Conflicted - accused of a crime.

[MamaMiaoff]

My male friend has been accused of sexual assault a month ago and I am conflicted.

He met her off a dating app and they started to send dirty texts. They met for a walk, hit if off and decided to met at a house that evening. He says they got on really well. She was all over him within the hour. He said he calmed it down as although he thought he was in for a promise wanted to chat and relax.

He says an hour later she went to get a drink, stood up and felt odd. She then accused him of giving her drugs. He doesn’t do drugs. She called a friend and said he was making her uncomfortable. He said at that point he left as she was shouting at him not to forward the pictures he took that night. He says there was none. Police has his phone.

Over the next few days she sent him many messages. Accusing him of being a bad man, then prayers of saving his soul and saying she was glad she didn’t do anything more with him than kiss. Then next message she is reporting him to the police for being bad? His friends and me told him to ignore her, but save the messages as they were odd. His last message a few days later was please leave me alone.

That day she went to the police and reported that she blanked out for 20 minutes, he spiked her and thinks he did something to her as she was sore in her private areas a few days later.

My friend got arrested, suspended from his job whilst investigation is ongoing. He is destroyed. He has admitted he thought he was in for a sex, but says he wouldn't expect it if she changed her mind. I believe he would never force anyone to do anything. I have been in a relationship with him and he was very respectful. Not the greatest boyfriend, and has a string of failed relationships.

But - Why go through the invasive procedure of a rape kit if the girl was not sure or lying. They didn’t know each other, so it can’t be revenge.

I believe my friend. But small doubts as it’s a traumatic thing to be investigated for by the women and certainly very serious to be lying. Why out yourself through it?

How do I support? What do I do?

Oh, and I would suggest that the reason he has remained so friendly with you is that you are unusually non-judgemental towards him and his unusual, risky lifestyle. Because you might be useful to him in the future.

Really don't like the sound of him at all. What on earth do you see in him that makes you want to remain friends with him? He has lied to you and misled you over being in a support bubble with him and would presumably have left you none the wiser had this complain not come to light.

Don't you even care that he was lying to you?

But right now tgere is an op about a man who has been accused by a stranger to both him and the op, and most people automatically have decided he is a rapist and liar when there is a 50% chance he is innocent

You need to read the thread, most people have not decided he’s a rapist and a liar and most people have said exactly what you said, which is it could be either. Only one person specially said he was lying, and they were called out for it. Everyone else said he could be innocent, he could be guilty and she couldn’t tell either way,

@TheImber

'Are you male'

And here comes the ad hominem, the last refuge of a scoundrel.

So that’s a yes then?

most people automatically have decided he is a rapist and liar when there is a 50% chance he is innocent. Thats the problem here.

That's a lovely invented statistic you have there. Goes nicely with all the other bullshit you've been spouting on this thread.

@TomorrowIsAnotherDae

when i was a student in the 80's I shared a flat with a girl who had been raped twice. She said that her brothers beat up both of her rapists (she left them to mete out justice rather than involve the police).

At our graduation dinner her brothers were there and somehow we got to talking about a sexual assault and I kept looking at friend to check she was okay as I thought the conversation would be triggering. I suggested we change the subject and one of her brothers asked why. I said 'you know why' and looked at friend and they really didn't get what i was saying. Friends brother looked at her and asked her outright "has something happened to you you haven't told me about?" She replied "no, I don't know what she's [me] on about"

Now I don't know if she was raped but the bit about her brothers was a lie (i.e. she didn't tell them) or not, but there are people who lie about serious stuff, or at least embellish the facts. Unfortunately she did lie a lot about various things so I'll never be sure what the story was there.

omg .... Im appalled at this... 😱

you exposed someone's personal private experience ...
by side glancing at her and asking is she was okay in front of the company you were in ...

speechless 😳

That's a lovely invented statistic you have there. Goes nicely with all the other bullshit you've been spouting on this thread.

What the fuck are you talking about 😂
Do you understand how the law works? I guess not. How is it a bullshit statistic that its 50/50 possibility of this man being innocent? Please explain.

