Well done, Pumpkin.
Ooubliette - enjoy your day off!
More musings on the theme above touched on by Gone Girl.
There are at least 2 works of Great Literature that I can think of that centre around a trial for rape where it was clearly a false accusation. In each of the books there is a race element that morally (if not legally) vindicates the accused (to the reader, if not in the courts of the story). By extension, the accuser is portrayed as at least weak and unfairly privileged; or perhaps her name is thoroughly blackened.
The two I am thinking of are of course To Kill A Mockingbird and Passage to India.
Are there lots of these books? Is it almost a sub genre? Or is just because these two are regarded as so Great and Important and Moral and Taught In Schools (because of the way they take on the race issue - ways that to the modern reader are by no means unproblematic in themselves by the way) - that it just feels wearily familiar that a whole plot can be predicated on false accusations of violent abuse?
Are there many books about true rape accusations where nothing happens to the rapist? Yes, in the sense that normal realistic fiction will portray sexual relationships where a certain amount of rape occurs, within and outside of marriages, but how often is it an acknowledged outrage that drives the plot? (except for the magnificent Veronica Mars)
I know asking these questions in a simplistic quantitative way doesn't really tell us much but I can't help thinking that there are a lot more Big Serious Stories about the stuff that doesn't happen much, than about the stuff that does.
It feels like the popularity of those Great Works of Fiction, in which men of colour are morally vindicated by discrediting white women, have pushed women to the back of the queue for justice. You couldn't possibly argue in favour of a racist conviction of an innocent man. So it elides the whole issue which is that rape is more about gender than it is about race. By turning it in to a race issue, you artificially pit (white? not necessarily) women against men of colour (when justice is owed to all) and make a thousand conversations not able to take place for a hundred years.
It's almost as if they were doing it deliberately.
It's like being able to avoid the accusation that you are whipping your dog by saying "Oh I wouldn't bother with that now, don't forget I'm whipping the servants too"