trial of alleged rape victim who killed herself

[chaosmonkey]

www.theguardian.com/law/2014/nov/06/call-crown-prosecutors-account-suicide-alleged-rape-victim

A young woman who said she had been raped went on to kill herself after the Crown Prosecution Service put her on trial for making up the allegation in a case originally instigated by her alleged attacker.

A bit speechless, so have just cut and paste initial para - sorry

[gita7007]

Amethycst…

How would you know if the article is a 'white wash' if you claim you havent read it??

This whole thing is a tragedy and I see no glee- though I would point out that there are more unpunished rapes than there are false allegations - just to make that clear.

Why was hers a false allegation?

1. the CPS took it on from a private case
   
2. video evidence showed her sexually interested in him on the day
   
3. she took so long to make the claim there was no evidence of bruising, drink spiking, scratching etc- so zero physical evidence.
   
4. she sent texts saying the sex was fantastic
   
5. He broke off the relationship when her conduct became increasing erratic- text evidence there too.
   
6. She is bi-polar and suffered wildly erratic emotions.
   

So unless you have information we are not party to, the above suggests a clear example of a false allegation.

The father made an error in saying the guys name on radio, no doubt consumed with grief.

But the falsely accused is entitled to clear his name.
For the poor tormented girl we must hope she now rests in peace.

[SevenZarkSeven]

The CPS are investigating this case, and while their conclusion might coincide with yours, I think that saying "The CPS took on the case because it was a clear example of a false allegation" is not appropriate until they have released their statement.

In the meantime, what you actually mean, is that in the article written by / on behalf of the man, and speaking from his side of the story, the reasons given are x, y and z. And that you believe him and imagine that is why they took the prosecution on.

Given that the CPS have stated that they find it concerning and are investigating I think it would be appropriate not to make statements about why they took the course they did, without making it clear that at this point in time it is nothing more than your opinion based on one side of the story as presented in the Daily Mail.

[SevenZarkSeven]

I'm still waiting for a link from the other poster as well to show that this man was found not guilty of rape in a court of law.

What I see on this thread are people telling lies about this woman and the situation, or at least asserting things as truth when in fact they are opinion. It's really fucking depressing.

[sanfairyanne]

you mean you saw a picture of them together, possibly taken the day after, according to him
texts were sent from her phone at his house on the day, by her, according to him

none of us know the truth. this is his side of the story. she is not here to give her side

even if it was a false allegation, which the police did not say, people with mental health problems make false allegations sometimes, as they believe them to be true. they are not usually prosecuted as it is not malicious, certainly they are not usually subject to private detectives and private prosecutions by people who were never even charged with any offense

[gita7007]

seven,
I accept your point about media bias and the fact that the girl couldnt be convicted due to her passing.

But some details are hard to explain away:

she sent texts boasting of great sex and she brought the rape claim after he jilted her.

So, you know, that does look pretty black and white.

Obviously if the DM have lied about the texts or fabricated the video or have omitted some major fact then I would rethink.

[sanfairyanne]

god people are depressing sometimes

[GinAndSonic]

A woman can never be raped by someone she is sexually interested in. Obviously.

I continued to date my rapist, and appear sexually interested in him, for several months after my rape btw. The images of them together mean fuck all.

[NormaStanleyFletcher]

Great. She has been judged and found guilty in the completely sane, rational and independent court of misogyny the daily mail. Cos they always tell the truth, the whole truth. Not just the convenient truth, oh no.

[CelesteToTheDance]

If the police had done their job and investigated the evidence provided that would have proven this man innocent, they could have got to the bottom of this in a day and referred this young woman to get the mental health services she desperately needed. He would never have had to take a private prosecution to clear his name and she would've been helped and never placed in a position of being publicly exposed.

Instead they were to busy 'believing' her, ignored offered evidence to the contrary and allowed this situation to snowball to the detriment of all parties.

And still people are trying to claim that he must be a rapist because she said so. It's people like that who forced him to clear his name so they couldn't continue blackening it. Ffs, he wouldn't be taking a private prosecution unless the video evidence and text messages claiming to have had the best sex of her life, later threatening suicide etc... Were AFTER the alleged 'rape'. He dumped her because she was acting erratically and threatening to harm herself, she made false allegations in revenge and he has all the evidence to prove that. Her suicide prevented him from proving his innocence in a court of law. His story stands up to scrutiny and her father forced him to go public with his media interviews naming him and wrongly claiming him to be a rapist. This resulted in death threats against him.

