A very compelling reason not to report rape

[GoldenWonderwall]

www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/vulnerable-women-routinely-jailed-false-rape?bfsource=bbf_enuk&utm_term=.dqqYVQ8bn4#.xkj2yRPZQA

I feel sick. I can’t believe that the police and cps use the difficulties in securing rape convictions against women to convict them. Taking a mother away from her baby, causing a mentally ill woman to take her own life. I’m sure there is some sensational reporting here but I’m unsurprised.

What can we do? Is there anything to be done or is it just another big brick in the wall of stfu about rape and sexual assault ladies?

This really is sickening. I've been thinking for years that we need an urgent reconsideration of the way sexual assault cases are prosecuted. But it's wider that that: we need a better public/cultural understanding of the dynamics of male violence against women. There's so much victim blaming and so little analysis of the realities of how women attempt to survive abusive relationships.

This has been kept hidden.

There was a period when Keir Starmer was DPP and required all false accusation of rape and dv cases to have his personal approval. Prosecution rates fell. Then he stopped doing that and they went up again. There needs to be an approvals process for these cases that takes into consideration mental health, the pressure on victims not to report, and the nature of coercive control.

Quite. It says there’s supposed to be but it appears if the police fuck up on the side of the accused then the system will pursue the complainant to ensure there has been some ‘justice’ served.

I’ve wondered whether I should go to the police for years. There’d be gaps in my evidence, I’ve no photographic memory. To think if I’d done that and then it had been twisted around to make me a criminal. Heartbreaking.

Also this one, which really shocked me as there doesn't seem to be much solid evidence that the alleged victim lied, it was down to the perception of the police.

www.theguardian.com/law/2011/aug/12/layla-jailed-after-reporting-sexual-assault

That guy who, not content with his accuser killing herself, continues to pursue her family through the courts is the worst scum of humanity. She's dead, let her parents grieve in peace.

A full exposition of my thoughts surrounding male pattern entitlement like his and the correlation between said entitlement and committing rape would probably get me sued.

The Eleanor De Freitas case is heart breaking.
There is such a double standard in the law.

Surely the ones who falsely report and lie about it are the ones responsible for damaging the credibility of genuine victims? I remember the Elenaor de Freitas case, and the CPS didn’t want to prosecute, and it was only that the falsely accused wanted to clear his name from the stain of the accusation that he brought a private prosecution which the CPS had to take over as they unearthed too much evidence of his innocence and her guilt.

It’s obviously very sad she chose to take her own life, but she was more a victim of her own actions than anything else, and if she really was incapable of being in the world without making these sorts of accusations then she should have been receiving treatment in a psychiatric hospital and not out and about where she could harm other people or herself. If there is a failing here it wasn’t the criminal justice system it’s in mental health services.

People who lie cannot damage someone else's credibility - it takes a biased attitude towards one sex to do that.

One woman lies = all women are liars, and all liars must be punished.
One man is violent = Not all men are like that, don't discriminate against all men because of the actions of a minority.

The thread title should be "A really compelling reason to not make false rape accusations"

The thread title is accurate. Rape is not an easy crime to report or prosecute. Not getting a successful prosecution does not mean the complainant lied.

Alexander Economou, incidentally a very wealthy and powerful man, did more than 'want to clear his name'. As you pointed out, no charges had been brought against him. Even so, he brought a prosecution against de Freitas which led to her suicide; and then afterwards tried to sue her bereaved father for defamation. The judge struck that out, saying 'Mr Economou has pursued this case not with sincerity but, as I find, in anger and with elements of vengefulness'. Economou was also charged with harassing the bereaved father. Police said afterwards that de Freitas should never have been charged.

Independent - libel case struck out

Guardian - harassment of Eleanor's father

Guardian - she should not have been charged

*People who lie cannot damage someone else's credibility - it takes a biased attitude towards one sex to do that.

One woman lies = all women are liars, and all liars must be punished.
One man is violent = Not all men are like that, don't discriminate against all men because of the actions of a minority.*

^^This. So much THIS!
And I'm so fucking tired of it.

Blast! First ever bold fail. That'll teach me to post in a fury.

Eleanor had a mental health diagnosis. She had delusions and was on medication. She needed help but because someone saw their arse and is still seeing it she ended up taking her own life. The moral of the story should be to think carefully but embarking in sexual relations with people one doesn’t know, not women lie and should be punished. Anyone who takes that individuals side is someone I don’t want within 100 feet of me.

Apparently falsely reported rape is at the same level as all crime. Where’s all the people pulled away from their babies for making a fradulent insurance claim? It’s despicable and indefensible.

I don’t anyone thinks all women are liars, I certainly don’t! Besides I think we all know men as a class are violent enough to the point that we all (women & non-violent men) have to be wary.

I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive to condem rapists and those who lie about being raped. Ok if most women who lie are actually mentally unstable then I feel compassion for them, and prison isn’t the right place for them. Nevertheless they do need to be either off the streets or medicated so they don’t pose a threat.

In the same way I have every sympathy for schizophrenics who wind up stabbing people to death because of their own fractured view on reality, but I’m also sympathetic to their victims and would rather they were out of circulation for both their own sake and their victims.

AE has popped up on here before. He may get wind of this thread.

I would have thought that was obvious @GoldenWonderwall falsely reporting an insurance claim won’t wind up with a potential innocent person being deprived of their liberty.

Alexander Economou, 36, allegedly bombarded David de Freitas with letters, emails and YouTube videos as he tried to "silence" the father's media campaign following the death of his daughter Eleanor in April 2014.

Economou created a website, called www.eleanordefreitas.com, which described her as a prostitute called Goddess Porsche and showed CCTV footage of the pair buying sex toys in Anne Summers together.

Gross.

He wasn't found guilty of harassment, but it's a fact that the website existed. Why do this to the bereaved family? If he wanted people to think he was a nice guy who wouldn't harm anyone, he was taking a strange approach to it.

I can understand a desire to bring your accuser to justice, but it does sound like disproportionate malice on his part. Especially going after her father.

I knew a girl (yes, she was a girl, very young) who was jailed for this. She was living in a homeless shelter at the time, had a long history of abuse and neglect from when she was a baby and had severe mental health issues. She did lie about things, maybe even compulsively, but there is NO WAY anyone will ever convince me that jail was the place for her. She needed help, therapy, treatment at a trauma centre...I am not even convinced she was lying about the rape - she was used by many men at that shelter.

I’m always up for getting vulnerable people the help they need. Perfectly happy for such people to get help.

Read the article MRA it's pretty obvious from your comments that you haven't bothered to do so.

Lecturing women on a thread about an issue that you have zero understanding of? Doesn't sound like something an MRA would do...

Ummm this isn’t a lecture it’s a discussion, and did you mean to be quite so goady? I’m only really familiar with the case up until the point she killed herself, and like I said upthread it’s very sad she chose to do so. I pick up as much to think about from these threads as I contribute and I neither position myself as or think I am an authority of any of this. Hope that helps! :)

Read the article before commenting on a thread about the article. The thread is about this article. Not an excuse for you to vilify lying women.

Ok if most women who lie are actually mentally unstable then I feel compassion for them, and prison isn’t the right place for them.

This is the point of the article which you would know if you'd bothered to read it. CPS guidelines say it's not in the public interest to pursue prosecutions of mentally unstable women. Police and prosecution services are acting in opposition to their own procedures...