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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Keir Starmer says Rape investigations 'undermined by belief that false accusations are rife'

144 replies

NormaStanleyFletcher · 13/03/2013 06:47

This bit makes me a little worried

"Following completion of the CPS study, false allegation cases involving rape and domestic violence will no longer routinely be referred to the DPP. "These cases will now be handled by [CPS] areas rather than headquarters, but we will continue to have an assurance regime where reports are sent in every six months," Starmer said."

When they were all being referred to Keir's department I felt more comfortable; I don't know exactly why but I have trust in him.

This bit is very interesting I thought

Of 159 suspects linked to allegedly false claims referred to the CPS between January 2011 and May 2012, 92% were women. Nearly half of them were 21 or under. One surprise was that in 38% of those investigations, the initial complaint of rape or domestic violence was made by someone other than the suspect. Among those under 18 it was 50% and often involved a parent

OP posts:
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KarlosKKrinkelbeim · 14/03/2013 18:52

I love the remark in the BBC reply about the need to show "two sides to the issue". Following that logic we'd hear from the rape complainant then the rapist telling us all why it was such a jolly good idea. No doubt we have that to look forward to, with the fuckwits in charge currently at the BBC.
And I pay my licence fee for this!

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Trekkie · 14/03/2013 19:41

Nothing's going to happen about this, is it, they've just fobbed everyone off. The story is still there, still with its weird wording and misrepresentation of what the police spokesperson said.

Reading the comments on the huffington post and having seen similar many times including on here, it is clear that rape myths are absolutely believed by at least some people - and surveys show that can be extended to most people not just those commenting on websites.

So a report comes out to try and dispel that myth, citing false accusations as "very rare".

The BBC response to this is to run an article stating that false accusations are "very common" and focusing on them, implying that anonimity for accused would be a good thing and misrepresenting a police spokesperson by saying she is issuing a warning to victims.

It's just not on, is it? It's not just me. Why haven't they done anything? For a body like the BBC to do this - condoning and encouraging the myth that women lie - on the very day a report comes out from the CPS to try and dispel that myth - seriously it's outrageous.

And the fact it is still there after everything is just a kick in the teeth for victims of rape and DV everywhere.

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HotheadPaisan · 14/03/2013 19:44

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

LineRunner · 14/03/2013 19:45

I do think the BBC will regret this.

They had a chance to put things right, and they didn't.

Things will come around, they always do in the end.

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KarlosKKrinkelbeim · 14/03/2013 19:48

Let's look at this objectively. The DPP produces a report saying he has examined a sample of evidence and found that false allegations are very rare. A media organisation responds with a report about the seriousness of false allegations. An intelligent 10 year old could spot the agenda there. Do these people think we're fucking stupid?

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HotheadPaisan · 14/03/2013 20:56

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

JacqueslePeacock · 14/03/2013 21:10

oh God. I just read the comments on the Huffington Post. Sad

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LineRunner · 14/03/2013 21:44

The Huffington Post's home page right now has 'Why I Am Glad I Was Spanked As A Child' [with a rattan cane] as a lead article.

Nice.

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Treats · 14/03/2013 21:48

Did anyone hear the Victoria Derbyshire phone in on Five Live about this yesterday. Same angle. She twice spoke to callers who had personal experience of being falsely accused of rape (one was the mother of a boy who had been accused) and interviewed a Notts policewoman (possibly the same one referred to above) and expressly linked it to the publication of the CPS report.

I was furious that she didn't invite any contributions from people who had been raped to give their side. When the mother of the boy who had been accused said that she wanted to go into schools to tell girls about the devastation that false accusations could cause she didn't challenge her at all. I mean, it's not as if there's enough discouragement from reporting rape already, is there?

Here's the listen again link: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r54vr The interview with the mother is in the last 20 minutes of the programme.

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NormaStanleyFletcher · 14/03/2013 23:25

The number of false allegations (the ones that were suspected false and referred to the CPS but never prosecuted included) kinda pales into insignificance when compared with the 10,000 tweeters that Lord McAlpine was originally going to sue for falsley naming him as the abuser as a result of the BBC incompetence.

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NoTimeForS · 15/03/2013 01:02

The Metro coveted the story accurately today. Shame on the BBC.

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NoTimeForS · 15/03/2013 01:03

*covered.

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JacqueslePeacock · 15/03/2013 09:25

Oh, Treats, my DH told me he'd heard something awful about it on Five Live yesterday - that must have been it. I missed it unfortunately. More complaints to the BBC...?

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runningforthebusinheels · 15/03/2013 11:23

Yes, I listened to the 5Live report - I thought it was a thoroughly irresponsible angle to take on this.

Here's how The Metro covered the story - a much more accurate respresentation of Starmer's report.

The bias and agenda of the BBC is obvious.

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FastidiaBlueberry · 15/03/2013 12:27

What can we do about this?

It's really obvious that the BBC has an agenda to misinform the public about this - they've been told by listeners, women's groups etc. about the facts and yet they're still using our licence money to promote their mad agenda.

