Would you stay with a partner accused of rape?

[Scrapper142]

Inspired by news and personal experience, interested to know, would you stay and if you have experienced it, did stay or get out?

Ed Westwicks gf has been defending him and said she believes he's innocent. Although postponed getting engaged.

The man who raped me is happily in a new relationship. It's something I don't tend to think about, but his name was tagged in a fb post on my feed his week and in a moment of weakness I looked. There was a picture of his gf blissfully happy.

I just wonder how she stays with him (assuming she knows). I'm sure if she has been told it's an edited and manipluated version. But I expect she is completely unaware and unaware of the reality of the man she is sharing her life with. It makes me so sad for her and then so fucking angry (that he can do this).

It's strange as I feel connected to this complete stranger, I know it's not my problem but I can't help but worry about her. Then I think she'd probably never want to hear or accept the truth anyway?!?!

Xpost with Tammy.

I'd have difficulty believing DH did something like that if accused because my own experience of him says he wouldn't.

I'd have to honestly evaluate whether he has ever shown a hint of dominant behaviour or a hesitation in responding to my cues, especially the word 'no'. I'd consider that even in the context of normal things, not just sex. I'd think carefully about how he talks about women in general. Has he ever ever commented on a woman in a derogatory way. Does he join in with banter that reduces women to notches on the bedpost? Is he secretive in general and do I feel he holds back parts of himself from me. How does he flirt? How did he behave when we first met and I was a stranger? What's his porn use like? Etc etc.

Many 'nice' 'normal' men are capable of rape unfortunately in my opinion but you have to remember that some are not. My DHs job brings him in contact with some of the worst people in society (not necessarily their fault) but on a daily basis he deals with people who lie and cheat and have no empathy. So I am quite aware of how broken some people are and how capable they are if ruining someone's life for whatever reason they feel justified in doing so. Having said that I think false rape accusations are rare. So I would consider very very carefully all of the above before doing my best to decide whether the accusation had any weight.

It's s tough situation for anyone to be in. We are conditioned to believe our loved ones are not monsters.

A more interesting question would be for me how many people would stand by their sons who were guilty (not just accused) of rape?

If someone accused my OH of rape i'd laugh it off, because I know he wouldn't do that. If someone accused my ex? I'd be backing them all the way cos he's more likely to have done it than not.

Sadly it is far too easy to cry rape sometimes, & i say that as someone who has been raped three seperate times. None of the men who attacked me have ever made it to police interview stage. I know someone who was jealous of her friend's relationship & accused her fella of rape; it caused a lot of problems. She got away with false accusations too.

ILoveLamp if I found out my son had raped anyone there wouldn't need to be a trial. I'd bury him myself. Then spend my life wondering how the f**k he felt it was acceptable to treat a woman that way; i suspect all our aims as parents is to bring our kids up to respect others regardless of gender

I'm sorry, but rapists aren't all innocent until proven guilty. Very few rapists are convicted. I was raped (more than once) by an ex partner and i didn't ever report it, because it was some time later that i realised he wasn't allowed to do that (as stupid as that sounds).
I believe there are actually a few cases where a woman has been raped, the man been acquitted and then the victim prosecuted.
Very much not innocent until proven guilty when it comes to rape, sexual assault, child sexual abuse imo.

My response would depend on various factors I suppose but I'd never be declaring him innocent - I couldn't possibly know, and the narrative that all rapists are sexual predators is how regular men get away with this.

This. Given how many rape charges actually make it to court (not many, and most of those that don’t make it to court aren’t false accusations) I’d be inclined to think there must be some truth to it, as horrible as that is and despite me knowing my dp inside out. False accusations are vanishingly rare, no more common than false accusations for other crimes. So if someone accused my dp, I’d have no reason not to believe them like I believe other victims of sexual assault/rape.

It would turn my world upside down but knowing what I know about rape statistics I couldn’t just blindly stand by him under the assumption that he didn’t do it.

Feel awful writing that but it is what it is.

But there is another side to that too. The police officer i spoke to when i reported one of my attacks told me the reason very few reported cases go to court (i believe the statistic was 6%) is because there are so many cases of women crying rape. There was a spate of cases when i attended Uni of girls having a one night stand - willingly leaving their group of friends to disappear with a bloke - then regretting it & calling rape. In fact we ended up having some long winded lecture about it by the local police!

I wish more genuine victims had the strength to come forward, & I wish that mire genuine cases were prosecuted & tbh the bastards hung. But just as many accused are guilty, there are sadly some accusers who are lying. I don't ever understand what someone thinks they will gain from lying because the process of reporting is hell on earth!!

In my book all people are innocent until proven through a court of law to be guilty.

But many people walk out of court free when in fact they did do the crime, murderers, rapists etc. The legal system isn’t fool proof.

