Another reason false rape claims are so horrendous. They destroy the credibility of actual rape victims.

wysiwyg2 · 2013-11-10T20:25:54+00:00

"Reedy's victory has gone down in legal history. During her battle she testified in Congress, and this helped persuade the federal government this year to change the definition of rape to include forced oral sex and the rape of men."

This. I applaud this lady for being strong and open minded enough to fight back against the horror that occurred and to fight for the change in the definition of rape.

nigglereddit · 2013-11-10T17:00:06+00:00

While we can all appreciate the problem this represents, this kind of reporting is extremely dangerous.

The girl describes being swabbed and questioned about the details of the crime repeatedly as "degrading", yet this is completely normal for every crime. It's not just part of the investigation, it is the investigation.

We can't make sex crimes a special class of crime in which the accuser cannot be questioned or investigated in any way. That only has two possible outcomes: sex crimes can no longer be investigated, or an accuser's word has to be taken as the truth.

Neither of those outcomes can form the basis of reasonable, competent law enforcement. Articles like this which present normal investigative procedures as intrusive, degrading and unreasonable are an attack on the whole basis of the judicial system disguised as concern for victims.

SRSLovesGawker · 2013-11-10T16:52:31+00:00

Astonishing. This woman gets shafted and ends up $1.5M the richer. This guy does 25 years on the malfeasance of the prosecutor and given the cap of $50,000^^per ^^year the best he could hope for is $1.25M, and the prosecutor gets a slap on the wrist and a disbarment, at a time in life where he could well retire anyways.

It seems pretty clear that if you're accused of a crime, it's best to be accused as a woman. More often than not you walk with suspended / time served, and occasionally hit the jackpot due to someone's incompetence.

Dronelisk · 2013-11-10T21:47:08+00:00

Don't rape claims demonstrate the importance of the presumption of innocence and by this strengthen the rule of law? So aren't false rape claims a good thing in some regard?

Godspiral · 2013-11-11T00:34:45+00:00

The article had little to do with the headline.

My problem with the headline is first the minor point that real victims are independent of false accusers. Even if we never caught any false accusers, it should never imply that accusers are truthful.

The major problem is the concept that only women's suffering matters. When we have to resort to fictitious theoretical harm to an unnamed future accuser, we are missing the tangible and real harm done to an individual accused male.

Rape and sexual crimes tend to be the worst possible accusation because murder and theft, though they have similar punishment, can usually have some justifiable motive behind them, whereas sexual abuse tends to imply psychological freakiness.

NWOslave · 2013-11-11T03:50:04+00:00

Poor title for this link to an article.

Another reason false rape claims are so horrendous. They destroy the credibility of actual rape victims.

False accusations only hurt the men who've been accused, no one else. Don't buy into the feminist propaganda that false accusations somehow hurt the reputation of the collective of women's honesty. Everybody's a liar, that's why we have innocent until proven guilty.

femmecheng · 2013-11-10T21:02:44+00:00

That's not a good reason at all.

The system can never guarantee justice, but it should offer as close as guarantee as possible that it won't create additional victims, that sort of defeats the point. That's why we have things like presumption of innocence, beyond reasonable doubt, rules of evidence etc. The consequences of punishing an innocent are too serious to get it wrong (except in rape trials or trials of black men it seems).

The problem with this post is accusers of crime never have some automatic, watertight "credibility". If that were the case we wouldn't need trials, just sentencing on automatic conviction (and it seems rape trials are starting to look that way - just ask innocent men who have been convicted of rape). Accusations are not evidence, and anything that comes out of the accusers mouth is just part of the accusation, and needs to be supported by evidence if it is lead to a conviction (and ideally even an arrest/charge).

To that end, I think that harmless (as in no-one was arrested), widely published false accusations, especially those that waste a lot of police time, are a very, very good thing. It educates and creates awareness in the pubic mind and police that false rape claims exist, are extremely common, are often highly sensational in nature (discounting the idea that women would never construct such a elaborate lie), and simply reinforces the pubic acceptance of the statement that in fact WOMEN LIE ABOUT RAPE. This is a good thing, how many tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent men have been saved as a result? That's not to say the system isn't capable of injustice or that lots of innocent men aren't sitting in jail right now, but it has tempered the holocaust.

Anyway, the media keeps saying there is a gender war going on between men and women, and you don't give a fuck about the enemy in a war, you stand by your brothers no matter what. Who started the war again?

altxatu · 2013-11-10T19:57:40+00:00

Yes, because the real victims aren't the people in prison for no reason.

Funcuz · 2013-11-10T21:23:14+00:00

Okay , I hate this argument about how false accusers destroy the credibility of real victims.

