Article on false abuse allegations

[PermanentTemporary]

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/04/how-eleanor-williamss-lies-about-grooming-and-abuse-unravelled

Guardian link.

Horrific story. Nothing that is not damaging and poisonous about it. Simply put, a young woman with a criminal history and almost certainly huge psychological and personality problems set up an entirely false story about being raped and abused by a gang of Asian men in her town. To the point of injuring herself to make horrible SM posts. The racist and social fallout has been devastating.

I remember not protesting when the MN campaign 'We believe you' happened, and it doesn't get mentioned much these days. Because a positive process of supporting women who suffered sexual crimes in plain sight without anyone believing them can itself be abused. The rule of law must be maintained but the people who implement that are as damaged as the rest of us; we have to hope ultimately that the process will give us some protection.

I'm probably not alone in getting less and less likely to support online campaigns and petitions. Things like this are too easily used to damage and persecute.

The guy who was accused was on the local news tonight. The biggest upset to him was how people who he'd known and been friendly with his whole life, would refuse to speak to him. It was very sad.
Part of his psyche has been ruined forever.

It's depressing now mich coverage this is getting compared to the thousands of women and girls who have been trafficked and raped.

I read Bindel's article about Blackpool and Charlene Downes who disappeared at the age of 14 after being groomed. Two men were charged with her murder but released. A teenage girl was raped by multiple men and murdered and no one has ever been prosecuted.

Women's lives are cheap

No one is denying the awful things that happened to those groomed girls and women. People were and are very supportive about it. That's exactly why people believed this young woman over her victim.

This man has suffered all sorts because of her lies. Doesn't he deserve support and sympathy too?

I heard another man she accused, Jordan, on the radio yesterday and I think it’s good this is getting coverage. The things the men went through were horrific and He deserves to have as much coverage as possible to clear his name.

His story here -
amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/03/i-went-downhill-man-falsely-accused-of-on-becoming-a-hate-figure

I think this story highlights police incompetence, how did it take them so long to realise their ‘evidence’ was made up? Did the pressures of social media campaigning lead them to make decisions they may not otherwise have made?

I don’t think we should shy away from discussing this in the fear other women may not be believed. We can’t just pretend it never happens. Previously I believed above all else we need to ensure women are believed l and their rapists are punished but reading these things, I think it would be naive to believe that a false allegation wont affect the men as much as a real allegation will affect the women, so it needs to be done right, especially with regards to Witch hunts started on social media before proven guilty.

This is a truly exceptional and very disturbing case. The fact that a young woman self inflicts injuries with a claw hammer to the point of becoming unresponsive on multiple occasions is so extreme I don't think the police would have initially doubted her claims. They did determine quite early on however that she wasn't telling the truth at which point she went public with her 'story' and then, of course, her community were outraged.

I wondered whether her own family (presumably knowing or suspecting the truth) should have done more to denounce what was being said.

You can recognise the awfulness of this case and the truly terrible impact on the man falsely accused however and still support campaigns about believing women. False allegations might happen but they are so rare that it's still ok to work on the presumption that women and girls are telling the truth and to speak up in support. Im sure the women mentioned in the article (designing logos etc) feel betrayed, as would anyone, but one case does not change the course of history which is that women and girls are all too often at risk of violence and sexual abuse by predatory men.

Yes he does. It has nothing to do with feminism though.

On that we agree. I have no idea why it's on this board either.

Yes I agree.
Also on this reporting we arent getting stories about women who have been raped and disbelieved "for balance"

I still support campaigns to improve the experience for victims of sexual assault and will carry on doing so until the likelihood of rapists seeing justice is improved. At the moment rape is effectively decriminalised.

I do have a lot of sympathy for the men affected by this woman. I also have a lot of sympathy for the thousands of women raped who aren't believed and can't get justice as society seem to believe a potential false allegation against a man is a more serious issue than actually being raped.

It strikes me that this case is incredibly unusual, almost uniquely so. To have someone who would so severely injure themselves deliberately in an effort to support their claims and be so determined to push provably false allegations, is just so bizarre. I can't think I've ever heard of anything like it.

It's very very clear to me that this case tells us nothing about the general state of false allegations of rape in terms of numbers or in terms of the reasons behind it. I wish these articles would have clear information about the fact that rape has no more false allegations than any other crime and that it is very rare for people (women) to be prosecuted in this way.

I guess I've posted it here because the FWR board gets more thoughtful and intelligent responses.

Reading Against Our Will I remember that Susan Brownmiller was told in the early 70s that race was used in the US as a racist weapon by white women and men against Black men in the US, and that was how she should write about rape. She took the radical decision to investigate rape from a feminist viewpoint and to broaden that perspective. I think feminists should always know what events are feeding into the wider culture's view of rape.

I think what separates this case from most rape cases is that there was a solid alibi for one of the accused - he was in police custody the night he'd supposedly raped her. That's the main issue with securing a rape conviction.

It's depressing now mich coverage this is getting compared to the thousands of women and girls who have been trafficked and raped.

I always think this when the focus is on the transatlantic slave trade hundreds of years ago. There are something like 4x the number of slaves in the world now than were trafficked over the whole 400 years of the slave trade, yet people would rather talk about the past and about reparations for distant relatives of those slaves.

Of course, one doesn't cancel out the other but it's weird to hear people argue that we need to educate society on the past to avoid it happening again, whilst simultaneously ignoring that it is happening right now worse than ever.

It was mentioned on here a while back and people just brushed it off saying the figure was so high now because of the huge increase in population. Still doesn't make it acceptable in my eyes.

There’s a piece about the guy accused of being the ringleader here. These men’s lives have been turned upside down.

www.lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/my-business-destroyed-children-targeted-25915804

I think it’s a really unusual case in that she went to great extremes to make the public believe her, but the impact on these men can’t be ignored. It does undermine genuine victims, massively.

But.. relevant to feminist concerns?
there are horrible stories on every side and counter-side of abuse (any kind of abuse).
No-one thinks false allegations of any kind is admirable or appropriate.
But it’s one case.. ONE case.. how many women were raped or sexually assaulted today in the uk?
how many will get justice of be believed or if they talk won’t lose friends?
I know.. I’m one of them.

No, I’m not sure this is the right board for the discussion. I agree with you there @Facecream .

From a feminist perspective, the problem is how damaging this case has the potential to be for genuine victims. I really hope it will be seen as the isolated case it appears to be.

Agree this has nothing to do with feminism or We Believe You. In fact I think it's pretty low to mention this at all in the context of We Believe You. The abuse and degradation of women is not lessened one jot by a troubled individual. And if people choose to disbelieve women because one woman lied that's on them.