To put this innocent until proven guilty concept to the test, imagine two separate children at your child's nursery / school accuse a staff member of abusing them. The CPS don't have enough evidence to take it to court.

Are you happy for that person to continue working with your child?

I think ilovelamp is right - you need to assess their behaviour and think seriously about whether there have been any clues. Then again, if your partner genuinely loves you they're likely to treat you differently to others in the past they haven't loved.

I've been with 8 mean, assaulted or raped by four of them, and i would say there are only two of them that I would really struggle to believe they'd done anything like that, but I'd still never publicly state that they definitely hadn't since I can't possibly know that.

The majority of the men responsible for all the recent MeToos don't even consider themselves to be abusers / rapists.

This ^^

The police officer i spoke to when i reported one of my attacks told me the reason very few reported cases go to court (i believe the statistic was 6%) is because there are so many cases of women crying rape

That police officer was talking bollocks then because false rape accusations are no more common than false accusations of other crimes.

The reason so many cases don’t get to court is because there often isn’t enough evidence, that doesn’t equate to the accusation being false.

There was a spate of cases when i attended Uni of girls having a one night stand - willingly leaving their group of friends to disappear with a bloke - then regretting it & calling rape.
You do realise that consent is on going? A woman can change her mind at any point during the act. Just because a woman willingly disappears with a bloke doesn’t mean he didn’t rape or assault her in some way.

I have a very close friend.
Her husband, out of the blue was accused of rape of a child.
The subsequent investigation turned up loads of stuff on his computer etc.

She was in total shock, and for several weeks in a complete fog, not knowing where to start.
But they had kids, so from day one, she took his keys off him and asked him to leave. She said that no matter what the end result was, she HAD to be 100% certain that she had done everything to safeguard her kids.
I remember being really impressed, and wondered if I would be as strong in her position. At that point she knew nothing except that he had been questioned on this charge, he could have been innocent, but she had told him to leave and hand over his keys!!

I knew him well too, and it was, and still is, shocking and hard to believe from the man I knew.

In the end the evidence was huge, and no doubt, but what would it have been like if the computer evidence hadn't been there? An accusation, from a family with many issues and a mother known to lie a lot? Who would you believe?

After he was arrested it was like his personality unravelled in front of them, as if the person we all thought he was was a mask.

made me realise that you can never know about anyone.

My current partner? (DH) yes I absolutely would unless it was proved definitively that he was guilty. The reason? I am 100% sure that he is not capable of such a thing. We have lived together for over 12 years, have shared everything and I believe I know him as well as it is possible to know a person.

If it was a boyfriend I'd been with for a few months and therefor didn't know that well, I think I'd be far less inclined to give him he benefit of the doubt.

Men do rape. But women do also make false claims. To say you would absolutely fall on one side or the other regardless of the circumstances or people involved is not rational.

mustbemad if a police officer actually said that to you, they're not only lying but shouldn't be working with sexual assault victims at all. The reason the CPS often cannot pursue these cases is lack of evidence, not the proliferation of false claims. Many women drop their claims, that doesn't mean they're false, it means the process is horrific.

You're right steppemum you can't ever really know anyone. My mum was married to my father for a very long time, had two kids with him, obviously knew me better than anyone but had no idea he'd been abusing me when I visited him. People are very blinkered in this area sadly. One in 20 kids are sexually abused, do you think all the spouses of these men are aware of it?

Men do rape. But women do also make false claims

Whilst this is true, let’s not pretend that there are equal amounts of women making false claims as there are men raping and assaulting women.

The proportion of men who rape and assault women is huge in comparison to women making false rape claims.**

Tammy - actually I USED to think that is wasn't possible for someone to be an abuser without their spouse being in some way implicit, they must know something was goign on, they must have realised that there were issues, they must have questions about their spouse etc.

It was only when this happened to my friend taht I realised that it is possible for this to be going on completely without the spouse's knowledge.

My friend did think her dh was worrying about something, that he had something on his mind, and had been that way for months. She tried to get him to talk about it, and even suggested trusted men friends that he might want to talk to.
She thought he might be depressed, had suggested the GP.

But there was NOTHING, just NOTHING that would have told her the actual problem.

They were together for about 12 years and had kids and were, she thought, really close.

I have been with my dh for 19 years. There is no way he would do anything like this. Obviously, none of us would be with our partners if we though that they were capable of this. Unless we are in an abusive relationships, we all think our partners are safe. we have to trust someone at some point.

But I have to face up to the fact that I could be wrong, and if the evidence came out, convicted or not, I would have to face it.

Like others, I can't imagine my dh ever being in a situation where he would even be unfaithful to me, let alone do it without someone else's consent. That's why I'm with him.

