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?!?!

This is why I get so angry when people talk about innocent until proven guilty as it uts a certainty that guilty people will be found guilty, even if they do end up in court.

If my partner was accused of rape yes I would stay with him because I don’t believe he could/would do something like that. I doubt anyone would be with someone they thought capable of such a thing. However, if they were found guilty or if there was indisputable evidence then of course I would leave him. I imagine that anyone who is with an accused rapist does not believe they are guilty.

Well statistically speaking, given the tiny percentage of false claims, most of those women would be wrong, wouldn't they? If they all are sure they're right, some of them must be mistaken?

Ok I think I’m going to go against the grain here with a lot of posters. I love my partner dearly we are just about to have our second child together. However if he was accused of any violent & or sexual crime against anyone I’d not stand by him because even though I really don’t think he would be capable, there would be that niggling doubt I was wrong and would walk.

I’m sorry if that makes me a shit partner but I just couldn’t look at him in the same way again.

How about changing rape to child abuse I’m sure a lot of the people that are saying I know my partner is not capable of these things would walk in the abuse situation even with no physical proof. Maybe I’m wrong but I hope not.

No matter the situation it involves someone who has been more vulnerable than the perpetrator and that person has taken advantage of that situation.

Oh, and that's not even getting into the fact that most victims won't accuse or report their assailants / rapists. Five men have assaulted or raped me. I bet some of them are married now. Wonder whether their wives think they're capable of that?

Tammy with stories like what you shared there is no incentive to report a rapist, their victims are forced to relive the worst thing that has happened to them on a daily basis to them watch their assailant walk away free it’s very sad.

I’m sorry for your experience and I’m sorry for those women now in relationships with these men. I have nothing but respect that you are able to function on in life I’m not sure I could.

Tammy i know that two of the blokes that raped me have families. One was subsequently accused of raping a 17 year old last year, which sadly didn't make it to court. His family left him. I want to say that karma did a little bit but tbh it isn't nearly enough. I also feel guilty as hell because i didn't report him & so he probably has attacked others too!

No, I couldn't stay with a partner who had been accused.

The guy who nearly raped me at 16 is now married and has a family. Although I doubt he even remembers the encounter and if he did he probably wouldn’t have thought he was about to do anything wrong.

Sometimes people who seem lovely or at least normal do terrible things. Most rapes and murders are carried out by someone who knows the victim.
If your partner was accused of a terrible crime and there was enough evidence they did it you would have to accept it.
My husband knows someone who murdered his baby. People we know stood by him at his trial and said he was such a lovely person he would never do such a thing. But clearly he did do it ( and has been found guilty). In this situation you have to accept what happened.
This is obviously much harder if that person is close to you. It would probably make you evaluate your whole life and your relationship with your partner if that happened. Some people can't cope with that and denial is the only way you can cope.

I also wonder how your response might be different if it was your child who was the rapist rather than your partner. I can see a situation where you recognise that what they did is a terrible thing and support them anyway because they are your child and you love them unconditionally.

There was a recent Louis Theroux documentary about people who had committed crimes and were in a secure mental health unit. There was a young man on that who had raped his own mother and she still went every week to visit her.

TammySwansonTwo you’re right of course. The crime might or might not have been committed and you’d probably have to decide based on the individual circumstances. I was referring less to individual allegations but to the allegations against well known people who are tried and found guilty long before it comes to court.
Most men don’t assault women, although the goalposts for assault have changed. I would consider a hand on my knee as a sleazy old man but not be traumatised by sexual assault in this case.

Clearly some men behave inappropriately and that is not acceptable but I absolutely know my husband and most of the men I know would never assault anyone. Ive known a couple of sleazeballs who might in the past but it was so obvious they were ghastly and behaved badly that I wouldn’t have wasted time associating with them.

Reading MN there are clearly women who know only too well that men they attach themselves to are capable of such behaviour, so I’m not convinced all women refuse to believe it of their husbands or partners. I imagine those men treat all women with limited respect.

No I wouldn't.
Rapist are all "nice men" who "wouldn't hurt a fly"
I see my rapist on fb playing the doting dad to his daughter teaching her how to fight to "keep away the bad men"

100% no... somebody doesn't just make up an accusation like that

No one here is talking about a hand on the knee. They are however talking about understanding actions like those in the context of a culture where so many women are assaulted and raped.

