Note: This post contains graphic quotes from a newspaper article about things a serial rapist did to some of his victims. If that bothers you you’ll want to skip this post.
You know that often-cited statistic that half of all rape charges filed by women are false accusations? After doing a bunch of research I’ve concluded that this is pretty much true. Yes, there are a lot of qualifications and very careful definitions, but in formal academic criminology terms early half of all formal accusations of rape really do turn out to be false!
This tidbit, plus the absolutely draconian social and legal ramifications that befall anyone so accused, have been used over the years not only to discredit all accusations of rape but, further, in support of increasingly harsh criminal penalties for false accusations.
Here’s a really lovely story about why making it harder, and harder, and harder to report rape and other sexual assaults perversely decreases rather than increases the likelihood of true accusations.
First, some triggery but necessary context. According to this morning’s Seattle Times
A man facing a potential life sentence in Colorado for a string of violent sexual assaults has been charged with two brutal rapes in Kirkland and Lynnwood [last clause redacted for dramatic effect.]
…
Prosecutors in both states say O’Leary frequently took photos of the victims and threatened to post them on the Internet.
…
O’Leary is facing nearly 40 criminal counts in connection with sexual assaults in several cities in Colorado, according to The Denver Post. If convicted in Colorado of the attacks that started in fall 2009, he is facing a sentence of life in prison, prosecutors said.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeO’Donnell, in charging documents, called O’Leary “a serial rapist” who engages in “violent and egregiously degrading conduct toward his victims.”
Investigators also say that they found [one of the Washington-State] victim’s name on O’Leary’s computer, Kirkland police Sgt. Todd Aksdal wrote in the affidavit of probable cause filed in the case.
…
According to The Denver Post, O’Leary has been charged with sexual assaults in the Colorado cities of Aurora, Golden and Westminster and of attempting to assault another woman who jumped out of a window of her home to escape. The victims were stalked, sometimes for months at a time, and the attacker broke into their homes while the women were sleeping, the newspaper reported.
O’Leary remains in custody in Colorado, where he will be prosecuted before being transferred to Washington state, according to the King County Prosecutor’s Office.
Source: Seattle Times, Sept. 14, 2011
Pretty brutal, right? This guy is one of the out and out bad guys. And you’d think one could have nothing but sympathy for his victims. Now the important part, also from the same article (emphasis mine.)
In the Lynnwood case, the 18-year-old woman said she was awakened by a stranger on Aug. 11, 2008, and was bound, gagged and blindfolded. She said that the attacker photographed her and threatened to post the photos on the Internet, Snohomish County charges said.
The victim reported the attack to Lynnwood police, but for some reason she later recanted. Lynnwood city prosecutors charged her with false reporting, and she pleaded guilty. The woman was ordered to complete court-ordered counseling and pay a $500 fine.
Cornell wrote that the Lynnwood Police Department “recently” reimbursed her the $500, according to charging paperwork.
“Suffice it to say, certain pieces of information just led investigators to the wrong conclusion,” Lynnwood police Cmdr. Steve Rider told The Herald of Everett in April.
Suffice to fucking say! He wasn’t just guilty, when he was arrested police found photographic evidence proving beyond any possible doubt that he was guilty, that it wasn’t a he-said/she-said “communications error,” that he did it, she didn’t want it, and that she was unambiguously a victim of what Whoopie Goldberg fatuously termed “rape-rape.”
Her story didn’t hold up. The police came down on her like a ton of bricks. She plead guilty for filing what turns out to be a 100% well-documented true accusation!
Yikes! What the fuck are we doing?!?!
As you read this article from the Seattle press, and others from Colorado where the perpetrator was more active and where he was finally caught by authorities, what comes to mind isn’t so much that the victim recanted her accusation under pressure from the police. It’s that she went to the police in the first place!
