So in the wake of a massive public spotlight on rape, the priority apparently is to protect the reputations of the tiny % of men falsely accused of rape

[FastidiaBlueberry]

FFS FFS FFS

Is it very cynical of me to think that this new demand to enable anonymity for men accused of rape (most of whom are guilty, but get off anyway) is a psychological need to re-establish what is most important to these woman-haters?

Stop talking about the mountain of rape victims who never get justice and FGS start talking about the anthill of men who get falsely accused.

Enough of Steubenville, Delhi, Frances Andrade, Jimmy Savile's victims, the 1 in 4 women who are raped or sexually assaulted.

Let's get back to talking about the really important issues - the miniscule number of men who will be falsely accused of rape or who will be the victim of mistaken identity. Fools, don't you know they're more important than all those rape vicitms? That that's a much bigger issue? So what 25% of women are subjected to rape or sexual assault? So what if 85-90% of rape victims don't report? So what that of those who do, only 6% get a guilty verdict even though only between 2-6% are lying or mistaken? Let's get some perspective on this - men matter more than women, stop imagining they don't.

Fuming but off to bed.

I don't think so.

I imagine she means that people make a false equivalence when actually there is not equivalence.

In all of these things there needs to be balance, and that is what the law is currently set up to give.

It allows anonimity to people who are vulnerable and takes into account the reticence of victims of certain crimes to come forward and wants to improve reporting rates.

Separately, people who are accused of crimes are not protected with anonimity in the UK. This helps with getting witnesses, further victims coming forward and so on.

It is not a "tit for tat" - the thinking behind these things is different.

There is also lack of equivalence in this argument for numbers. There is always an offset - and a balance must be struck. At the moment the authorities believe that the abbility of other victims / witnesses to come forward and thus getting more convictions is worth more than granting anonimity to people accused of crimes and losing all those convictions.

There is also the principle of open justice in the UK.

Yes I find it quite extraordinary that people would be so willing to give up the principle of open justice.

The thing about not having anonymity for accused people, is so that justice can be seen to be done.

Witnesses who read that XYZ is standing trial for murder/ rape/ robbery etc., can ring the police and either offer information which might help get the guilty defendant banged up, or offer information which might help ensure an acquittal or dropped prosecution of a victim of mistaken identity or malicious accusation.

If everyone was anonymous, that principle would be lost.

You could argue that if police are doing their job properly that won't be needed (because they interview everyone who ever stepped within 2 feet of the defendant) but I'm not sure I'd be happy to rely on the police to find every single person who might be able to add something to a criminal enquiry. Granted, potential witnesses overlooked by police enquiry might not come across reports of a person standing for trial, but they definitely wouldn't if they were anonymous, would they?

Ooh, look what someone posted on my FB page:

www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2013/02/19/comment-anonymity-for-rape-defendants-is-a-tired-argument-th

There seem to be a lot of strongly held assertive opinions about rape when the one thing we know is that we dont know much !

Most sex occurs in private so it is often impossible to prove/disprove rape other than go on the word of the two individuals involved. Thus it is an easy crime to make a false allegation. Also, a lot of sex occurs in a drunken haze and consenting sex often involves ambiguous games eg one partner says no means yes.

So an extraordinarily difficult crime for a jury to decide who is telling the truth/whether a crime has occurred.

So two possible approaches...

1. assume that most people bringing rape allegations are telling the truth and convict the defendant willy nilly. And therefore successfully convict all rapists but also convict a few innocents.

2. assume the defendant is innocent until proven otherwise and only convict when the evidence is really strong enough. And therefore only convict a small percentage of rapists but never falsely convict non-rapists.

I think it is very difficult, but my personal view is (2) is best.

PS I think discussions about rape should be gender neutral in their wording as above (regardless of any legal definition of rape)

Sorry apple but practically everything you've just posted is pure, undiluted rape-myth.

Men don't turn into rapists because they are a bit drunk or because a woman is a bit drunk and it is incredibly insulting and man-hating of you to say that.

Women who have bad or unintentional sex because they're a bit drunk, wake up, realise they've fucked up, go home and have a bacon sandwich.

They don't go down to the police and make a rape allegation, because they're not all mad, unstable, malicious and generally appalling people.

You have just regurgitated all the misogynist stereotypes of women (and men all being rapists and just needing a bit of booze to release their inner rapist) all in one go.

Outstanding performance.

ps just realized i didnt address the OP about anonymity !

I think good argument for this in personal/difficult to prove crimes like rape, but clearly has to be symmetrical ie anonymity for both for accused and accuser.

Also the idea that it's "easy" to just make up a rape allegation.

Well yes, in theory it is, but what on earth is the point of making up an allegation that no one believes when it's true, let alone when it's false?

I could make up an allegation that Nick Clegg shagged my dog, but given that I've not got a dog, who will take it seriously?

This constant, hammering home of rape myths like anyone can be arrested at any time - the poster here whose husband was arrested, wasn't falsely accused, he was the victim of mistaken identity. Women can't just go down the cop shop and claim they were raped and a police investigation swings into action - even where women really are raped, the police tell them to bugger off and stop wasting their time, as in the case of the first few victims of John Worboys.

apple I think it's best to approach your post point by point.

