a conversation about low conviction rates why does it have to be done in connection with a specific case?

Deathgrip thanks for posting what I'm too exhausted to. The conviction rate for rape is barely 6%. Do people really think that 94% of men were falsely accused and that all those (mainly) women, girls and boys were lying when they came forward? And yet some on here still want anonymity for men unless they're convicted, but won't comment on the fact that Jimmy Savile would never have been found out if that were law.

This really is a war on women, by other women too. Shameful.

Nice try but that’s not what you said. You said:

I was watching an interview over the weekend from a man woken up at college by his girlfriend having sex with him. He felt that he had been assaulted but was laughed at by the police when he reported it - so actually I do wonder how prevalent it is. Probably very common and just not reported because of the attitude that men should think themselves lucky

The conversation is about people who believe that an accuser should be prosecuted if an alleged rapist is found not guilty. Conviction rates are a crucial part of that discussion.

What makes someone too drunk to consent? It isn't being unconscious is it

Meh, even if she is unconscious it doesn't seem to matter, its still not rape apparently, especially if she 'went back to his for not-a-chat'.

Deathgrip

My question is how can anyone quantify the number of false allegations, and your post doesn't answer that other than the CPS trying to guess at the number. Based on what though?

This paragraph that you quoted is concerning

Undoubtedly, there will be other cases of false allegations being made where there was not enough evidence to bring a prosecution of wasting police time or perverting the course of justice. But we don’t have data to quantify this

So how many false allegations and why do they not have the data to quantify it?

How many of the not guilty verdicts are false allegations? I doubt that anyone can answer that question. But equally I don't understand how you can assert that the number is so low as to not be worth talking about.

This was a discussion on the feminist board recently and people asked for ways in which conviction rates could be improved and no one could really answer it and there lies the difficulty. When it boils down to he said/she said how can you prove beyond reasonable doubt?

This really is a war on women, by other women too. Shameful

Yes it is.

I am tired of it all. I’m tired of the bullshit that’s being spewed on this thread. How are we not rioting in the streets about the absolute joke of a system that means 98.3% of reported cases (so maybe 10-20% of all actual cases) are not prosecuted? And people say we don’t need feminism any more, we have equality - fuck that.

I’m sick of reading “oh but what about the poor men being falsely accused and their lives being ruined” next to “yeah, it’s a bit shit for the victims when there are no consequences”.

Meh, even if she is unconscious it doesn't seem to matter, its still not rape apparently, especially if she 'went back to his for not-a-chat'.

Which is clearly ridiculous. I'm talking about the less black and white situations though. What is too drunk to consent?

I don't see how anyone outside of the court case can even comment on this case - the reports are sketchy to say the least and give so few details that all you can do is to accept the verdict.

How are we not rioting in the streets about the absolute joke of a system that means 98.3% of reported cases (so maybe 10-20% of all actual cases) are not prosecuted

But why are they not prosecuted, and how can that be remedied?