Two reasons for that. First, because of her attacker’s particularly meticulously prepared and violent methods that included not only photos and threats of additional shame (posting photos) and violence (not just against her but her loved ones.) But second because the laws both in favor of perpetrators and, increasingly, against accusers meant she had to be incredibly foolhardy to come forward without the kind of concrete evidence it takes to be taken seriously even after a violent sexual assault.
In other words, in the current climate you have to be either really badly, visibly injured or else really fucking brave and determined to file a truthful report to the police.
The only other people likely to be determined enough, let alone incredibly foolhardy enough, are… people who are so incredibly angry, outraged, vengeful, or else so incredibly “busted” under compromising circumstances, or just plain incredibly stupid, or incredibly attention hungry that they’re willing to file a false report either to intentionally harm someone or else to avoid being compromised for something the would otherwise be held accountable for.
Quick note: Think this is a gendered question? Really? We masculinists — feminist friendly and otherwise — correctly spend a lot of time pondering society’s disregard for male victims. Yet absent ironclad evidence we men are even less likely than women to be believed. With the result that to the extent we’re able to encourage victims to step forward we’re almost certain to see what will look to outsiders like an equally unacceptable increase in false accusations. But to the extent one recognizes how desperately underserved male victims also are by current attitudes towards reporting, one can scarcely take the position that it’s better that ten guilty people go free than one innocent be falsely accused.
Either way, whether traditionally gendered or genuinely gender free, the other side of destigmatizing and decriminalizing accusations by all victims will be a far more realistic, far less artificially induced ratio of true to false accusations against all assailants.
What we’re doing right now isn’t working. Time to try something else.
@Lamech: “And you are arguing against someone who thinks the penalties should be harsher?” Um. Yeah. Why would I want penalties to be harsher for people who didn’t actually commit the crimes they’re coerced into pleading guilty for? Whether they’re falsely charged with rape or falsely charged with reporting they should get justice, not punishment. And not to put too fine a point on it, but why would I think it was ok for someone to get raped and then falsely sent to prison (that “harsher punishment” business, remember?) when I already think it’s really, really bad for someone to… Read more »
@figleaf:”@Dungone: “…that it would sometimes be miss-applied. I think it’s the minimal harm that we could expect when what should have really happened was a much stiffer prison sentence.” Got it! The Lynnwood victim shouldn’t have called the cops in the first place if she wasn’t prepared to rot in jail till her rapist was caught by someone else. Good to know who’s side you’re on.” So you think a 500$ fine is plenty harsh for this? Okay, So if someone kidnapped you, and destroyed tens of thousands of dollars worth of your stuff, played Russian Roulette with your life,… Read more »
@Daran: “The difference between ND and DOW is that ND’s alleged perjury was an attack upon DSK, while DOW is attacking nobody. This is true whether or not ND’s core allegation was false. If it was false, then she deserves to be severely punished for that too, though of course it would not be right to do so unless it was proven to be false beyond reasonable doubt. Even if the core allegation is true then it is still wrong of her to allegedly lie to the Grand Jury.” I’ve referenced the case before, but Tracy West/Louis Gonzales actually goes… Read more »
This is misleading. I find it very implausible that, in the discourse our society has when creating a much needed law, that laws don’t get passed merely because they’re the only way the lawmakers could address a problem without eliciting a strong and irrational response from political activists. As my city councilman explained to me once, you pass the law that you’re able to pass, not the law you wish you could pass. The laws under discussion, filing false reports, perverting the course of justice, and perjury, are all pretty much common law which predate this kind of political activism.… Read more »
Figleaf @Dungone: “…that it would sometimes be miss-applied. I think it’s the minimal harm that we could expect when what should have really happened was a much stiffer prison sentence.” Got it! The Lynnwood victim shouldn’t have called the cops in the first place if she wasn’t prepared to rot in jail till her rapist was caught by someone else. That’s profoundly unfair. dungone’s position, as far as I can tell, is that proven false rape reports should be severely punished, and that if as a result a (vanishingly small) number of true reports are erroneously punished, then this is… Read more »
The option of suing the state or city, as well as the accuser, for damages for a baseless prosecution already exists. It’s called “malicious prosecution”. I’ve worked on a few of such cases. The reason few malicious prosecution cases are ever brought is that (no citation to a study, based strictly on my personal experience) your average baselessly prosecuted person isn’t the “nice guy just minding his own business” virginal choir boy everyone seems to imagine, but a nice guy minding his own business and just totally by accident, I swear, just inadvertently happening to be at the scene of… Read more »
I think I’m on whichever side that stands against those who create sensationalist, alarmist, irrational panics that actually do the most harm when it comes to the issue of victims coming forward to the police.
