TRACY BROOKS CASE SHOWS ONCE AGAIN WHY MEN SHOULD REMAIN ANONYMOUS UNTIL FOUND GUILTY IN RAPE CASES

The case of Tracy Brooks who had down the years falsely accused five men of rape is a salutary tale (link).

It not only serves as a great disservice to those women who are raped but again shines the spotlight into the way that the criminal justice system 'automatically' believes a man is guilty.

What is also made worse is that a man, once charged, is named irrelevant as to whether he is found guilty. It is too late for those who are found innocent or who eventually have the charges dropped against them, their names have been emblazoned across the media and the friends and work colleagues will never quite believe them.

Often the feminist fundamentalists will state that nothing can be in place that will out off women from coming forward if they have been raped. Of course, that is true, but there is no evidence to state that by keeping a man's identity secret, unless found guilty, would put women off from coming forward.

The current situation is a clear case of sexual discrimination against men and cannot be justified on moral, logical or rational terms.

The Government have looked at it but done nothing about it, no doubt because Harriet Harman QC MP sees it as an opportunity to attack and undermine men

This is one Law that has to be changed.

Comments

[John Kimble]

hmmm can't find any mention of the case on the bbc site. Until more media outlets actually do what they're paid to do and report these issues the government will never take any notice

[Barry Madison]

I could not agree more. Excellent post.

May I suggest one other point: The reluctance to protect innocent men by keeping them anonymous seems to stem from a purposeful ignorance about the frequency of false accusations. The rape counseling cottage industry still clings to the assertion it is an "urban myth" that women lie about rape, and they've managed to create this general impression among the general populace -- hence, the inertia in doing anything to protect inncocent men, because such cases are deemed to be very rare.

One can acknowledge that rape is an awful thing and, without contradiction, assert that false accusations of rape are not "an urban myth." It is perplexing and hurtful that some who want to raise awareness about rape feel a need to denigrate falsely accused men by dismissing their victimization as an "urban myth." We owe it to those men and, yes, to true rape victims whose claims might be doubted because of these lies, to educate women about the harm they do when they cry "rape" when no rape was committed.

Men who have been falsely accused are typically victimized in numerous ways. Their reputations are forever besmirched by the stain of the lie. They typically have no civil recourse against their accusers because the accusers usually are judgment-proof. And the assymetry in the punishments is astounding -- a man accused of rape knows he might spend thirty years or more in prison; in contrast, a woman accused of lying about rape typically gets no jail time or, at most, a sentence counted in weeks, not years, because the law can't differentiate between false reporting about rape and false reporting that someone stole a pack of gum. Keeping men's identities' anonymous can't solve some of these problems, but it can help keep their reputations from being destroyed by a liar.

We owe it to these innocent men to keep banging the drum on this issue.

[Nigel]

At least Amanda Lang did get sentenced. Yet another of the supposedly rare false claims

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=550509&in_page_id=1770

[Mark]

It's quite simple really, a womans word is taken as gospel when they are accusing a man of a sexual offence. There is a massive bias in favour of women in the legal system, and this gives them a huge amount of power over men. If there's one thing history has taught us it's that power corrupts!