Falsely accused people are not obliged to lie down and accept all lies against them, watch their reputation shredded, lose family, friends, career and the trust of everybody around them, exposed to constant violence/death threats and live the rest of their life as a pariah so that the liars can escape accountability and Andrea Dworkin style extremists can pretend that all men are rapists and women always tell the truth.

That attitude is grossly offensive to every wrongly accused person (of any crime), it's harmful to the credibility of genuine victims and it doesn't help people like this young woman. She could have been helped and she would still be alive if the police had bothered doing their jobs and not ignored evidence that contradicted her false claims.

I feel very sorry for him but much sorrier for everyone who can't afford a private prosecution to clear their names. Every allegation is not a fact no matter how many times internet mudslingers try to claim it so.

[sanfairyanne]

how do you know his story stands up to scrutiny? there hasnt been any scrutiny

did you know you cant libel a dead person? he and the daily mail could lie all day and night if they wanted to, with no fear of any legal comeback.
this is his side of the story we are reading today. it might or might not be truthful, but if it was not, he would be in no fear of any legal action.

[Amethyst24]

Gita I have read the article, I never said I hadn't.

The thing is, now this woman is dead, no one's going to investigate the matter. He was never prosecuted; she can't be. So he can say precisely what the fuck he likes and no one is going to set out to disprove him.

If his account were true, as I said above, I find it difficult to believe that the police didn't take some form of action against her for wasting police time. But they didn't; they didn't proceed with the case because of lack of evidence, not because of evidence that she had been lying.

[PuffinsAreFictitious]

Interesting to see all the same old rape myths being pedaled again. You'd think that, after all this time, people would think of new ones, wouldn't you? Except of course that the old ones, no matter how often they're rebuffed and refuted just keep on going.

Just out of interest, did he state why he felt it necessary to email, text and phone her at all hours of the day and night telling her that he was going to destroy her? If he was innocent and not trying to prosecute her maliciously and to destroy her of course?

I'd also be interested in seeing the links to where he was tried and found not guilty. You'll have a bit of a drama finding them, because they don't exist, and I know they don't exist because I've been following this case quite closely.

Celeste, seeing as this is the second thread today where you have decided that a person was not raped and that them calling it rape is detrimental to people who have been 'really raped', perhaps you could clarify what you mean by real rape? Is it the same as Whoopi Goldberg's idea of rape and rape rape? Genuinely interested.

Humanists are a group of people who believe thusly so I'm not sure that that can be said to be in opposition to feminism, or even, in some aspects, different from it. They are, after all, supporting the Back Off campaign, which is great news. Did you actually mean Equalism, or one of the similar anti-feminist ideas?

[RufusTheReindeer]

Agree completely and utterly with amethyst

[prashad]

I think the prosecution of anyone with mental health issues should be treated very carefully. Sometimes prosecution is suitable (if psychologists determine they are responsible for their actions), but other times it us not. This woman clearly needed help.

I can appreciate how terrible it is for a man to be falsely accused of rape. Even if the charges are dropped, or they are found not guilty, it still has a massive impact on their lives... and I do think false rape claims should be prosecuted. I suspect that the reason he brought a private prosecution is because the police are reluctant to pursue this sort of thing for political reasons (a witch hunt against alleged rape victims would not be a good headline).

In this case, I have no idea what really happened. It's interesting though to see the way these situations are treated on a feminist forum. The Shia Lebeouf thread was full of comments about how he implied consent, should have stopped her, should have called out, etc... stuff that'd probably get you banned if the genders were reversed and you made those comments. In this thread, there's a bias in that people are getting hung up on the fact that he was not actually found 'not guilty' (ignoring the 'innocent until proven guilty' thing), and entertaining the probability of him being guilty, despite some pretty powerful evidence to the contrary. I suppose the bias is to be expected on a feminist forum though. It does show that emotions/passion trumps logic.

[RufusTheReindeer]

I don't see where the "powerful evidence" is

Can you produce some?

[FloraFox]

Dearie me I don't think you have your thinking head on today.

