In a recent news story from Michigan (reprinted below) men accused of rape were not charged because they passed polygraph tests.
And what if they had refused to take the polygraphs? Well, it is no stretch to assume they would still be in jail.
There is, of course, no guarantee that men accused of rape will be offered the opportunity to take a polygraph test, or that they would be released from jail even if they pass the polygraph test. But if given the chance, men accused of rape had better take the test if they want to be released from jail.
So why aren't rape accusers required to take polygraphs? Well, even though the tests are considered in some sense valid when men accused of rape are asked to take them, the women who accuse the men of rape say they should be exempt from taking them. You see, rape victims' advocates have lobbied state and local governments "to ban or discourage police from asking rape accusers to take polygraph tests. They have contended that women will be discouraged from reporting sexual assaults if police don't simply take them at their word, without question." S. Taylor, KC Johnson, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, 378 (2007).
No one is interested in causing undue stress to persons who have traumatized by a rape. But is a polygraph more stressful to a rape accuser than a stint in jail is to an innocent man falsely accused?
The question scarcely survives its statement.
And if you don't think it's common that innocent men are jailed for rapes they didn't commit, spend several hours reading this Web site to see the actual news accounts of that very thing happening. And then read the objective sources that place false rape claims anywhere from nine to more likely closer to fifty percent.
If a polygraph would keep an innocent man from languishing in jail, we should not exempt rape accusers from polygraph tests. Let us be blunt: if the insistence that rape accusers submit to a polygraph test keeps a hypothetical rape victim from "coming forward" resulting in a rapist remaining at large, as terrible as that is, that result is preferable to allowing an innocent man to be jailed for a crime he did not commit. That is really the bottom line. (Some radical feminists do not agree with that, which tells us everything we need to know about their vile agenda.)
The fact of the matter is that polygraphs are routinely used by law enforcement officials, and they are a particularly important tool in one specific area of the criminal justice system -- insuring that sex offenders (who, incidentally, are predominantly male) are adhering to the terms of their probation. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, for example, has upheld the use of polygraphs for this purpose, saying that polygraph testing "produces an incentive to tell the truth, and thereby advances the sentencing goals." The vast majority of states require polygraphs for use when it comes to sex offenders. Thus, polygraphs are perfectly acceptable when used on men who want to avoid a vile sex charge. Do you see the pattern here? Let's spell it out:
Polygraphs: good, when men are asked to take them to help law enforcement officials discern if they've committed a vile sex crime;
Polygraphs: bad, when women are asked to take them to help law enforcement officials discern if they are lying about being victimized by a man's alleged vile sex crime.
This is a gross and intellectually dishonest double standard. No rationale justifies exempting rape accusers from submitting to polygraphs. Such exemption only serves to exalt the radical feminist agenda to jack up rape convictions over any concern for innocent men falsely accused of rape. But that, after is, is really the entire purpose of this immoral, politically driven double double standard, isn't it?
And that is a disgrace.
HERE IS THE NEWS STORY:
2 accused of Sumpter Township rape pass polygraphs
by Susan Oppat The Ann Arbor News
Monday October 13, 2008, 11:15 AM
Two men who were accused by a Sumpter Township woman of raping her in August passed polygraph exams, and will not be charged, Sumpter Township Police Sgt. Mike Czinski said today.
Czinski said Wayne County prosecutors have also refused to file charges against the 18-year-old woman for filing a false police report.
The woman had told police the men assaulted her in the Rawsonville Woods mobile home where they all lived.
Link: http://www.mlive.com/annarbornews/news/index.ssf/2008/10/2_accused_of_rape_pass_polygra.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
14 comments:
A better solution would be to ban polygraph tests. polygraphs are no more effective than tarot cards. They have no place in a criminal investigation
As a woman I agree that victim/woman should also have to take polygraph tests. The truth is important to the victim as well. A false rape accusation by a bitter scorned woman affects the real victims of rape.
However Im not sure of the accuracy of the polygraph test and if severe emotions would affect the results. I imagine taking drugs or physically hurting yourself while answering questions would manipulate the results. Care should be taken.
Oh and And punishment should be harsher.
