The Myths About Women Who "Cry Rape"

[DontCallMePeanut]

From The Telegraph

Sorry, my head's not in the right place to provide any critique of this at the moment, but thought this would interest the members of the feminist section. Will attempt to comment when I have a clearer head.

That didn't sound like it was in the right place. It was the answer to your 10.22 post, Peanut.

May I just add, as a side note to Moonferret. During the first year of my degree, I've learnt that, if you provide the right terms, you can find anything you want on the internet, in newspapers and throughout history. It's how research works. If you search for women who lied about rape on the Daily Fail, then you'll get such articles. Search about it on google, and you get the results closest to your search term, which is a bunch of MRA forums. Just because you find something saying we lie about rape, doesn't mean we believe it.

Can I just add, would you llie about rape? If the answer to that is no, then why believe that most people who take a rape case to court would?

Reflecting on the original article, and linking it to this issue of who we believe. So far, the two women who've dared to step forward and say that DSK has sexually assaulted them have been trashed and further attacked:

• Tristane Banon has said "I can no longer hear that I am a liar because I haven't made a legal complaint. For eight years I have carried the weight of this incident alone, hearing rumours and lies about me." DSK's lawyers have announced they are counter-suing her for libel.
• The chambermaid has been repeatedly and publicly vilified as a liar, an illegal immigrant, and a prostitute.

This is as clear an example as you could imagine of women being shown the consequences that await them if they try to fight back against rape. As Susan Xenarios, the head of the rape crisis centre in New York involved in the case has said: DSK is a person of "extreme international power. I don't know how that factors in. The whole thing is very disturbing"

Thank you, TAB. It might just... I don't have words, atm about it. But it's almost definitely how DS was conceived. I slept with the ex twice around the time DS was conceived. And once was that occassion. And it's closer to what would make sense as the conception date.

Sorry, I'll take this off the thread now. I think I needed to get it out. And maybe puttting it into to context will help some other woman. But that's the only positive element I can think of to it at the moment.

Lenin: I'm not calling for secret trials, I'm calling for trials to take place in open court without the accused having been already 'convicted' in the media and had his (or her) personal life splattered all over the papers, including any number of wild accusations sent in by people with grudges.

DontCallMePeanut, I'm sorry that the thread has not gone the way you (and me, and others) would have wanted. You said: "Maybe I'm just not in the right frame of mind for feminism atm." Honestly, I think what you're not in the mood for is sexism. The response to the OP was about doing down women, not believing them. It had nothing to do with feminism, quite the opposite.

Your question to MoonFerret is a good one. Of course, it assumes MoonFerret is a woman. I think there's a better-than-fair chance that MoonFerret is a man. In which case, there is a particular poignancy to your question about whether MoonFerret would lie about rape.

Don'tCallMePeanut That's a really good question for people to ask themselves.

People are so, so quick to accept this hateful "They do it for attention" theory that they don't think about the kind of "attention" you get.

Would anyone report a rape, endure hours of (probably not very sympathetic) questioning, medical examinations, knowing that hardly anyone would believe you (certainly not if you had friends/family like moonferret anyway!), knowing that it probably wouldn't even get to court, that if it did you would be cross-examined and have your privacy made public, for fun?!?!?!

Didn't think so. And that is why I would always believe someone if they told me they had been raped.

I just don't think it is something that 99.9999% of people would lie about. And the miniscule fraction that would probably have extremely serious mental health ishoos which I would expect might have manifested themselves in other ways first.

DontCallMePeanut, I should also have said: I'm terribly sorry to hear of what happened to you. I think you're amazingly brave and strong to post about both the wider topic and about what happened to you.

I would do the research, if someone could point me in the right direction.

The thread title was about false allegations - to me, that indicates intent ie deliberately making a false statement. Another poster lined a number of cases from the papers where this has happened. It clearly does exist. And it does have consequences, both for the individuals involved in the specific case, and in opinion forming (ie belief sets about accusers). These are important, but somwhat separate from cases where there is no reason to postulate malice on behalf of the accuser.

Not guilty verdicts may (or may not) be reached for other reasons. But it is not a myth that rape accusations can be made for malicious reasons. What is absent from this thread is any information about how prevalent such malicious claims are.