The criminal justice system is about justice and judgement. The clue is in the name of judges and their work product judgements. You yourself have exercised judgement in describing evidence as "pretty powerful". You're kidding yourself if you think you are simply applying neutral and objective logic in that assessment. One of the most important parts of a criminal trial is credibility - the judge and jury have to hear the evidence and it must be tested under cross-examination. A Daily Mail mouthpiece article doesn't enable you to assess evidence as "pretty powerful" and if you think it does, you don't know much about evidence.

[RufusTheReindeer]

I'm sure you've got some...

Because it would be pretty illogical to talk about "powerful evidence", which one assumes has never been tried in a court of law and the police and original CPS disregarded, and not actually have any

Because that might make someone look like a bit of a twat...but I'm sure you have some

[RufusTheReindeer]

Cross post there I think

It's because I'm so bloody slow at typing but still

[PuffinsAreFictitious]

A couple of posters questioned whether they believed Lebeof was raped, were called out on that and you're saying passion trumps logic..... riiiiight. One talked about how the 'we believe you' campaign might not apply to men, who tend to be automatically believed when they accuse a man of rape, another listed reasons why they had seen others say he hadn't been raped.

One DM article, written by the alleged attacker after the alleged victim has died and therefore can't prosecute for libel, does not compelling evidence make. Unless of course you're allowing your prejudices against women/people with mental health problems/rape victims show, rather than being logical.

[Amethyst24]

This is interesting:

www.theguardian.com/law/2014/dec/01/109-women-prosecuted-false-rape-allegations

Clearly it's WAR getting their press release out in advance of the DPP's statement (which will be more interesting still), but I thought the last paragraph was relevant:

"A spokeswoman said: “Cases of perverting the course of justice that involve allegedly false rape allegations are serious but rare. They are usually highly complex and sensitive often involving vulnerable parties, so any decision to charge is extremely carefully considered and not taken lightly.

“Such cases can only be brought where the prosecution can prove that the original rape allegation was false and the relatively few cases that are brought should not dissuade any potential victim from coming forward to report an assault.”

If the evidence he has is as compelling as he says it is, then why wasn't a case brought against her by the CPS? Why did he have to bring his own, private prosecution?

[confuddledDOTcom]

Yikes and this is one of the many reasons I've only ever reported rape once.

[SevenZarkSeven]

That's a really interesting article.

I would hope that the police / CPS draw lines between cases where a flase accusation is malicious, and where it has been made due to e.g. mental health problems, or no actual person has been accused. So where a woman goes to police and reports a rape but doesn't accuse anyone, and it's found that she is unwell, is it in the public interest to prosecute her? I raise this because in a study in the states this accounted for a significant number of the (low) % of false accusations.

Clearly where someone has falsely reported any crime it needs to be pursued - it would be interested to see how many people are imprisoned for a crime that is lied about frequently ie robbery/burglery with a view to committing insurance fraud.

The other problem here is that it seems (and has seemed for a long time) that due to rape myths police forces often start out by assuming the woman is making it up for some reason and start investigating her, without once investigating what she has reported. Clearly this is very concerning. It ties in with this part "War says it is supporting several women who say they were forced into retracting their rape complaint by police and then told they would be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice." which is downright terrifying.

As it stands, with police forces not reacting appropriately to reports of rape in so many cases, it seems that they are aggressively pursuing cases where they think the woman might have lied, disproportionately. From their point of view I suppose if a woman has mental health issues and is traumatised it might be an "easy win" for them? Or is that too cynical.

[PuffinsAreFictitious]

I don't think it's cynical. It's a well known phenomenon that a huge proportion of the prison population has MH problems. Cynical would be to suggest that we as a society are merely continuing the long tradition we have of incarcerating the mentally ill because we simply can't be bothered to actually treat them.

[SaucyJack]

Amethyst- the CPS did take over the prosecution due to the weight of the evidence.

I made a mistake earlier saying that he was cleared. After re-reading I realised that his prosecution and the CPS case were one and the same, and no judgement was ever made due to her suicide before the trial. My bad.

And you can't be a rape apologist in a case where no rape has taken place.

[SevenZarkSeven]

"I made a mistake earlier saying that he was cleared. After re-reading I realised that his prosecution and the CPS case were one and the same, and no judgement was ever made due to her suicide before the trial. My bad."

Can you clarify this a bit? It doesn't chime with what I have read about the case.

Also thought the CPS were investigating why the case was taken over and they hadn't released their statement yet?