Over the past few days, we have been reflecting on two incidents regarding alleged or confirmed incidents of sexual assault in Los Altos High School and Palo Alto High School which have happened in recent years.
One point I have noticed several people bringing up regarding sexual assault cases in general is that it is often difficult for sexual assault victims to testify regarding their crimes and to cooperate with the legal systems, lawyers, and schools to help them investigate and collect evidence to build a case based around the truth.
One thing that victims need to be aware of is that if they decide not to cooperate with investigators looking into the case no matter how hard it is for them to do so, then unfortunately they can not expect action to be taken against the alleged suspect without the case being investigated and a conviction occurring against the suspect.
The Washington Examiner had found that nearly 1 in 5 rape accusations brought up in college campuses are false and the power that a woman can leverage over a man's life if she falsely accuses him of rape is tremendous and dangerous. There are many instances of men's lives, careers, reputations, and lives being ruined over a false rape accusation and true rape victims need to come forward so they can get justice in their case and real rapists will get charged and locked up for their crime (again rape is a truly horrendous and disgusting crime which one could take part of). At the same time however, we need to provide safeguards for people who could possibly get their lives ruined over a false accusation while at the same time allowing for victims to get the justice that they need in a rape case.
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ReplyDeleteI don't think the Washington Post article was the best example to use here if you are trying to argue that false reports are rampant. For one, the WP article only covers the stats of one school- Harvard. For a school with over 22,000 students, It is without a doubt that rape and sexual assault stats are muddled and possibly could be skewed by the school to appeal to their own image. Those numbers are high, but are still an under-report of the actual number, since school stats don't include unreported cases and cases taken through the police.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, WP wasn't actually talking about false reports- they are talking about unfounded reports- meaning that police or the school found no basis to investigate further. Just because an assault was not investigated does not mean it didn't happen, it might just mean that there wasn't enough evidence or that the case was not a priority. Unfortunately, sexual assault often happens without any eyewitnesses and with little evidence. Listening to the victim is important- and if false reports are made then they will be investigated.
Third, lets say a false report did happen. A report doesn't automatically mean a conviction- reports are set up to be investigated and it is unlikely that anyone's life will be ruined over something they didn't do (not saying impossible, but highly unlikely). Give me one person whose life was ruined by a false report and i'll give you hundreds of assault victims whose lives were ruined by their attacker. Just wondering, and maybe this is a stretch: do you really care about false rape stats because you care about the law and false reports? If you did, wouldn't you care about false reports of all crimes? Or is it more of an issue of annoying uppity feminists threatening our long standing history of domineering chauvinist practices that makes you feel uncomfortable?
One more thing- you said that "the power that a WOMAN can leverage over a MAN's life if she falsely accuses him of rape is tremendous and dangerous." - Why do you see rape accusations as an attack on men by women? Anyone can become a victim of sexual assault, just as anyone can become an assailant. Perpetuating the narrative that rape victims are anti men is wrong and dangerous.
(lol, I'm surprised you were able to reply with as much as you just wrote and I literally just posted this blog. I'll give you props for that.)
DeleteI'm too tired to debate the percentage of false rape accusations whether it's one school or the entire nation. I had meant to say that false rape accusations are more rampant than some people would like to believe (aka 2%) but I really don't care about arguing those statistics.
But the first thing you mentioned was that if a false report happened, it wouldn't ruin anybody's life because it's simply an investigation and if the accusation is cleared then everything will blow over...
...until the accused man's name gets shared around and put into the public dialogue which even after the charges are cleared, it clearly ruins the men's lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Banks_(American_football)
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-surrey-11676804
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3716388/Ruined-195-000-legal-bill-teacher-cleared-rape-just-26-minutes-Friends-raise-money-help-former-head-geography-left-mentally-physically-crushed-troubled-teen-s-false-allegations.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/man-wrongly-accused-rape-said-7515309
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/yes-false-accusations-destroy-lives/article/2557145
Next up, I don't see rape accusations as an attack on men. You must've skipped over a few sentences here and there or completely didn't read what I had written.
I had stated that there are women out there who can leverage power over a man's life knowing that if they falsely accuse him of rape then his name, reputation, and credibility would often times be ruined while the false accuser can remain anonymous and even at times be left off the hook for falsely accusing after the case collapses.
Lastly, you tried questioning my morals and whether I had "really cared about false rape accusation because I care about the law and false reports". I really do care about the law and false reports because that can affect me in my own life being a male if I get caught up in some bad shit.
I should be here asking if YOU really care about the law if you try to skew what I said about false rape accusations into something completely irrelevant.
P.S, I just wanted to correct you, it's not the "annoying uppity feminists" I have a problem with lol let them have their way I really don't care, it's the irrational feminists =D