For the Guys. False Rape Accusations: Discuss

[polimicks]

zabieru asked me if I'd be willing to host a discussion amongst the guys on their take on the "Epidemic" of false rape accusations that gets trotted out every time I, or any other woman, starts to talk about rape.

Yes, I know, I'm not so good at reining in the bias about this topic.

So, I'll be turning this over to the guys. I will not edit. I will not delete unless the venom and name-calling get out of hand. I will let the guys have this discussion, and urge the girls to let them have it as well. If you fear it will be too triggering, don't read it.

This post is ALL about the comments, so it's in their hands.

Comments

[zabieru.livejournal.com]

I've got three posts to make on this topic. Here's the first, on the difference between false social accusations and false legal accusations.

I hear a lot of talk about false accusations. And it often goes like this:
Well-Meaning Dude: What about false accusations? I don't want to harsh on rape victims because I am a good person but accused perpetrators have rights too.
Someone Else: Yeah, that almost never happens. (cue statistics)
WMD: Sure it does. I've seen it.

Here's what I think is happening: That guy has heard someone say "I was raped" or "That guy? No. I never want to see him again. He... Well, he... (cue hesitant talking-around sexual assault)."* And then later he has discovered that this almost certainly didn't happen.

*If I sound unsympathetic, it's because I am. I feel very strongly about protecting and supporting victims of violence, especially and above all sexual violence, and when someone manipulates those feelings it makes me angry and disgusted.

Someone Else hears him say "false accusation" and thinks he means a legal accusation, a police report, et cetera. WMD thinks "well, I suppose social accusations are more common than legal ones, but smoke and fire and all that." So he doesn't explicitly say "I don't mean legal accusations" because he was originally talking about social accusations but what he has to say fits legal accusations too, as far as he knows. He's right, actually. If we were talking about burglary or something, he'd be on track. There's something he doesn't know, though, about social accusations in relation to legal accusations, specifically about sexual violence.

So. Social accusations are pretty common. I've been privy to at least one in my time. And I say "at least" because that's the one where I'm dead certain it didn't happen like she said. There are a couple of others where I'm 75% or 95% sure, but I don't really know and so it could be true.

Legal accusations are very, very rare.

Very rare.

Someone else can give the statistics, but even true accusations are rare compared to unreported rapes, and false accusations are less than 10% of accusations, so for every false legal accusation, you should figure on nine true ones and around a hundred rapists going unpunished.

I've heard someone claim they made a report to the police, but that wasn't true. I don't really know what to say about that: She made a false social accusation, as part of which she claimed to have made a legal accusation which in fact she never made.

But because of that I'm disinclined to trust anecdotal stories about legal accusations. Please, if you know someone who has been arrested, or has done the arresting, in a case where you have some kind of evidence that no sexual assault took place, tell us about it. But unless you have evidence (rather than hearsay) that a police report was made, take that with a grain of salt.

[morinon.livejournal.com]

See, that's about my PoV. There's also the fact that someone socially accused of raping someone else becomes a pariah EVEN WHEN it's shown they couldn't have done it, in some cases.

I have, in the past, been the WMD.

[zabieru.livejournal.com]

But you see that none of that has anything at all to do with our criminal justice system or the experiences of actual or supposed rape victims in dealing with the criminal justice system, right?

I mean, there's reasons why someone would think that they were related, but they'd actually be incorrect in that supposition.

[rae-beta.livejournal.com]

The times I've seen entirely false social accusations come up, they were all the product of gossip--none were the result of someone knowingly and directly making a false claim. I know it happens, but I suspect that in most cases involving social accusations, they're as much the work of concerned and/or misinterpreting friends as of the alleged victims.

[zabieru.livejournal.com]

Ooohh... I think you're right, that's the most common case, but I've also heard specific first-party allegations and I think that's more common than you're giving credit for. And I think there's a reason why I've been the third party to those and you haven't. That's my next post, but I just scrubbed a draft I didn't like, so it might be a while.

[rae-beta.livejournal.com]

Gender, I'd guess, is a fair lot of it, as is anticipated reaction--I'd imagine that if you're making a deliberate false accusation, you're way more likely to go to a) a man (which I'm guessing you are, just from the context of this thread), and b) someone who isn't trained as a victim advocate. Anyone who knew me well enough to come to me about an assault would know that my first responses would be based around their safety and available resources rather than social revenge, which seems like the obvious motive for deliberately making a false accusation (I'd further distinguish deliberate false accusations from, say, describing something from inaccurate memories, especially when the latter are fueled by drugs and/or alcohol and/or hypnotherapy / repressed memory "therapy").

I didn't mean to downplay--or reflect at all on--the relative prevalence of first-party allegations, which was why I specified that I was speaking from experience rather than statistics or even anecdotal evidence. Consider any missing credit given. =)