This is the response I got back from them:

We passed your concerns to Rod McKenzie, Editor, Newsbeat who has responded with the following:

?This was a story commissioned to specifically examine what it was like to be falsely accused of rape. To help contextualise the story we reported on a 17 month study carried out by the Crown Prosecution Service which set out to establish how common such false rape allegations were. In the past we have published many stories highlighting the issues surrounding rape and domestic violence, specifically targeted at our core audience of 15 to 24 year olds. Please find links for two such stories below:

www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/17230648

www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/17238674

On this occasion we chose to look at those young people ? usually men ? who are occasionally wrongly accused. We know from our audience research that among this group concern over this issue is commonplace ? we sought to contextualise this anxiety. I do not agree we misrepresented the study, or published an article that might somehow put people off reporting such serious crimes. However, having considered feedback I agree we were not clear enough in our wording. For clarity we have replaced a word in the second sentence from ?common? to ?unusual?.

In the fourth line of our story we quote the Director of Public Prosecutions Kier Starmer who says false rape allegations are ?serious but rare?. In the accompanying video he makes the same statement within the first fifty seconds. Whilst our story hears from a young man who says he was wrongly accused, we ensure that rape victims are given a voice by running quotes from Dianne Whitfield from Rape Crisis. We also feature a video which contains a Nottinghamshire Police spokeswoman who says their starting point is always to believe allegations of serious sexual assault. She goes on to explain how thoroughly they investigate both sides of any allegation. Far from downplaying the seriousness of rape we finish our article by publishing the phone numbers of advice lines for people who believe they may have been the victim of rape or domestic violence.

On the day this story was broadcast we received a big response from our young audience, and we openly invited feedback on this challenging topic. Whilst some people did say our reporting of false accusations was damaging to real rape victims, on our Social Networking sites false accusations were described as ?disgusting?, and one young man told us that he felt the bigger problem was that these claims make life harder for real rape victims to be taken seriously. On Twitter another young male listener told us "Allegations of rape not only waste police time but wreck the lives of those accused! And another wrote... "My 23 year old nephew was recently accused of rape. He then killed himself. The girl did it again to another guy."

Our view is that all aspects of this story merit coverage and debate and we will continue to do so."

Thank you again for taking the trouble to get in touch with us.

Kind Regards

BBC Complaints

Nothing about how they're going to balance the report with coverage of the real issue - the prevalence of rape and how much of a mountain it is compared to the molehill they've chosen to focus on.

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runningforthebusinheels · 15/03/2013 12:31

For clarity we have replaced a word in the second sentence from ?common? to ?unusual?.

Dear Rod McKenzie.

Can you honestly, whilst keeping a straight face, ask me to take that sentence seriously??

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Bramshott · 15/03/2013 12:42

I really wonder what the BBC were doing/thinking. Either:

(a) they had an article already commissioned and ready to go about how devastating it is to be falsely accused of rape and they decided to shoehorn in a few references to the CPS report and rush it out on that day because it seemed 'current' - shoddy journalism at best, and fairly hard to believe IMHO

OR

(b) they read the CPS report and press release and deliberately decided to write and run an article devoted to exactly the kind of damaging myths the report we trying to get rid of - much more likely, and MUCH more worrying

The e-mail indicates that they're trying to persuade us it's (a) and that they're just inept; but it seems to me that it's much more likely to be (b) and that there's someone in Newsbeat with a malicious and misogynist agenda Sad

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amalur · 15/03/2013 12:52

Apologies if this is posted twice, but my last post vanished.
I complained to the BBC using the link above. I am guessing that I will get the same answer but the more complaints they get I am hoping the more embarassed they will be at having to peddle the same excuses.

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HoleyGhost · 15/03/2013 13:17

Bloody hell. This is beyond grim of the bbc

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HotheadPaisan · 15/03/2013 13:36

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

FastidiaBlueberry · 15/03/2013 16:22

You know what else pisses me off? Their nonsense about "contextualising the story".

They only "contextualise" when they want. I had an e-mail exchange with one of their editors a while ago, where I was actually complaining about their failure to contextualise a domestic violence murder and this is how it went:

Me: This report concentrated on what a great guy this homicidal
maniac was. It had his picture up front (not that of his victim) and it
interviewed elected representatives in North Norfolk who ignored and
minimised the fact that he was a violent abuser. There is obviously a
history of hidden domestic violence here - normal men don't just shoot their
wives - which is totally ignored by the elected representatives of Cromer
and the reporter who wrote this article. Between 2 and 3 women a week have been murdered in the UK by their partners or ex partners this year and thissort of reporting makes it possible - it plays into the idea that normal men
just suddenly run amok and murder their (unworthy, ignorable) wives,
girlfriends and exes. It brushes over the really serious problem of
domestic violence and ignores it. 1 in 4 women are subjected to DV and
we're mostly licence-fee payers - why aren't you reporting domestic violence
and male violence against women (the biggest and most under-reported
category) properly? You have a duty to do so.