Part of the problem is that we are looking for a remedy for the falsely accused person in laws that were never intended for this purpose. As someone else in this thread has pointed out, the nominal victims of such charges as making a false report, and perjury are the police and justice respectively, not the falsely accused person. This is misleading. I find it very implausible that, in the discourse our society has when creating a much needed law, that laws don’t get passed merely because they’re the only way the lawmakers could address a problem without eliciting a… Read more »
@typhonblue (from way up): “Maybe women who advocate for horrendous sentences for rapists are rapists or most wish to commit rape themselves? Why omit that from your analysis and automatically assume it not to be true?” Excellent point and one I shouldn’t have been so blind to. My guess is that it’s because most women, like most men, don’t understand that women can be perpetrators as well as victims and that men can be victims as well as perpetrators. @Dungone: “Yet there are gender essentialists who won’t be satisfied until 100% of the female accusers are believed, 100% of the… Read more »
@Dungone: “…that it would sometimes be miss-applied. I think it’s the minimal harm that we could expect when what should have really happened was a much stiffer prison sentence.”
Got it! The Lynnwood victim shouldn’t have called the cops in the first place if she wasn’t prepared to rot in jail till her rapist was caught by someone else.
Good to know who’s side you’re on.
figleaf
When I imply that I have no more sympathy to give, on the grand scale of things, what I mean is that the sympathy is already built into the system. Saying, “but look, she’s a victim!” is a false compromise. The way I look at it, no matter what you do on behalf of accusers, a real rape victim is going to have trouble getting out of bed in the morning. You’ll always be able to point out how the original crime makes everything so much harder and say that no, we haven’t done enough. If she parks in a… Read more »
I don’t know how that happened. The only links that were intended in that sentence were the three linked to the words “three”, “part”, and “series”.
@Daran, nobody here has made a convincing case for dropping the penalties for false accusation. If what you want me to do is to turn my sympathy for someone who got screwed by the system to rescind the law, it won’t happen. What on earth makes you think I want that? I’ve already argued against that in my very first comment to this thread: I like to apply what I call the lightning strike principle. If the number of known instances of a thing, throughout the whole world, throughout all time, is less than the number of people struck by… Read more »
@Daran, nobody here has made a convincing case for dropping the penalties for false accusation. If what you want me to do is to turn my sympathy for someone who got screwed by the system to rescind the law, it won’t happen. And if that’s not what you want, then what do you want? What’s the point? Keep in mind that the full context of what happened to the woman was not presented in the original post, if you’re looking for me to have sympathy, and only after figleaf told us the additional details did it become clear that she… Read more »
dungone: Yes, I believe that it is fully appropriate to compare whatever additional stress and suffering from the $500 fine to the additional stress and suffering that a guy who was sitting at home minding his own business suffered when someone made a false accusation. I’ve already replied to this remark, but I’ve just noticed something I missed before. You’ve attributed the additional stress and suffering of the victim in this case to the $500 fine. There are many sources of additional stress and suffering arising from a case in which a genuine victims report is rejected and disbelieved by… Read more »
@Demosthenes XXI, perhaps we have different definitions of “malicious”, but I do consider it malicious to pick a random person out of a lineup, knowing them to be innocent. A non-malicious false identification would be where the victim really did believe she was identifying the perpetrator. A real-world example of someone actually picking a random person out of a lineup is that of Cathleen Crowell’s false accusation against Gary Dotson. She chose him out of several photographs shown to her by the investigating detective because he was the closest match to the description of the non-existent perp. To Crowell’s credit,… Read more »
