COMMENT: Interesting comment by Judge Prcaccini in this case:
He asked how could the three defendants on trial for rape could be held to a different standard, if trained observers, such as the rescue worker, could not even identify her as intoxicated?
That is an excellent question. If she was dancing, talking, smoking pot and "shotting," then it is reasonable to believe she was able to consent. Another case of day-after-regret? Maybe. But the Judge made the correct decision in this case.
Rape charges dismissed in Pawtucket case.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- They hugged, slapped backs and the word "justice" rang out in the courtroom seconds after Judge Daniel A. Procaccini dismissed rape charges against three men.
Procaccini found that the state had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Spencer Ward, Kenneth Sakor and Alaba Sobowale had sexually assaulted a Massachusetts woman on a stairwell at a birthday party in Pawtucket three years ago.
Monday's decision ended the trial in Providence County Superior Court and cleared the three men of first-degree sexual assault charges.
"From day one, we didn't think they were guilty," said John Coughlin, representing Sakor.
Prosecutors needed to prove the three men sexually penetrated the woman knowing she was physically helpless, meaning she was unconscious or physically unable to communicate her unwillingness to engage in intercourse.
Coughlin said the men had chosen to have the judge try the case before Procaccini instead of a jury because the judge would have a greater understanding of the law than a jury. "
"The state was dealt a bad hand," Coughlin said.
The now 27-year-old woman testified over two days that she treated her mother to The Phantom of the Opera at the Providence Performing Arts Center before heading to Sakor's birthday party around 11 p.m. March 9, 2006. She had at least five drinks, including a rum and coke that she believed someone kept refilling after she drank from it. She danced and "chit chatted" with the 20 or so people there, most of whom she supervised at that Judge Rotenberg Center, a residential facility for special needs students in Canton, Mass.
She said she smoked marijuana in the foyer with five men, including all three defendants. She took "shotties" from a man, allowing him to blow a puff of smoke into her mouth. She said she could not move or speak and awoke to find Sobowale, 48, of 79 Ivan St., North Providence, raping her; followed by Ward, 26, of 76 Petteys Ave., Providence; and then a third man.
A rape kit done at Women & Infants Hospital identified Sakor, 24, of 197 Garden St., Pawtucket, a former high school track star, as the third man.
In ruling, Procaccini noted that the rescue worker, police officer, and doctor who saw the woman in the hours after the alleged assault described her as alert, communicative and not obviously intoxicated.
"[The woman's] description of helplessness is not supported by the evidence in the record," Procaccini said. He asked how could the three men be held to a different standard, if trained observers, such as the rescue worker, could not even identify her as intoxicated?
He also noted significant gaps in her ability to recall the events, particularly when she was being questioned by the defense lawyers.
The Journal does not identify alleged victims of sexual assaults.
Link: http://newsblog.projo.com/2009/03/judge-dimsisses.html
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16 comments:
Sigh! Pierce Harlan, it is truly sad that you, with your 'poor men' mentality, somehow think that the fact that men ONLY commit about 75% of the rapes they are accused of makes them deserve a little pity. What about all the rapes that ARE true that are not reported? My site, http://mradvicecolumn.blogspot.com, gives people, including women, a place to talk about matters of the heart-of-hearts, including relationships between men and women.
First, thanks for the shameless plug of your website, Mr. My2Cents. Unlike your friends who run the feminist sites, I did not remove your shameless plug.
Further thanks for your woefully uninformed opinion on rape statistics.
And finally, thanks for the blatant misandry. Always nice to see there is a need for sites like this.
In the interest of full disclosure, I noticed the following on your website: "When are we men going to stop bringing such shame upon our species, and then wondering why there is so much male-bashing going on. In fact, I think that one of the chief reasons why a lot of women are turning to other women for companionship is that we have dogged them so much."
I believe that is all anyone needs to know about you. I could not stomach reading beyond that.