You'd be wrong if you think that anyone who's ever sexually assaulted anyone treats women with limited respect.

Since when was a hand on a knee “sexual assault”?

This just isn't true, Eryri. Even some (too many) men who have been convicted of rape still get job offers,

Yet some who are falsely accused lose their home, their job, their family, their friends (or most of) and are violently assaulted...how is that anyting but their life being ruined?

(The friend I'm referring to was found not guilty, his accuser has since admitted that she lied and has been prosecuted for it successfully...but it doesn't reverse the damage she caused or remove the physical and mental scars)

Could I stay with someone who had been accused? I would if I truly believed them innocent and nothing I saw or heard made me question that.

If my DH was accused, I would stick by him, because frankly the man I know isn't capable of that. However if I had the slightest thought that it were true he'd be out the door so fast. If my Ex was accused, I would believe that allegation definitely, he was an awful person.

A colleague of DHs has recently been accused of sexual assault by another colleagues girlfriend. It's made him homeless, he's lost hours at work as they were not allowed to work together, he's lost friends. She admitted in multiple text messages to different people it was a lie, she just didn't want her boyfriend to think she'd cheated on him, so accused the other party of assaulting her. She has caused irreparable damage to his life and wasted a ton of police time because after she did something wrong, she needed a way out so she lied.

Not all people accused are guilty. However not all people accused are innocent. Unless you were there or there is 100% proof you will never ever know.

Vague hearsay stories of someone someone knows aren't helpful, it's perpetuating a myth. The reality is false accusations are rare, rapes aren't.

From my experience, although painfully slow, the police have never made me feel anything other than being totally believed. In part I suspect this is due to the rarity of false accusations.

My rapist genuinely thinks he's a nice guy. He told me as much while explaining in all his friendships and relationships he has only ever been kind, loving and respectful. Apart from to me, I pointed out. No answer. He also told me he wasn't one of those 'evil' rapist, said without a hint of irony.

The man/boy who raped me was someone that I had been in a relationship with previously for 2 years. He raped me about a week after I ended it.

He never gave any hint of being capable of rape, whilst we were together. We were very much in love and he was kind and thoughtful, never aggressive or disrespectful in any way.

The rape was very violent. You really never know that your partner could not be guilty

Scrapper it's nice to hear that your dealings with the police were positive. Sadly mine weren't, I was treated like an inconvenience. Made to tell my 'story' to an untrained male police officer because we had to wait an hour for a specialist female officer - i'd rather have waited. I got picked up by an officer to do a photo e-fit parade & for the entire thirty minutes she basically told me they would get nowhere because I waited three days to report it. Even when they found the CCTV of this guy dragging me down an alley at knifepoint? They questioned whether I was 'joking around' with him.
They had so much evidence against this bloke, & still treated me like some silly little girl. It was actually a relief to sign the forms to drop the charges because I felt like I was having a breakdown

I find it quite concerning the number of people who are saying ‘my partner would never be capable of it’...

This is absolutely because of rape myths about what sort of man is a rapist.

Like Tammy has been saying it’s not being any sort of man, it’s simply putting yourself above gaining of free consent... that’s all...

Given the culture of masculinity is set around abuse of women (and femininity) I find it hard to believe that there are men who have never ever engaged in that kind of abuse of women (minor or major) and whilst I have some sympathy for that because the pressure of socialisation is hard to overcome, it’s totally ridiculous to say or think that how your partner is with you now is how he always is with all women and how he always will be with you.

I think that's pushing it a little Offred. You're basically saying that every man has at some point in his life abused a woman in some form. Not sure I agree with that. Yes there are some bastards in the world but I can't agree that all of them are.
By that token all women must have at some point been abusive towards men in the fight for 'feminism' - stands to reason surely?

Mad - things have changed within policing. My recent experience with the specialist team has been really good. 12 years ago when I called the police about ex pushing me to the ground and taking our baby they were so horrible that I was frightened to tell them all the rest of the stuff.

I am so glad to hear that Offred, because honest to god after that experience I would never willingly go to the police again. Which is soul destroying really!

No, it doesn’t. It’s only a part of feminism that is about hating on men, it’s not even really considered legitimate feminism by the vast majority of feminists.

The culture of masculinity is almost exclusively about showing that men are superior by abusing women (and feminity) in a myriad of ways.