109 women prosecuted for false rape claims in past 5 years

[AWholeLottaNosy]

This made me so angry. The thousands of women that can't get justice for being raped due to 'lack of evidence' yet the CPS thinks it's ok to pursue these women for reporting their rape to the police. We all know how incredibly hard it is to report a rape and the facts speak for themselves, aprox 85,000 rapes a year, 5-15% are reported, of those reported rapes, only 6% get a conviction. This is a fucking travesty but it seems like it's easier to get a conviction for a false rape allegation than get a conviction for a devastating, life altering crime? Something is very wrong here...

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

Oh and last thing, false rape allegations are aprox 2% of all reported allegations, similar to other types of crime.

This is slightly off topic so I apologise for that.

I once met a male doctor who told me the most repulsive thing he had to do as a GP was to remove a tampon from women who 'had lost it up there' or 'forgot to take it out'. He looked disgusted as he said it.

I asked him if he looked for evidence of bruising on their thighs or wrists or neck. He said no and looked puzzled.

I told him this;

"I have known two friends who have gone to their GP with this problem. Both of them had been raped. Hence the tampon lodged deep inside their vaginas'

They were too ashamed to say they had been raped. He didn't even think to look or ask how this 'oversight' happened.

I hope he does now.

I was raped as a teenager by a very violent man who told me he would kill me if I ever told anyone. If I had had the courage and support from my family ( which I didn't have) to go to the police and then got intimidated by him to withdraw my case, should I then have been prosecuted for that? Prasad just fuck off this thread, I don't know who you are or why you always turn up on threads like these but you're not welcome here.
My life was ruined by this man and it still affects me 30 years later. Rape is an incredibly hard case to prosecute and it's made so much harder by these women being re victimised by a criminal justice system that doesn't protect them.

Oh, is prashad a goady fucker?

Yes he has form for it.

AWholeLottaNosy.

I believe you

Please try to ignore Prashad, s/he seems to get their jollies from pretending to be completely stupid in order to do some fluttery eyelash disingenuous bollocks. I'm just hoping that they don't know how much they harm people by doing that, rather than that they do and are getting something out of it.

And Yes Line.

And one more point Prashad, most men who rape women are serial predators so actually it's helpful to have them publicised in the press as it encourages other victims to come forward ( think of Jimmy Saville,Max Clifford , Rolf Harris, John Worbouys, Bill Cosby etc). It is so hard to get a conviction for rape as it tends to be one person's word against another but if a series of unconnected women come forward and describe a similar style of assault, it's much more likely there will be a conviction. The man
Who raped me was convicted a few years later of raping a 13 year old btw.

Redruby a very lovely friend of mine who is a GP mentioned once that removing a tampon that's been inside a woman for too long is the grimmest thing she has ever smelled at work, so this man might not be misogynistic, just remembering something really horrible.

My friend said that what sometimes happens is women forget they've already got a tampon in, insert a new one, then remember the original one or notice the smell themselves, and panic and go to the doctor rather than just having a rummage and taking it out.

So while your stories are very upsetting, the situation itself is not necessarily sinister. It's not physically possible for a tampon to get lost inside you. What is common is women being too unfamiliar with their bodies and too squeamish about them to have a feel and get the thing out, which is a shame in itself.

Sorry, total derail.

As a non-Brit I have been really appalled at how rape victims are treated in the UK -- not that the US is so much better, but for example the idea that you can't get counseling while waiting for your trial is CRAZY, how on earth can they get away with this. It's only about the most traumatic thing you can have happen to you, of course you should get counseling, it seems like medical malpractice if you can't.

The fact that if you do go to counseling you have to reveal your notes -- it's like you, the victim, are on trial, it's ridiculous.

What I would really like to see is how often false claims are pursued for other offences. Plenty of people say things are stolen instead of lost, or claim someone attacked them when they didn't -- are these always pursued so aggressively?

The thing that worries me, based on the various news reports of these cases I've read, is the nature of what is considered to be evidence the accusation is false. I'm sure in some cases there might be evidence that intercourse didn't even take place, or that the woman has been filmed going 'Give it to me big boy!' or plotting with her best friend to falsely accuse a man and ruin him, but in 2 cases I've read about they were talking about texts she sent him afterwards that didn't suggest there had been a rape - I assume 'thank you for a lovely evening, see you again soon' type thing.
But we know from many women's experience that often it takes victims time to even recognise they've been raped at all: in date rape they don't generally go, 'Oi! You've just raped me!', they go through the motions of a normal end to a date and it's only when they describe the incident afterwards that someone points out that actually if she was asking him to stop and he wouldn't and just carried on it was rape.

I don't see what we can do here though.

I'm disgusted that people who recant are being prosecuted, because there are many reasons why someone would chose to not go ahead with prosecution - been there, done that.

But at the same time I also understand that women can't falsely accuse and expect it to be washed away. If there is overwhelming evidence then they have done so, then absolutely they should.

I'm wondering what the statistics are in regards to how many women have been prosecuted for 'lying', and how many men have been prosecuted for rape. And how come one might be easier to prove than the other? Or is it down to pressure and bullying?