Women don't lie about these things. The legal system requires a high burden of proof, but really the only proof that should be required is the woman's word. It's not a question of whether it happened, just a question of whether he can now get away with it because the legal system sadly doesn't accept the account of the victim as proof (which it would in an ideal world).

@ShaneTheThird because you've invented a statistic of 50/50 ? Not all court cases involving sexual assault result in a 50/50 split.

You're saying that with every rape accusation 50% are guilty & 50% are innocent.

That's a completely made up statistic.

The fact that have to explain this to you suggests to me you won't understand the math behind this & will continue to insist that your figure is correct

@gutful no. I am saying there is a 50% chance the ops friend is telling the truth and 50% chance he is lying. Which is true. Unless you genuinely believe 100% of people accused are guilty in which case its you who doesnt understand.

Isnt it an interesting world we live in that when a man says he has been mugged, robbed, beat up he is taken at his word.

People don't jump in and say well I knew someone that lied about being mugged so you never know. Lots of these guys are batshit and lie you know.

Or what were they wearing or why were they out walking alone late at night?
Why were they in a pub so drunk?

Interesting their accounts aren't questioned so intensely.

@RantyAnty

I agree, there does seem to be a definite negativity arround the whole issue of rape.

So difficult for women to come forward, this post by op shows us that even women are prepared to defend men in the court of public opinion.
Obviously the man is innocent till proven guilty, but how can we teach women what is acceptable and what is unnaceptable when public opinion instantly puts fault at the female.

Op is sure he has done nothing wrong, she doesn't know, she wasn't there but what it does show is how she has been quick to dismiss a violent sexual crime, how easy was it for her to be convinced.

Imagine how hard it is to convince authority and society when you have been raped.

Distance yourself from this very serious allegation, it will do you no good to make assumptions, either way.

@ShaneTheThird nope agree on that

This is why said Op should take a step back & look at this situation more subjectively

[quote ShaneTheThird]@gutful no. I am saying there is a 50% chance the ops friend is telling the truth and 50% chance he is lying. Which is true. Unless you genuinely believe 100% of people accused are guilty in which case its you who doesnt understand.[/quote]
Well if you look at thr statistics it is 96 percent chance he is lying snd four percent chance he is telling the truth. There is no reason to believe that the likely hood of him being honest is 12 times higher in this case. The fact he says she’s mentally unstable and behaved erratically does not mean she did.

Let’s face it, it’s hardly unusual for abusers to call their victims nutters.

But statistically no, although it could be either one is lying, snd one of them is lying, it is not 50/50. It’s 96/4.

@RantyAnty and if/when it came to trial, the defence doesn't drag out a load of the man's friends and exes to testify that actually, he likes being beaten up and robbed, he's always changing his mind about things and he's a flake whose word can't be trusted, and then throw in an allegation about his mental health to top it all off.

Oh good I see the men have crawled out of the woodwork. I swear to god if they invested as much energy in holding other men they know accountable as they did defending random strangers.... Is there some sort or bat signal that goes out when someone mentions a man might be rapist? They all seem to flock to the scene of the unspeakable slander 🙄🙄🙄🙄

'96/4'

Again with the nonsense stats just because they support your preconception. 🙄

@TheImber

'96/4'

Again with the nonsense stats just because they support your preconception. 🙄

Nonsense stats? You're basing this on what, exactly? Your belief that women are malicious and deceitful and that 4% is far too low a figure to reflect their terrible nature? Those figures are from the ONS, incidentally, but I'm sure you know better. Out of interest, when you mentioned the 3 cases of false accusations that you personally know about (as two of them related to the same incident I'm counting that as one) - was one of them against you?

[quote ShaneTheThird]@gutful no. I am saying there is a 50% chance the ops friend is telling the truth and 50% chance he is lying. Which is true. Unless you genuinely believe 100% of people accused are guilty in which case its you who doesnt understand.[/quote]
What drivel.