Somebody mentioned looking for specific “malicious” cases of false rape accusations. As was also mentioned, they all do not have to be “malicious.” Case in point, former NY weatherperson, Heidi Jones. She claimed that a “Hispanic male” tried to rape her in the park and followed her home. She didn’t name any names or point any faces out in a lineup…fortunately. She easily could have and just picked some random Hispanic male out of a lineup, and that would have been it for him. But Jones wasn’t being malicious; she was just being selfish, unthinking, uncaring, and too caught up… Read more »
And finally, I think the same thing feminists often say about the really fucked-up nature of false accusations and forced confessions/convictions based on crappy evidence applies to cases like the Lynnwood victim: every false accusation makes life that much harder for real victims. Which is 100% true — from any anti-rape perspective in general, and from any feminist perspective in particular, someone who files a false rape report, or who doesn’t file a report but spreads false rumors, is directly undermining feminist efforts to get sexual assault and rape taken seriously. Well, same thing’s clearly true for victims of false… Read more »
Speaking of FRS, from the comments on their post about the Lynnwood victim’s case: No – two wrongs never make a right. This woman should never have suffered for the lies of other woman. Also, and far, far more important to getting why I think the whole thing matters One BIG thing I want to point out here – and I’ve heard others on this very discussion blog criticize others for it – is the fact an innocent woman plead GUILTY to something she didn’t do. This is VERY common for men, expecially in child accusation cases. I know why… Read more »
Lamech: @Glaivester: I think its safe to say that in most any rape case where the accused is claiming innocence they are also claiming the accuser is falsely accusing them.
What I meant by “complaintant” is that the person claimly to be falsely accused chooses to press charges. The accused could still deny that s/he had raped anyone but decline to press charges against the accuser.
Also, this would preclude prosecutions for false reports if the accuser recants prior to identifying an attacker.
dungone: @Daran, there’s nothing inherently hypothetical here. If you want to talk about a real person who committed suicide after a false accusation, we could find examples. Of course we could. You’re free to trawl the archives for the FRA with the worst outcome for the victim, while I’m stuck with the case at hand. Tell you what: Next time we’re discussing the Duke FRA, I’ll dismiss their suffering by saying “They only spent a few days in jail. Some rape victims kill themselves!” How will you feel about that? Yes, I believe that it is fully appropriate to compare… Read more »
Figleaf: @Daran: “You’re talking about a $500 fine that was returned. I’ve had to pay as much for getting my car towed after a parking violation because I misread the sign.” Aaaaannndd if that $500 fine was the beginning and end of the story for the Lynnwood victim then yeah, you’re totally right, pull up her big-girl panties and move on right? I screwed up the markup in my comment. The words you are here attributing to me are actually those of dungone. I was not supporting his view. I was objecting to it. I would greatly appreciate it if… Read more »
@Dungone: “Unless I learn otherwise, I have to assume that she made an informed voluntary choice even after the police advised her that it would result in a charge. Any deviation from that is a problem with law enforcement in general and I wouldn’t take it as a specific issue pertaining to accusations of rape.” Welcome to my world. Or at least welcome to the point of my post. The deviation would be a problem with law enforcement in general. Also, while I’m checking around to see if I can find further details, it sure sounds as though the Lynnwood… Read more »
Just of note that if you are convicted of fraud then any time in the future where you are dealing with the court system (say if you get into a car accident and sued) then any testimony or statements you give and be called into question. Fraud impacts your “character”.
” Now in her specific case it appears* that the police forced a confession out of her. ” Hell, half the time they force the accusations out of the women! This happened to a woman who now tours the country with the guy convicted of raping her and going to jail for it, for years. the police bum-rushed her into identifying him, God knows her state of mind at the time. Hey they got a slam dunk case. It’s all good; pays off at election time. So she ends up blaming herself for what – not resisting the pressure enough… Read more »