Taking the figures in the OP, 109 convictions for false reporting is a conviction rate between 9% and 26%, assuming that all false reports are prosecuted and no true reports are prosecuted. The rates drop if any significant number of true reports are proscuted (for example a recantion under duress being prosecuted) - so the rates get lower the less trust you have in the judicial system.

Let's not get overheated here.

109 women in 5 years is about 22 women a year and I cannot believe that they were prosecuted lightly and without evidence. They were tried before a jury and the evidence must have been compelling (considering it should be 'beyond reasonable doubt') before being found guilty or they pleaded guilty.

In 2011 over 1900 men were convicted of rape so multiplied over 5 years would be around 9,500.

Women who falsely accuse a man (who is named while she keeps her anonymity) can cause just as much devastation to his life as a woman who is truly raped. It can end with him being innocent and in prison and his life ruined.

She also makes it more difficult for real victims to come forward and in their own way makes real victims less believable and victimise them further.

Men who rape are criminals and deserve the full force of the law to be heaped on them.

Women who lie under oath and crucify an innocent man deserve the same. If it was your husband or brother who you trusted totally being wrongfully accused would you be quite so biased?

Wrong is wrong whether you are a man or a woman and the situation where victims are treated badly or not believed has no bearing on the argument.

1 of those 209 is actually from the area I live in, as I used to know her. There was overwhelming evidence and she did get sentenced if I remember rightly.

Thankyou for the statistics destiny, it's interesting to read those. Whilst harrowing.

Actually no, after research it's 2 women from my area, and one man

This is a very good article on this subject in today's Guardian.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/02/britain-violating-rape-victims-human-rights

The figures in the OP imply no more than 750 rape convictions per year. Destiny says about 1900.

Somebody's stats are wrong.

Www.gov.org
^Of those individuals prosecuted, three quarters were committed for trial at the Crown Court, reflecting the serious nature of the offences each was accused of. This proportion has ranged from 69 to 77 per cent over the last six years. Rape accounts for around three in ten defendants prosecuted for sexual offences each year. In 2011 the 2,900 defendants prosecuted for rape were prosecuted, on average, for 2.3 rape offences each.

Of those cases that completed to the point of guilty or acquittal at the magistrates’ court or Crown Court in 2011, just under two thirds were convicted. This is eight percentage points higher than 2005. Over the same period the most common sentence was immediate custody with around three in five offenders sent to prison.^

Surely the point here is that women who falsely accuse men of rape are investigated pursued and prosecuted much much more vigorously than men are when women correctly accuse men of rape.

The point isn't not to prosecute false accusers but to look into whether the imbalance reflects a problem in the system in terms of how they approach these situations. (Clue: it almost certainly does)

And that'e before you even get into the stories of women being pressured to retract complaints and then threatened with prosecution, being imprisoned for "falsely retracting a rape accusation" and they left the children with the man and the children had been witness to DV and the police and CPS believed he was guilty of rape FFS, and and etc.

Destiny - presumably you're getting 1900ish by multiplying 2900 prosecutions by "just under two
thirds were convicted". However the full quotation is "Of those cases that completed to the point of guilty or acquittal... just under two thirds were convicted." I wonder if the cases failing partway through (e.g. due to the victim withdrawing a claim rather than appear in court) might account for the difference?

Anecdotally an awful lot of women over recent years have said that when they have reported a rape, they have immediately felt that the police were looking for evidence to "catch them out", were investigating them, rather than the crime that they reported.

Obviously women and men who make malicious claims need to get the book thrown at them - for any crime. The stats here though are about adding to an already large body of evidence suggesting that the UK police are shit at investigating rape and are fundamentally not on the side of the victims.

Nosy. I just can't see what the relevance is of the article about American women being bullied into retracting genuine rape allegations (not prosecuted for making false ones) and rape victims in the UK not being believed having on prosecutions for false claims of rape?

They are all wrong.

We don't have to accept any of the above situations or excuse one in favour of another.

If we are saying the UK is out of step with most countries because we let a tiny number of women who claim rape which didn't happen be prosecuted, rather than slapped on the wrist, is it ok then to ruin men's (and often their whole families) lives? Make true victims of rape less believable? Make the public less likely to believe women who have really been raped? Let someone walk away having lied to the police out of revenge for being rejected. Maybe the world should take rape and false allegations more seriously. I don't think the majority have a mental illness as they would be psychologically evaluated before proceeding.

I just don't see the point of a post saying wrongdoers are right purely because they are women and women are usually the victims of sexual assault. It's not logical. Equality should be a two way street.

What's the evidence to say women who make false allegations of rape are pursued more vigorously than rapists? 22 per year doesn't reflect this at all.

Why on earth is everyone going on about this tiny number as though it's relevant to the appallingly low conviction rate for genuine rapes?

The two are not in the slightest bit connected. I don't believe a jury would convict a real victim of bringing a false claim with absolutely no evidence whatsoever. They are quite likely however to acquit a rapist