If someone is lying, there is a 0% chance that they are telling the truth.

Do you even know how witness statements work and how easy it is to disprove them?

In your uneducated, inexperienced little world, there is zero chance of your invention of a Schrodinger"s Cat concept of truth being taken seriously. You are embarrassing yourself.

No. However one of the men whose accuser was prosecuted was (and still is) a very good friend of mine.

Its nothing to do with a conspiracy against women, its the simple fact that those stats are taken from succesful prosecutions of women (and sometimes men) for lying about being raped or sexually assaulted.

They obviously don't reflect the true numbers of false allegations any more than the number of succesful rape convictions reflect the true numbers of actual rapes committed.

Even a level of 4% though translates to around 1 in 20. So even using your figures, one in every 20 people who reports a rape or sexual assault is lying.

Thats an awful lot and absolutely should not be ignored or dismissed.

You're assuming that the figures for unreported false allegations are much bigger than those for unreported rapes and that this would mean that the % of false accusations would be higher than 4%. You don't know that - it could be the other way around and the true percentage of false reports is actually lower. But it's impossible to say, so although it's fun to pull "facts" out of your arse to support your misogynistic prejudices, you're not fooling me about your agenda here.

@JimmyJabs

You're assuming that the figures for unreported false allegations are much bigger than those for unreported rapes and that this would mean that the % of false accusations would be higher than 4%. You don't know that - it could be the other way around and the true percentage of false reports is actually lower. But it's impossible to say, so although it's fun to pull "facts" out of your arse to support your misogynistic prejudices, you're not fooling me about your agenda here.

The word 'could' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there...

You know that resorting to name calling is usually the sign of someone who has lost the argument?

@katfold

Women don't lie about these things. The legal system requires a high burden of proof, but really the only proof that should be required is the woman's word. It's not a question of whether it happened, just a question of whether he can now get away with it because the legal system sadly doesn't accept the account of the victim as proof (which it would in an ideal world).

Women don't lie about these things? There was a thread deleted at the weekend about someone who lied about being pregnant to trap someone. I suppose women don't lie about that either...

How is it at all relevant that SOME people lie - about rape, burglary, the time of the day, how much they weigh..?

It only matters in each individual case. The police are better placed to assess the truth of this case than some easily offended man coming on here to make up statistics.

I’m also disbelieving if these people on the internet who tell stories of “good mates” who were prosecuted for rape but suddenly the woman decided to admit she was lying and/or was a “nutter”.

It isn’t usually women who cat call men walking down the street, who act as if they are entitled to speak to a woman and tell her “to smile” if she isn’t smiling and fluffy to his outstanding presence.

What’s wrong with men who don’t want to see fucking rapists etc brought to justice? If they were the “oh so good, I was only flirting and never put my hand on an arse that didn’t consent” men wouldn’t have to make up statistics and evidence to bully their way into controlling the kinds of scenarios the OP described (ie woman goes to police to make serious allegations- well she’s probably lying).

I think in this situation I would provisionally believe your friend, for the simple reason that he IS your friend and there isn't, yet, on the face of what you know, sufficient reason to disbelieve him. If he's found guilty it will be on the basis of further evidence discovered by the police, and you'll then need to revise your opinion accordingly.

If the woman is not lying then she needs the support of her friends going through what is surely a very trying experience. But that's not your problem right now. You don't know her and there's nothing you can do for her.

If you knew them both, then it would really be an impossible situation.

I don't believe I called you a name TheImber - I just named your behaviour and opinions. You're arguing from a position of personal belief that is impossible to test one way or another, and when presented with statistics that challenge you (the best statistics we're likely to have in the circumstances) you simply dismiss them out of hand. You've consistently refused to acknowledge anyone else's points (picking on my use of the word "could" and not engaging with what I actually said was pretty low) and when people eventually decide that you're not worth arguing with you triumphantly seize on it as a victory. I'm reminded of the saying about playing chess with a pigeon here - you've knocked over the pieces and crapped all over the board, and you think you've won...