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Tuesday, 06 July 2010

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john

How about serving your time better by naming rapists? Do you have a mother, a daughter, a sister? only a pathetic 2% of allegations are false meaning 98% of men accused of rape are rapists. get your facts right before you go on crusades without meaning! or maybe people like you have something to hide.

Jon

john, how can you POSSIBLY know what percentage of allegations are false? Detailed working and explanation, please. You've made a claim, here. Time to back it up.

Pierce Harlan

John, your statement is grossly erroneous. There is precisely zero support for it outside the fairyland of the sexual grievance industry. Your comment is stardust feminist wishfulness.

The overriding evidence suggests that false rape claims are a significant problem, and that the victims of false claims are not rarities. No one knows for certain the percentage of false rape claims. A leading feminist legal scholar recently acknowledged: ". . . the statistics on false rape accusation widely vary and 'as a scientific matter, the frequency of false rape complaints to police or other legal authorities remains unknown.'" A. Gruber, Rape, Feminism, and the War on Crime, 84 Wash. L. Rev. 581, 595-600 (November 2009) (citation omitted).

But it is erroneous to assert that only a tiny percentage of rape claims are false. First, no one can make that assertion with any degree of certainty. The prevalence of false rape claims is neither known nor knowable. Here is why: for every rape claim reported, only a relatively small percentage can be definitively called "rape." This is beyond dispute. Approximately fifteen percent end in conviction and of those we know that some innocent men and boys are convicted. We also know that some claims reported (the numbers vary depending on the study) are outright false. But in between the claims we are reasonably certain were actual rapes, and the ones we are reasonably certain were false claims, is a vast gray area consisting of a group of claims that cannot properly be classified as "rapes" -- because we just don't know. That's the nature of a rape claim. The claims in this vast gray middle area often suffer from evidentiary infirmities. For example, for some such claims, while the claimant herself might think a rape occurred, her outward manifestations of assent did not match her subjective disinclination to engage in sex, so it wasn't rape.

Regardless of what the actual number might be, every impartial, objective study ever conducted on the subject shows false rape claims are a serious problem. As reported by "False Rape Allegations" by Eugene Kanin, Archives of Sexual Behavior Feb 1994 v23 n1 p81 (12), Professor Kanin’s major study of a mid-size Midwestern U.S. city over the course of nine years found that 41 percent of all rape claims were false. Kanin also studied the police records of two unnamed large state universities, and found that in three years, 50 percent of the 64 rapes reported to campus police were determined to be false (without the use of polygraphs). In addition, a landmark Air Force study in 1985 studied 556 rape allegations. It found that 27% of the accusers recanted, and an independent evaluation revealed a false accusation rate of 60%. McDowell, Charles P., Ph.D. “False Allegations.” Forensic Science Digest, (publication of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations), Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 1985), p. 64. See also, "Until Proven Innocent," the widely praised (praised even by the New York Times, which the book skewers -- as well as almost every other major U.S. news source) and painstaking study of the Duke Lacrosse non-rape case. Authors Stuart Taylor and Professor K.C. Johnson explain that the exact number of false claims is elusive but "[t]he standard assertion by feminists that only 2 percent" or sexual assault claims "are false, which traces to Susan Brownmiller's 1975 book 'Against Our Will,' is without empirical foundation and belied by a wealth of empirical data. These data suggest that at least 9 percent and probably closer to half" of all sexual assault claims "are false . . . ." (Page 374.)

Groan

Baroness Stern in her recent report for Vera Baird clearly concluded that there needs to be research into this issue in Britain. Having reviewed all the evidence presented. Given the Stern review was hardly a MRA production it does merit a read. It effectively concluded that apart from serious research into false accusations there was no need to go further. Needless to sat Vera was a bit miffed at this. But then she lost her seat. A number of police estimates on an anecdotal basis speculate on 20% being false(as in malicious or fabricated) and a larger number being "regrets" for a drunken liason.

Pierce Harlan

Sadly, I promise that the folks in Britain won't have an impartial look at this issue. They will appoint persons who've already made a career out of preaching the Gospel of "false rape claims are a myth."

Remember this one? http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2009/05/british-study-says-rape-is-rampant.html

Paul Parmenter

John, consider yourself duped. Duped by your own wilful blindness and your primitive urge to play the role of the heroic knight riding to the rescue of damsels in distress under threat from evil men whom you think you are going to crush. Duped by the professional victimhood industry who play gullible men such as you like old fiddles. You are a very useful dupe for them because you can be relied on to peddle their lies in the wider community without bothering to do any research into the facts. If you had any such interest in the truth, you should have a good long read of Pierce Harlan's False Rape Society website, link given above. You would learn more in a couple of hours there than in years reading the mainstream press, or centuries reading the ranting of feminists.

And if you are truly either unwilling to make the effort to find the truth, or incapable of recognising and accepting it when it is in front of your face, then I have just one last wish for you. It is the same wish I offer to other men who prefer to live in a state of denial rather than recognising how their brothers are being betrayed.

My wish is that you find yourself on the receiving end of a malicious claim by a highly plausible liar, who gets believed because she is female; while you get condemned and vilified because you are male. See how you cope with being told that women don't lie about such things. See how you like being told that any attempt at denial on your part will be construed as evidence of guilt. See how you get treated by the police and the rest of society when your name and picture are plastered over the local press under the word "Rapist". See how people you thought were your friends turn on you and treat you, because they are as willing to believe the lie as you are willing to believe other lies right now.

I know this is not a pleasant thing to wish on anyone, but it really seems to be the only way some people will ever learn. So maybe that is what it must take to shake them out of their complacency.

Deana

Paul Parmentar, I couldn't have said it better myself and I'm a femaale!

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