SGB: the problem is, publicity as well as transparency can be important to justice, especially in the case of rape. The publicity of the John Worboys case was fundamental to establishing that he was a serial rapist, as other victims came forward and testified. What is needed is for newspapers to abide by both the spirit and letter of the contempt laws.

Meditrina, the interwebs has this marvellous thing called Google. Google has this marvellous thing called Google Scholar. Go knock yourself out doing your research.

I thought the problem with rape cases was with bad processing by police, withdrawal of statements and the difficulty getting enough evidence to take to court? not sure on the percentage but don't most rape cases that go to court end in conviction?

Peanut, don't be worried about getting anything out if you feel you need to. Sometimes typing things down helps to organise our thoughts into something we can understand. Maybe it will help others, maybe they to will only be able to leave when they are ready. What is more important is that it helps you to understand what you think and feel.

What a kindly worded comment. I had been expecting that someone here had the knowledge at their fingertips, given the strongly worded comments from some.

Anyhow, I have found that it is between 5-8% of accusations are false (variability depends on how tightly definitions are applied).

That is enough to be concerning, and shows the issue is not a myth.

Thank you, slhilly. :) That makes more sense to me (the not in the mood for sexism thing) How can I not be in the mood for feminism, when it's what I believe.

There was a thread on the feminism boards recently, asking if we'd report a rape if we were the victims, given what we know about rape apologists. So many people said "no"

Is anyone any good at maths and what not, here? I've just thought of something. Right, let's say 5% of reported rapes are false allegations. Yet 85% of rapes go unreported. Let's say that remaining 85% were reported, yet no more false allegations were made? What would that take the percentage of false allegations down to?

Also, someone posted on here something the other day, about why people lie about rape (the minority that do) and raised a point that x% had been raped or abused, but were accusing the wrong person, out of fear or whatever. Another x% had mental health issues of some description. I can't remember the exact statistics given, yet, surely if this was made common knowledge, that would help dispel a few rape myths.

Silly moonferret this is not a discussion forum. This is a place where men are all potential rapists, rapist apologisers and all round women abusers.

Everyone on here knows no woman ever lied about being raped, they were just dismissed by a male dominated court system and misrepresented by male owned media.

No more of that 'innocent until proven guilty' heretical talk.

Skipping the board invasion and going back to the original post, well done to this woman for coming forward. What I don't understand is how this man's wife is standing by him when it's clear he has at the very least cheated on her and at the worst raped someone.

It's a shame the journalists mum talked her out of reporting the assault at the time.

Meditrina, I'll be kind to people like DCMP. I see no reason to be kind to people who want me to help them do research to show why we shouldn't believe rape victims. Ever heard of confirmation bias? You've just shown it in spades. The 5 to 8% false allegation rate is in line with other crimes. And casting doubt on the credibility of rape victims (I'm so sorry, "testing the veracity of the witness's statement") is notoriously the standard defense of rapists. So I think you can let out a big sigh of relief, secure in the knowledge that they've got this one covered.

MissHodge, if you think misandry is one of the pre-requisites of feminism, you are extremely mistaken.

The reasons most women wouldn't lie about rape.

1. The invasive nature of tests involved in collecting evidence.
2. The fact rape cases see the women's life brought under scrutiny. Even if they don't have a sexual history, they're still made to look like a slut by the defence team.
3. The stigma that women experience after reporting a rape.
4. Surely, the fact most people are decent human beings.

These are the reasons that if my niece, sister in law or worst enemy told me they'd been raped, I would believe them. If my sister in law told me my brother had raped her, I'd believe her. Even though I wouldn't want to think my brother was capable, I'd believe her.

As I asked before. Would you lie about rape?

Both those articles I linked to above put the reporting figure at 55-75%, which is far higher that the 15% it was at 20 years ago. And those allegations that were listed as being 8%, only an estimated 2 or 3% were actually false. The others were what the officer decided didn't "constitute a crime" for whatever reason, not that they were lying.

As for mental health issues, they may not have been lies. Mental health and learning disabilities feature in a large number of rape cases. Which again, I happen to have seen. Rape is when some either does not, or is unable to give reasonable consent. When someone is mentally ill, they are not able to. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to prove what happened because the victim may not know for sure what actually happened, in which case someone could very well have had sex with them when they were unable to prevent it and therefor it is rape.