As for your inane, uninformed, hateful comment on my site: even if your rape stats had some basis in reality (and they don't), why on earth does that suggest to you that an entire class of citizens -- the wrongly accused -- are not entitled to a voice? To an advocate? To the same legal protections we provide other victims? Why on earth do you think that men and boys and even some women being put through a hell beyond anything you could comprehend deserve derision from the likes of -- you?
I must give you credit. You are either a brilliant man (and, to be brutally frank, I see no evidence for that) or you are one stupid son of a bitch to prance onto this site and, with uber confidence, lecture Pierce Harlan about rape statistics. And then to suggest that I am whining about "poor men." You haven't the first clue about what we're doing here, but it is comments such as yours that prove the need for sites like this -- to give the wrongly accused an advocate against smug, arrogant, know-it-alls, like you, who deride their plight with no authotity beyond your serene ipse dixit.
If you ever have an informed notion, supported by objectively verifiable fact, I will gladly engage you in civil discourse.
I strongly suspect that won't happen.
womens rape crisis centers that always believe the women when she says she has been raped, even when she is lying, are a dangerous group. That are attacking the very basic institution of truth in a legal system, and replacing it with an irrational klan/mob mentality.
mr 2 cents does not have truth behind his simpleton comments..he, like most, are regurgitating the "hysteria prop" that they are surrounded by.
There is a cure for "hysteria prop", and that is to attack it at the source, which is the gender feminist/ law enforcement misinformation alliance.
Can anyone be right, against a hysterical mentality...that wants to be wrong. Of course we can, we just have to demand the truth.
A wise MRA told me " The truth will always multiply"..and it is!!
This two-cent clown (The asking price seems way to high to me, given what the mangina offers - but, I digress) wishes to bring up the nebulous issue of unreported rapes, which is one area in this arena of rape-debate to which they feel that they can always turn.
Yes! I think we all know that there some women who, for what ever reason, choose not to report that they have been raped – even violently. But, the number of such women is something that is extremely difficult to “pin down”. While some women will never tell anyone, not even close friends or family, other women certainly tell “stories” of harrowing experiences they had to endure, which simply never happened. They can gain large doses of sympathy, without having to endure any scrutiny.
Some women (and I won’t bother to name names from over at Glenn Sacks’ blog) “recover” memories of having been brutally raped years after the incident was alleged to have happened. And, while I do not know the psychology of such recovered memories, I do know of numerous instances where investigation has revealed that the memories that the women had supposedly recovered could not have happened. I seem to recall one such case where the alleged perpetrator was found to have been living hundreds of mile away at the time, and only moved to that local some time after he was supposed to have raped the women in question.
But, to avoid getting to far off on that tangent, I did also want to point out one type of rape that definitely goes under-reported (perhaps by as much as 90%). That overwhelmingly under-report type of rape is lesbian-rape. Women who get close to another woman, only to find themselves forced into sexual acts (including some rather barbaric sounding fetishes) in which they were unwilling participants will almost never come forward and report the attacks to authorities.
But, like unreported heterosexual rapes, the exact numbers are largely a matter of speculation based on undocumented/unconfirmed (unconformable) self-reporting (interestingly, both by victims and victimizers).
I’m certainly not advocating engaging in such a deceptive manipulation of the debate, but, I’d never-the-less point out that it would be possible to emulate the low-road taken by kiss-up mangina’s like the poster above, and we could claim some exaggerated number of unreported lesbian rapes, insinuating that the existence of such suggested that women were the worst of all actors in the issue of rapes of women.
Hey, I know it’s sounds utterly stupid (and, I struggled with even typing it out), but I did want to make the point that throwing about idle speculations regarding things we cannot measure does little to bring about positive debate – and, ultimately, has exactly ZERO to do with the issue of innocent men suffering needlessly because some unthinking women chose to accuse them of what it considered to be amongst the most heinous of crimes – typically simply for her convenience.
