Women who falsely accuse, of RAPE etc. Feminists ?

[Oblomov]

FACT
There have been lots of discussions on here of RAPE recently.
But what about all these woman who falsley accused. what damage they do. then it is even harder for women who have really been raped to be believed.

Do feminists believe that women do falsely accuse.
That poor head of Dept, was accused by a troubled girl and has now lost his chance of being a Headmaster.
What about that girl, who i remember from the papaers, scuffed her own arms when a boy she knew refused to give her the taxi money. she accused him of rape.

At uni, I knew someone who we all thought was falsely accused of rape. He never recovered. his perssonality changed forever.

I am not a rape supporter. I don't support men who rape. But neither do I hate men and automatically assume that all men are cappable of rape. Men are falsely accused sometimes you know. not every woman tells the truth.

You're not actually the victim of a false accusation, Jently.

Seth:
obviously the ones where you are randomly wandering down the street and a woman jumps out of an alleyway and accuses you of raping her may be harder to counteract, but those ones are quite rare I believe. made me laugh. Did you mean it that way? Because of course, that's the only type of rape that ever has a chance of getting taken seriously.

I think your advice is great. And actually, this is something i think men need to hear, so I'll bold it in case any are reading: it is sexy to be asked if you want it. no, really. When we have these conversations, people pop up all "oh, so do I have to say 'darling would you give consent for me to place my penis in your vagina'" but honestly, have you ever been to bed with a man who's whispered "do you like this? Do you want me to go further? What do you want me to do?" because I refuse to believe that I'm the only one to find that scorchingly hot.

That's what we need to teach our boys. Really.

Ok, it's being deleted.

As a full sentence that should read "report...which suggested that false accusations of rape are less common than some other offences, whilst being more common for some others but overall more prevelant in general

Sorry 'bout that I am distracted: DS has lost his cola bottles and it may be the end of the world!

Right, I do understand, Nancy, I just get sick of people coming in and saying "I don't think X is true" and expecting me/us to jump to proving it with statistics. You know? Not aimed at you, at all, it's just tedious to spend all your time starting from scratch with people who have done exactly no research on a topic, but who say "well I think X, please provide me with sources that prove or disprove my thinking".

Quite understand tortoise

prolesworth - thanks for the direction.

The intention was a trifle satirical Tortoise , yes....

I so agree with you re consent. I find it really odd when people say it would spoil the moment or whatever, because there are so many different ways it can be sexy.... I wonder if many people don't actually talk to each other in bed.

It's worth thinking about the different things a 'false allegation' can mean - it's not necessarily a completely made-up, malicious accusation intended to ruin a man's life.

It could for example be a mistaken identity case where the woman certainly was raped but mis-identifies the man who did it, especially if it's too late for DNA evidence to be taken. Or the case where the woman genuinely believes she was raped, but the man is equally sure he didn't do anything wrong, due to differing ideas of what's required for consent, or just miscommunication.

And there are cases where the woman was raped, but there's insufficient evidence to prosecute, this would probably be classed as a 'false accusation' despite being nothing of the kind.

I'm a bit confused that the OP linked to a website about falsely accused teachers and carers and yet we are talking about women who make false accusations?

Shouldn't this be a thread about children who make false accusations? In which case, given the high profile cases of sexual abuse in children's homes and paedophile rings, I believe the system we have in place to prevent such abuse cannot be relaxed.

I wouldn't take the linked website too seriously....it is a support group for like minded people who believe adults rights come before children's, it does not have any credibility.

Oblomov to answer your OP, of course feminists believe that women do sometimes falsely accuse men of rape. (Well, this feminist does anyway. I don't need to be told that men are falsely accused sometimes you know.)

Just as false allegations of other crimes are made, by men and women.

So what is your point? That we should worry more about the miniscule number of false rape allegations, than the massive number of real rapes, most of which are not even reported, let alone result in justice?

I don't think that's necessary. MOst of the rest of the world, is far more worried about men being accused falsely of rape, than they are about women being raped - in spite of the fact that the former is very uncommon and the latter extremely common. Therefore, i'm quite happy for feminists to continue to focus on the latter rather than the former, seeing as how it's a much worse problem.

HTH.

agree entirely, HB.

Why isn't the OP asking what men think of rapists? Or what feminists think of people who make false allegations of other kinds of assault, or theft, or other crimes?