How does it do that ? Do the police not take women at their word when going after somebody ? Does the general public seem to have any problem lynching the falsely accused ? Are false accusers even punished once they've been exposed ?

If it actually hurt real victims of rape then you'd expect that we'd be treating all rape claims as false accusers until evidence proved otherwise. What we really have is a system where a guy goes to prison for decades because the finger is pointed at him. Does that sound like a system where accusers are automatically assumed to be lying ?

How many other crimes are like that ? If you get accused of a murder , what are the odds you'll go to prison without physical evidence , witness testimony , or even a dead body to prove a crime was committed ?

Sure doesn't sound like anybody is having any trouble believing any woman who comes along and claims she was raped. That may have been the case at one time but it sure ain't that way these days.

FruitierGnome · 2013-11-11T01:17:03+00:00

The title of the article is also a good way of representing mens rights. US police force as if Pittsburgh PD represents all U.S. police. Just like how one rapist on campus justifies women throwing stuff at men as they walk by just in case they are a rapist as well. Bad cop = all cops are bad, bad man= all men are bad.

Nomenimion · 2013-11-11T05:57:48+00:00

Most of the time, false rape accusers have a history of lying about multiple victims. So it's easy to know who to prosecute.

The vast majority of the time the problem is the liars getting a free pass, not an innocent woman going to jail.

SilencingNarrative · 2013-11-11T16:43:12+00:00

This is a much better article detailing how the police targetted Sara Reedy and violated her rights (a classic 4th ammendment unreasonable search and seizure case), to say nothing of how they didn't take her complaint of being raped seriously.

The detective at the hospital who questioned her ordered the doctors to screen her blood for drugs. There was a positive result because she had been smoking marijuana. The detective had no probable cause to do that. Nevertheless, he used that to incriminate her and accuse her of being part of the robbery.

I am amazed that feminists would not make more noise about her case and instead focus on Stuebenville, where the police acted appropriately.

Returning to the original article (not the one I found):

Reedy's story is dramatic, but it comes against a backdrop of problems across the US, with accounts of police ignoring or neglecting rape reports, while bullying victims and scrutinising their behaviour rather than the suspect's.

"There is a national crisis," said Carol Tracy, of the Women's Law Project, an advocacy group in Philadelphia. "We're witnessing the chronic and systemic failure of law enforcement to properly investigate crimes of sexual violence."

They are arguing that Sara Reedy's case is typical of how rape victims are treated by police. Their only argument, however, is to recount how badly she was treated (and they don't even do a good job of that. they don't discuss the blood test and lack of probable cause. they consider that the police questioned her at all to be the beginning and end of how badly she was treated). That's not much of an argument.

If I had to connect what happened to her with widespread problems with the police, it would be hat the police want to explain away the crimes they are charged with investigating with as little effort as possible. Once they have enough evidence to make an argument that relieves them of having to dig further, they try to make that stick.

In Sara's case, they argued that she was a drug abuser and a thief. In Brian Banks case, they simply argued that he was black and male and therefore had to be guilty once accused. I would say that Sarah Reedy and Brian Banks have more in common with how the police treated them than Sarah Reedy and the girl raped at Steubenville High School.

CosmicKeys · 2013-11-11T03:24:59+00:00

Just recently there was a case in NZ where a serial rapist like this could have gone free because of a string of false and withdrawn accusations. The idea that nice guys just accidentally rape girls because they didn't see a poster on the topic is misleading. Victims should definitely be able to come forward without shame and there should be a way for them to do that and find support.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/9158454/Guilty-verdict-returned-in-rape-trial

10 victims. The fact that the failure to investigate this properly lead to another rape is disgusting.

Vordreller · 2013-11-10T21:31:38+00:00

Destroy the credibility of "actual" rape victims?

Implying any rape claim is ever false. Implying womyn are capable of lying.

/s

5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2013-11-11T13:48:22+00:00

This is another example of how feminists are actually hurting women.

By fighting any attempts to do anything about false accusations they are creating a scenario where false accusations will inevitably occur.

This, as you say, makes it harder for actual victims.

But they'd rather harm men and women to maintain their illusory monopoly of victimization rather than actually work to help all victims.

Title	Another reason false rape claims are so horrendous. They destroy the credibility of actual rape victims.
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	367
Comments	68
Date	November 10, 2013 4:24 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1qb8m5/another_reason_false_rape_claims_are_so/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/another-reason-false-rape-claims-are-so-horrendous.1159147 https://theredarchive.com/post/1159147

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Another reason false rape claims are so horrendous. They destroy the credibility of actual rape victims.