Mr.MyWorthlessOpinion either chooses to ignore this very real issue, or is simply not bright enough to understand it. I suspect eh former here. But, just like the kiss-ass mangina lapdog writing in The Triangle, all his groveling at the feet of the feminists he worships will do him little good in gaining any sexual success with them.
[sorry to be crude, but I’m tired of pretending that we cannot know the reason why virtually every male feminist expends great energy rehashing their errant dogma. I’ve been all too aware of the reason since I was in college in the early 80’s. Some things never change. So-called betas prostrate themselves before women, and subject themselves to all manner of self-flagellation in the ill-thought belief that do so will garner favor for them from women – and maybe, someday, after years of proving their humble lowliness to women, some women will have enough pity on them to be willing to have sex with them.
I’ve never understood why these guy’s can’t seem to buy a clue. How many of them have a woman “friend” stop by to thank them for their “efforts” while on the arm of some “bad boy” they themselves are on their way to humiliate themselves before in the equally ill-though hope that he will come to love them?]
Two young girls in 17th century colonial America also made a rash of false accusations in witch caused a mass hysteria in the community that cost a number of women/men their lifes.
These were the Salem Massachusetts witch trials.
How about standing up for the truth, simply because it is the truth. Right now the victims of mass hysteria are men/boys, but not unlike the Salem witch accussations "mass hysteria" is a cyclical thing.
Cultural hysteria is only tempered with the truth..but the truth is being kept from the public.
False rape accusations are not 2%..they are much higher than that.
The Salem witch trials in early American history, are somewhat an example of what happens when a mob mentality erupts over women/girls lies, and no one dares to challenge what she is saying (like is it real, or a lie??)
I imagine Mr. 2 cents, as just another ??hysteric?? that would have burned the witches..and never questioned whether these young girls were lying or not.
""[The woman's] description of helplessness is not supported by the evidence in the record," Procaccini said. He asked how could the three men be held to a different standard, if trained observers, such as the rescue worker, could not even identify her as intoxicated?"All contemptuous rant aside (and I do apologize if I offended anyone with my earlier rant),
This sort of reminds of that somewhat famous case in which a woman (can't recall her name) participated in a video-taped orgy with multiple men, then shortly after leaving the "party", called police to report that she'd been gang-raped.
Here we have a woman who was NOT discernibly inebriated, let alone incapacitated, who could even articulate the number of men who had recently had sex with her - but yet was trying to sell the story that she was "paralyzed" and unable to move or speak, while fully aware that she was being raped.
So, what is this new mystery drug that temporarily complete paralyzes, but does not render it's victim unconscious; and leaves no trace, nor lingering side-effects. I've never heard of something like that before.
Sorry, I'd find it easier to swallow if she claimed alien body-snatching.
I'd imagine that after having wild spontaneous sex with multiple partners, it suddenly dawned on her that having done so would likely hurt her "reputation".
So, she did what we see happen so very often, she tried to use a false rape allegation as a sort of "Get Out Of Slutdom Free" card.
Hey, I'll put my two cents up against that other guys' any day.
Now you,my fellow men, see the type of people I have to deal with when I am discussing how women can and do lie about being raped ( amongst many other things they can/do lie about. MrMy2Cents comment is not even worth anything. We know the truth, he will unfortunately have to run the risk of having to eat his/her/it's own words as he/she/it cannot back them up with truth. I can just imagine what he, assuming "it" is a he, would say or do if he/she/it were falsely accused of rape,sexual assault or, any other crime(s) real or imagines ) against a woman.
MrMy2Cents, What about all of the false rapes that are not reported, even those " rape " cases that have been sensationalized by the feminist controlled main stream media ? Here in Nashville,TN, a local feminist and state controlled news station channel five a report on a man who was wrongfully accused and sentenced to decades in prison, before the innocence project proved he was not the person who committed the rape and murder the state ,a woman's state, fought to " prove " he committrd. His story was never shown or printed. His story was not presented to the public in the same manner as the false information, claiming he was guilty, was broadcast on every news report the media here. He was quietly exonerated but not before the public.