There exists another possibility. What if the accuser passes and the accused passes? Or both fail? This constitutes a severe test of the polygraph as a means for determining truth, and would cast serious doubt on cases where people were prosecuted purely because they failed the test. Those who manufacture, use and rely on the polygraph as a tool for obtaining the truth are not interested in having it tested in a real-world situation.
Listen, your logic is sound, so why be exclusive to just rape cases? If you want to treat both parties of a rape case as such, then give polygraphs to anyone that reports a burglary, carjacking, assault, harassment, or any other crime. There is no reason to single out one crime here. Either do it to all of them or none of them, there's no reason to single out ONLY possible rape victims, it's ridiculous.
I agree with the comments -- if it's not reliable, ban it. But let's cut out the double-standards, which are not scientific but are politically motivated.
Why do you want rape victims treated differently than victims of other crimes? For that matter why are the alleged attackers allowed a get out of jail free card by passing a polygraph? We don’t offer that option to people accused of other crimes. We have a justice system that decides if someone is guilty or innocent and a notoriously unreliable polygraph should not be used to determine guilt or innocence.
Anna: First, we need to keep our language straight: We are not talking about rape "victims," we are talking about rape "accusers," who may or may not be "victims." Kindly don't mischaracterize the players -- this entire Web site is devoted to making that vital distinction between "victims" and "accusers." Your characterization of all accusers are "victims" is indicative that you are in no manner sympathetic to men falsely accused.
Second, you premise your comment on an assumption that rape accusers are treated in a manner different than other persons who make criminal accusations. You offer no support for this blithe assertion aside from your serene ipse dixit. The fact is, polygraphs are widely utilized in criminal justice.
Third, polygraph tests are anything but "get out of jail free" cards. For reasons that are not explained in the news story, in this lone case the men were released after taking a polygraph test. Spend several hours reviewing this Web site and you will see that such actions only occur if there is no other evidence. My educated suspicion is that the police realized they had a very weak case to begin with and the polygraph was just the icing on the cake.
Fourth, you assume that no other class of accused is released on the basis of a polygraph. Once more, that is rank speculation on your part.
I am suspecting from the tone of your note that you are unsympathetic to men falsely accused of rape. I am suspecting that you presume women tell the truth about rape and that men who deny they are rapists lie.
I am suspecting you are a troll.
I am a prosecutor and I see how difficult it is for women to report when they are raped. They have to relive the assault over and over again as they are interviewed and re-interviewed by skeptical police officers and detectives. They have to go to the hospital to have a rape kit exam done, which is not as bad a pap smear, but it is is a rather invasive exam that must be conducted as soon as possible after an assault. We insist on it to to try and preserve any existing physical evidence, even thought we know that condoms are used in most rapes, which means no sperm. The victim is worried about her family and friends finding out, whether they will believe her or blame her. Disbelief and blame is not uncommon, even when there is overwhelming evidence of guilt. She has to worry about being kept safe from her attacker, assuming it's someone she knows, which it is, most of the time. She has to calm down and try to feel safe again, which is nearly impossible. Most victims exihibit systems of PTSD, lasting anxiety, feelings of worthlessness, insomnia and helplessness. She already knows that the defense will call her a "lying slut", because that is the most common defense. Using a polygraph test, the results of which are inadmissable, doesn't add much value to the investigation.
Polygraphs are inconclusive as a matter of law, which is why the results are inadmissable. We rarely use them. The polygraph doesn't detect deception, it only detects fear of deception. It does not show anything on a sociopath, which is a fair description of most serial rapists.
In my office, no one is charged of rape without a thorough investigation by our detectives who then meet with the District Attorney prior to arrest. We only charge those we think we can convict. We work very hard to make sure we can prove a person's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, prior to arrest. These cases are given the highest level of review, prior to arrest, even more than some murders.
nochumpluv, we, too, are sympathetic to problems faced by actual rape victims. There are innumerable Web sites where those problems are championed. In contrast, there are essentially none where innocent men and boys falsely accused are given a voice.
I sense from your comment that you, too, disagree with the double-standard at work here, but I do not want to put words in your mouth.