But I absolutely have partners from the past that I would, even at the time we were together, not have been too shocked about such an allegation. Obviously, I kind of knew they were jerks and they weren't very kind to me. Me being the person I am now, no I wouldn't have wasted my life on someone who could have gotten themselves in a situation of being accused of rape, regardless of whether or not the allegations were proven to be true. But I did a lot of dumb things when I was younger. One of my first boyfriends was under investigation for accessory to attempted murder when we met (his friend nearly killed someone and he helped him by coming to pick him up and hide him from the police). My dumbass 17 year old self probably wouldn't have had the guts to leave as I obviously didn't in that situation. Hindsight is always 20/20 though, isn't it?

That said, I don't think it's all that uncommon for sexual predators to manipulate everyone around them, especially their partners. My MIL is married to a convicted paedophile (her 2nd marriage, not my dh's dad). She was with him when it happened (he sexually assaulted his niece) and supported him all through the trial and his prison sentence and still does, to the point of lying to everyone around her about it and trying on his request to facilitate his access to children in her own family. But she is so manipulated by him and believes everything his says no matter how preposterous. Like, she believes he is completely innocent and it's all just a government conspiracy against them (never mind all the forensic semen evidence they have which got him convicted). I suspect a lot of partners of sexual offenders fit a very similar profile. These guys (not always, but often it's guys) seek out a certain type of partner who is insecure, with low self-esteem, who doesn't believe anyone else would want them and I suspect they use that to manipulate them, to make themselves seem normal and respectable (no one would ever suspect this about my MIL and her partner, they seem very respectable, sweet old couple), and that is in part how they are able to gain access either to children or to make themselves seem non-threatening and safe to other adults. So it totally doesn't surprise me how many women fall for these guys and sacrifice everything for them. But I imagine the sort of people who would respond to a thread like this probably have some self-esteem and can stand up for themselves and aren't as easily hoodwinked as the sort of women who fall all over themselves for these kind of men.

Innocent until proven guilty is a legal term, defining whether someone is convicted or not, not whether they've actually done something and whether it affects their life. Over 90% of rape cases don't end in a conviction. No one who has raped or assaulted me has spent a day in court.

This ^^

Sad that the usual ‘false claims’ argument is being dredged up. Maybe because the argument that the attitude men have towards women is pervasive and condones rape culture is too uncomfortable?

I was raped by a very close friend’s husband. He said that I’d come on to him and it was consensual. It wasn’t. She believed him. So did everyone else.

Next

I’m really disappointed at the rape myths being perpetuated by some posters on this thread.

Men do rape. But women do also make false claims.

This is true, but the numbers involved on each side of the equation are so very disparate (rape is incredibly common, and false claims are not) and the punishments so disparate too (a man convicted of rape won't necessarily even have his reputation ruined, whereas a woman convicted of making a false claim is damned forevermore), that it's not a valid comparison.

Thing is - yes, there are highly intelligent manipulative predators who will fool everyone around them. I'd say they're the minority of abusers.

Most sexual assaults occur in a situation where a man decides that his own needs in that moment are more important than gettjng consent. After the fact they don't consider that they've assaulted anyone (3 of the 4 men who've assaulted me tried to contact me for sex afterwards, one even professed his love and proposed to me). They don't think they've done anything wrong necessarily, they're just not really that bothered. And if your partner had behaved like this when he was a young man, perhaps a man who really didn't think too hard about boundaries and consent and did things he shouldn't have done because he could get away with it and what's the big deal really... well you'd have absolutely no idea that they'd done that, and you wouldn't believe it if you were told in most cases it seems. I would believe it because I know how easily men can go from respecting your boundaries to obliterating them in the moment.

delay absolutely consent is ongoing. The problem arose when some of the girls were texting their friends bragging about having slept with this bloke & him being amazing in bed...then conveniently forgetting that they had sent three or four friends this when accusing the bloke of rape. Hence why our Uni felt it needed addressing.

I'm not naive, i know that you can never truly know somebody. Been there, done that. With disasterous consequences.
The thing that gets my goat more than partners being unsure & sticking around is the ones that have blatantly done it; the proof is there etc, yet still the partner shuts their eyes. We had a similar discussion about this recently regarding sex offenders - if someone has a computer full of child abuse images, how can you deny they knew what they were doing??!

So sorry nextindia - the guy who actually raped me had been a guy I'd been seeing for a few weeks and had sex with a couple of times previously. He was good friends with my flat mates, all of whom gave him the benefit of the doubt and I had to live with him turning up every couple of days without warning to hang out. Oh, and text me begging for sex.

People have no idea what others are capable of. You can only know someone as well as they want you to know them, and even if you do know someone you can't know every bad decision they've ever made unless they tell you.