• It is not correct that there is no evidence in rape cases and that it is one person's word against another. At each stage decisions are made about going forward with a report / prosecution for rape. First the victim has a good idea of what is "rape rape" and what is not. Victims self-select - rapes which involve people in a relationship with no physical evidence are far less likely to be reported to police than a violent stranger rape. So the cases that get to the police have already whittled out most of the "his word against hers" cases
• Next come the police. Depends on where you go. Some forces you are far more likely to have your report of rape marked as a "no crime" than other forces. Some forces / individual officers do not treat victims well, say they think they are lying, don't take physical evidence or witness statements etc. So another tranche of accusations gets no further than this stage
• Next the CPS need to decide whether they want to prosecute. In order to prosecute they have to believe they will have a reasonable chance of getting a prosecution. Thus they only take forward rape cases which they believe (due to physical or other evidence) they have a pretty good chance of winning (and the stats bear out that when cases do go to court, they do indeed get a conviction rate in line with other crimes

The vast majority of rape cases that go to court thus have supporting evidence.

The point you made "Also, a lot of sex occurs in a drunken haze and consenting sex often involves ambiguous games eg one partner says no means yes. " I don't even know what to do with this It seems to be saying that many rape accusations are due to people having drunken sex and then playing rather odd sex games leading to ambiguity and it's all grey areas and then women deciding to lie about it for no obvious reason. Alternatively. Lots of people simply get raped, is probably a less convoluted way of looking at it.

Your two possible approaches.

1. The police should believe people who come forward and say they have been a victim of crime. Unless they have an extremely good reason not to. Yes EVEN victims of rape.

No-one in the world thinks that all men accused of rape should be imprisoned immediately with no due process. Not sure where that came from.

1. Is the system we have in place at the moment. I don't hear for any calls to change it to a system like you mention in 1.

Hi FastidiaBlueberry

You've missed my main point....

Rape is very difficult to prove/disprove (perhaps almost unique in crime ?)

Therefore we have choice (as society) of

1. lowering the level of evidence required to increase conviction rate or

2. maintain the level of evidence required to prevent mis-conviction

In UK, we do (2). Therefore there will be a low conviction rate and a lot of rapists go free. Unfortunately. That is a sad inevitable fact but I can't see any better way to do it.

Can you ?

"I think good argument for this in personal/difficult to prove crimes like rape, but clearly has to be symmetrical ie anonymity for both for accused and accuser."

Ah yes, false symmetry again.

Like the number of falsely accused men = the number of women alleging rape who are falsely accusing.

Clearly someone who has decided to completely ignore all the arguments that have taken place on this thread.

apple - here's the MN 'We Believe You' page on rape myths

Useful reading.

it's not that difficult to prove, which is why of the cases that do get to court the conviction rate compares favourably to other violent crimes

however only a few of all cases are reported, and only a very few of those will go on to be prosecuted

Yes, the better way to do it is

Increase society understanding of what rape is
Work towards making rape utterly unacceptable in all circs (rather than just violent stranger, child victim, elderly victim etc as we have at the moment)
Train police forces to do their jobs wrt rape
Train the CPS to do their job wrt rape
Talk to juries about rape myths
Disallow talk of women's sexual history etc

All of these things are talked about in reports by schools, police forces, government reports, rape charities, and so on and so on.
Unfortunately attitudes are extremely ingrained, with society opinions shaped by the media in its various forms, and centuries of mysoginist thinking.
Still, that's the way forward.
Personally I think a non adversarial court system would be a step forward for all sorts of crimes against the person.
And sentencing reflecting risk of harm to the public rather than people getting out after a fixed time.

There is quite a lot to think about rather than your idea as to what the only 2 options are.

Trekkie - thanks for you post, makes huge sense and points out a lot of complexity i have ignored.

Re the drunken haze...

my point was not that alcohol leads to false allegations etc but that it makes it harder for a jury to get accurate picture of events so harder to successfully convict.

The We Believe You pages on MN that pubes had linked to have a lot of information about common misconceptions so I would second her suggestion that you have a look at those if you are interested.

Not really apple.

It's only harder to convict, if you believe that a woman's drunken hazy memory is less reliable than the drunken hazy memory of a man.

And if you believe that she has a stronger motive for lying about rape, than he has.

Thankyou, I have looked, but they seem like rather extreme misconceptions that very few reasonable people would believe (at least one would hope not !)

So mumsnet are a bunch of militant feminists who just make things up about rape, do they?

OK

Am sure Justine et al will be proud to hear that.

Or are you talking about the rape myths they are de-constructing?

Because extreme though it may seem, lots of people do believe rape myths.

Even educated, progressive people who in all other politics are right on, organic, concerned, lentil-weaving etc. - when it comes to rape, the first things they talk about is false accusations.

That's how ingrained rape myths are.

It's not wrong for MN to confront it head on and disabuse people.

I have had three partners, including my current one. All three are well acquainted with alcohol, as am I. In each relationship, at several points, one or both I us have been stinking drunk. Never have these men raped me, because tey are not rapists. Yes, they may have wanted sex with me when I was drunk, but they didn't have it because it would have been rape and they aren't rapists. Yes, they may have wanted to have sex with me when they were drunk, but free they were told no, they did not force me as they are not rapists.

If they had had sex with me, they would have been rapists. It would just be my word against theirs.

Many crimes are one persons word against another - would you suggest we discredited them too?

@ FastidiaBlueberry

I believe that the drunken hazy memory of a woman and a man are equivalent - surely we all believe that ?!

But jurys only convict if the evidence is clear and alcohol clearly reduces that clarity (regardless of whether there is culpability).

Therefore, yes, I think alcoholic haze does reduce chances of successful conviction... I hope not a controversial point ?

I realise that my post is a bit incoherent but I was just a bit shocked at apples post and her two options!

apple as per my post earlier, it is highly unlikely that a case where there was no evidence other than the verbal evidence of two people who were both drunk, would ever get near a court.