I do hope you respect that the emphasis of this one particular Web site is on innocents who are falsely accused of this vile crime. They have largely been left out of the rape dialogue, for reasons I don't understand, by people who champion rape victims. Why we can't champion all victims, I don't know, but the issue has become so politicized it is frightening. The dialogue is, in fact, dominated entirely by persons who seek to underscore the difficulties, the prejudices and the hardships of actual rape victims. We never minimize those problems here. All we point out is that as difficult as those problems are, they do not trump the wrong done to a man or a boy wrongly arrested for a rape he didn't commit. If you disagree with that statement, then this probably isn't the Web site for you.
This website is complete crap. Your statistics are wrong and by encouraging this, you are in turn encouraging the rape of 1 in 4 American women and 1 in 33 American men.
Less than one half of one percent of all reported rapes are false (FBI crime stats) and as rape is one of the MOST UNDER-REPORTED crimes to begin with, you are servicing the wrong population.
I agree that most men don't rape, but websites like this are giving excuses to the ones that do
Of 1,1111 unique visitors to this site today as of 3:45 pm, the previous comment stands alone as the only hate comment.
Let's set the record straight: the previous comment is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a treasonous, slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity. And in the center of all this waste and stench, besmearing herself with its foulest defilement, splashes, leaps, cavorts and wallows a bifurcated specimen, a traitor to humanity and all that is decent that responds to the name of holly krings.
I know nothing of this presumably young college student, whose brain is not fully formed yet, aside from her comment here.
But I am publishing this one comment to show the men and boys falsely accused who read this Web site (and I know there are a number who do because they write me with often gut wrenching stories) what the forces of hate, of misandry arrayed against them look like.
They are angry; they are irrational; and they couldn't make a persuasive argument if their lives depended on it. I hope I come up against this young woman in court someday -- I suspect she was so angry when she wrote this that she started to cry.
She starts out with this: "This website is complete crap. Your statistics are wrong . . . ."
At least she's upfront in letting us know that she is an idiot. Very kind of her -- but don't stop there: read the rest for the humor value.
"Less than one half of one percent of all reported rapes are false (FBI crime stats) . . . ."
Um, you are wrong. It is an old feminist canard to attribute erroneous, anti-male statistics of this nature to the FBI. I actually cite the FBI stats on this "crappy" site, and I attribute MY source (you see, my dear girl, it's not enough to say "FBI.") But you wouldn't know that because you've never actually read this site.
"I agree that most men don't rape, but websites like this are giving excuses to the ones that do"
You wretched, putrid excuse for a human being -- you know nothing of this site, or of the matters we advocate here. We are concerned only with men and boys falsely accused of rape. We speak out against rape. When have YOU ever spoken out against false rape claims? Oh, I'm sorry -- in your Women's Studies Fairyland there is no such thing. They are a "myth," and a "bugaboo."
Now, you cretinous, immoral, horrid excuse for a woman, return to Feministing or whichever radical site you've come from and stop trolling here to abuse the falsely accused. This is one of the few Web sites that give them voice.
You've had your chance to participate in the discourse. You blew it. You are not up to the challenge from an intellectual standpoint.
It's ironic that the latest version of the Violence Against Women's Act (VAWA), which all began with the first one authored by Joe Biden, would have prohibited even asking an alleged victim to take a polygraph, but it was a polygraph that helped Pittsburgh Police unravel the story of Ashley Todd, the McCain volunteer who falsely accused a
6'4" black man of robbing her and carving a backwards B in her face, and then fondling her.
Had the Pittsburgh Police been unable to use that tool, it might not have been determined to be false as quickly as it was and may have influenced the people of Western PA, Congressman Jack Murtha refers to as racists and rednecks, not to vote for the Obama.
Joe Biden's pandering to the female vote threatens innocent men and could have cost Obama the swing state of PA if passed in its initial form.
Excellent point, CopInVA. Please keep reading and commenting.
My 13 year old son has been falsely accused by his 15 year old cousin, why? Because of a custody battle. His life is being ruined by a girl that we loved and supported for 13 years. Adolescence hit she moved to her father's house and he is using her as a pawn. This is a very real crime and it is occurring more frequently. The heinous nature of this is that she will never criminally suffer for her perjury.
Post a Comment