Her: Most of the initial information which emerged around the story (which was still unfolding at the point we started to write it) was connected to Mr Johnson because he was a public figure. This was also why there was a picture of him available in the first instance. As the reporting of the story developed, more detail emerged about Mrs Johnson and we have included this. In talking to those who knew the individuals involved we simply reported what they said.

We continue to work on the story about the tragic death of two individuals and will continue to add information as appropriate.

Me: "In talking to those who knew the individuals involved we simply reported what they said."

I take your point, but I think the BBC has a duty to make an effort to talk to people who might actually talk some sense. I understand the family of the murdered woman were probably too traumatised to talk to the BBC, but without fail, men who murder their wives, have had a back-history of hidden Domestic Violence and it is just not good enough for a publicly-funded broadcaster like yourselves to ignore the context in which these news stories happen - you could have talked to experts in family-annihilators or domestic abuse. Time and time again when I read about men murdering their wives and/ or children, I read minimisation and empathy with the murderer and excuses for male violence and I read apologia for men's entitlement to not have their feelings so badly hurt or provoked, that they end up murdering women and children - as if killing is not a choice they make, it's something they are driven to.

1 in 4 women live with chronic domestic violence, that is the context in which these murders happen. If a black boy or man is murdered by a white boy or man, you don't ignore the context of racism and racial violence, so why do you systematically ignore the really serious context of male violence against women? 2-3 women a week are murdered by their male partners; this is a real thing; women on the whole don't murder other women and they don't murder their male partners on the scale that men murder women. Why is the BBC not acknowledging this fact in its reporting? If it were a racist or an anti-Semitic murder, you would acknowledge the context, so why not when it is male violence against women?

I guess my point is, is that if you as a broadcaster were properly aware of the context in which this murder happened, your first report would not have been so inappropriate because you would have understood without having to be told, that this is yet another domestic violence murder. This is about properly informing the public, properly contextualising, ensuring that when you report horrific stories like this, you as a public-service broadcaster enlighten and inform instead of hiding context and in doing so, being part of the problem instead of part of the solution. The media has a role to play in tackling crimes like this, not just in reporting them; its role is to uncover the context and to make connections between each of the murders of the 2-3 women who were killed last week, the week before, the week before that and who will be killed next week, the week after and the week after that, by men with whom they have or have had intimate relationships. If you don't play the role of acknowledging the context, then what you are doing, is ensuring that these murders keep happening while people pretend there is no connection - the same way people used to pretend there was no connection between individual black men being murdered by white men. That's not what the BBC should be doing in my opinion and I really do think you should take some steps to educate yourself as an organisation about male violence against women the same way I'm sure you do about racist, anti-Semitic and violence against other marginalised groups so that the first reports are not always so badly-done.

Her: We will, of course continue to cover this story as new information emerges. It is not appropriate for us to speculate about any extent of domestic violence when no such evidence exists. It is simply untrue so far as I can establish to say that where a man kills his wife there is ?without fail? a back history of hidden domestic violence. Our job is to report the facts and context as they emerge and to analyse them without speculating or making assumptions.

Me: All right, the phrase should be "almost without fail" then.

The fact is, when murders like this happen, they happen in a context which you are refusing to acknowledge in a way you don't refuse to acknowledge when it is racist violence. The problem with your statement about reporting the facts and context "as they emerge", is that the BBC, along with the rest of the media, very rarely report the context once it emerges - that of the chronic level of domestic violence; the news story has moved on by then and been replaced by another context-less murder. If it is your job to report the context as well as the facts, then you're simply not doing it well enough at the moment.

At that point, she stopped replying. Grin

Sorry to c&p all that, it's quite long, but I think it shows how much bollocks the excuse of "contextualising" is. They're telling one listener complaining about the lack of context that doing context isn't their job and now they're telling all the other listeners that promoting rape myths is in fact, "context". How over-powering is the smell of bullshit here?

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AbigailAdams · 15/03/2013 17:07

Their "context" is their misogynistic agenda Hmm. And what is the "context" in this instant?? The context of perpetuating myths amongst teenage boys is obviously more important than reassuring them (and teenage girls) that false accusations are rare. And of course more important than actually dealing with the issue of teenage rape.

I complained yesterday and haven't heard anything.

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runningforthebusinheels · 15/03/2013 17:54

I haven't heard from the bbc either, but I'm assuming I'll get the same shit response as above.

Don't know if it will come to anything, but I put in a complaint to the pcc as well - as I think inaccurate misrepresentation of the cps report int his way is a breach of section 1 of the code of conduct. We shall see.

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Trekkie · 16/03/2013 13:12

any updates?

the item is still linked from newsbeat homepage

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ScrambledSmegs · 16/03/2013 14:33

I've had the same response as Fastidia. I think I'm actually angrier than I was before.

They really are a bunch of idiots.

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