No, it's all about propagating this massive myth that most rape victims are liars and only a tiny minority can be believed - probably middle class married women who were attacked by complete strangers in the street. Anyone else is obviously making it up...

Parents accused of abusing their dcs have anonymity in the family court I was surprised to hear as I thought noone got that over eighteen.

Posie - the reasoning behind that, is to protect the children, because if the parents are identified, then the children can be as well.

So it's not a protection for the accused, but for the victim.

Two random points.

The first is that I know someone who is widely known to have raped someone, and there has been no impact on him whatsoever. Meanwhile the woman involved is widely held to be unhinged/bonkers and avoided like the plague.

The second thing is that Obs do you remember that case with the 8yo girl and the two boys? There was a thread and everyone was saying how awful it was for the boys and that the case should be cancelled. The girl then agreed with the defence lawyer that she had made it up, after a day of hard questioning, and the thread and the newspapers and television all screamed that the case should be dropped and those poor boys. In the end the boys were found guilty of attempted rape. Yet still many on the thread and in the media were saying what an awful thing had happened to the boys. How their lives were ruined and they thought it was dreadful. Hardly anyone even mentioned the girl. Who was 8yo and had two 10yo boys (ie older and she was outnumbered) physically sexually assault her in a series of locations. But oh dear those poor boys.

If the trial had been dropped, as most people and the papers wanted, when she collapsed under cross-examination, what do you think the outcome would have been? Her life would have been doubly ruined. And no-one would have cared, they would have crowed that she got what she deserved. She was 8.

The point I am trying to make here is that our society is primed to disbelieve the rape victim. Most people disbelieve rape vistims. The police disbelieve rape victims. Women who have been raped have little recourse.

Yes some men are falsely accused and that is very bad for them. Women are sent to prison for falsely accusing men of rape (are people sent to prison for making up other crimes?). Many more women are raped, and they never get justice. If they try to get justice, their lives are often ruined all over again. That little girl, was vilified in the press as a vicious bitch, who lied deliberatly to get out of trouble. She was 8, and seriously assaulted by two bigger older boys. But society was firmly on their side.

That case tells anyone anything they need to know about where our society is regarding rape victims and males accused of rape. We have got a long long way to go. And concentrating on a tiny minority of cases where men are falsely accused will not help the millions of women who have been raped and feel they have no recourse.

Great post ISNT.
One thing I find incredibly worrying and sad is that whenever the case of the 8 year old girl comes up in conversation with friends who were vaguely aware of the case but not really following it, they say things like 'Oh yes, the 8 year old girl, wasn't she found to have made it all up to get out of trouble?'
Somehow even though the judge was quite clear, the making it up bit sticks in people's minds and the fact that the judge thought she was pressurised into wrongly saying she'd made it up went completely unnoticed!

Are rape victims disbelieved because people most people can't imagine an ordinary bloke being so vile? Or that people associate rape with a stranger in the bushes? We expect a rapist to be a violent nasty man visible to all and so when that (wrong)jigsaw doesn't fit we can't understand it?

Posted too soon.

We also like to protect the accused, juries and prosecutors can't ruin that poor blokes life.

I think there are lots of reasons....

You can't see the damage caused by rape.
Some people think rape is just sex gone wrong (eg that BNP arsehole who thought it was like force-feeding a woman chocolate cake).

some excellent posts on this thread. As always I am learning a lot.

Another one here waiting with bated breath for the thread about those who wrongly accuse people of arson making it so much harder for genuine insurance claimants. THIS - insurance fraud related - is the type of crime that is actually falsely reported in more than 50% of cases.

I think it's fair to say I have never heard anyone complain about false accusations of any other crime, it's only rape/abuse cases. What does that tell you, OP?

I think it is part of a wider problem which includes people who make false confessions and also those who fake illness to get into hospital. It all stems from a personality disorder craving attention.

I do wish poeple would think more widely about false crime reports, poeple lie about robbery, arson but it always seems to be the rape ones that get all the attention. We know from mumsnet that there are people who accuse their neighbours of crimes out of spite.

And yes, the prevailing attitude in the press is that it is better for 80 real rapists to get off than for one man to be falsely accused.

Women having their lives ruined by rape are pretty low on societal and political agendas. After all, people with lives ruined by crimes have no real voice or power so are easily ignored.
They certainly don't write the leader articles in the Times, or decide the editorial content of the Daily Mail do they?