Oh, by the way, his " victim " was a female but who wouldn't have guessed that , seeing as the media minimalizes false accusations of violent crimes committed against men by women but, maximizes any report of female victimhood.
Pierce Harlan, excuse me, but do you mean like the shameless plug for your site that you left on my site??? Or did I forget that your're a god, not a man, so you can do and say whatever you want?
I didn't mean to hurt your LITTLE feelings. I didn't realize that your site is meant for the myopic view that you share with your male chauvinist, "poor men" choir of yes men (and women).
If it were possible to give some CONCRETE, ABSOLUTE numbers on rape cases, you wouldn't have to use the skewed figures that you use. In the meantime, since you are just a man, albeit a narrow-minded one, I will use the numbers that I consider more objective than yours. You CAN'T prove your assertions anymore than I can.
The decision by you and your choir boys to strike-up-the-band against any dissenting voice illustrates the need for sites like mine, where free expression is permitted, and welcomed.
2 cents says
"If it were possible to give some CONCRETE, ABSOLUTE numbers on rape cases, you wouldn't have to use the skewed figures that you use."
scott say's, gender feminists have a tight grip on what academia can and cannot study, and the true percentages of false rape accusations would be quite embarrassing for the gender feminist propaganda machine..so the gender feminist information gatekeepers simply tell us we cannot study it.( And tell us it is for our own good)
It is simpleton hysteric males like you're self that fuel the gender feminist juggernaut.
Bask like swine in feces in you're ignorance, for it will not last forever.
Mr.2Cents: Now that you mention it, I forgot that I did express my opinion about an anti-male comment on your site.
I don't recall seeing any citations of sources for any rape statistics in your argument. We freely list ours and reference them on our site (and those stats are not "ours," they are the only studies out there by scholars). If you want to educate people or engage in civil discourse, then please do so. But we're not going to turn this site into a forum for you to insult our readers. We have a lot of readers who've been falsely accused -- we know this because we get a lot of notes from them, and these sorts of diatribes are hurtful to them. We've all had our rants at each other, and it's well established that you don't like what we do here. That's fine, and I don't care. If you want to engage in civil discourse here, please do so, but we're not going to allow any more gratuitous insults.
My2cents,
Go blow your boyfriend and stop calling yourself an MRA.
I apologize for 'insulting' y'all. I thought turnabout was fair play.
Nevertheless, I would like you to know that, as a black man, I am probably more familiar with injustice than most people who live in this anglo-american society. Therefore, having to live with injustice almost on a daily basis, I hate injustice in every form, including men who are falsely accused of rape.
Black men have, historically, been accused of rape by white women wanting to satisfy their curiosity about the virility of the black man. So, I sympathize, and empathize, with the sentiments of your Society.
By the way, the Bible refers to cases of false rape charges, which adds credibility to your cause.
The problem I have with your group (based upon the limited contact I have had with you over the last week) is that you have taken a real problem, looked at it myopically, and now want to label everyone that wants to expand the discussion as misandrous.
I believe that you would gain more sympathy for your cause by being more balanced in your thinking, and not burning at the stake all whom your group label heretics. You can never, in this life, look at any statistics in a vacuum. That neither wise, or realistic.
For all the men who have been falsely accused, and benefited from your efforts, I cheer you and yours. I can only imagine what it would be like to walk in their shoes. Unfortunately, it is the way that some scorned women have chosen to retaliate against some men who have chosen not to follow the stereotypical way of most men who will put their dipstick in any hole.
Mr. My2Cents, thanks for your comments.
I think that if I came across this website before I started to delve heavily into the false rape phenomenon, or had become acquainted with the false rape community, I might have thought that the message was not balanced.
I came to this issue with a completely open mind -- in fact, I believed the rape crisis feminists' claim that only two percent of all rape claims are false. The more I studied the issue, the more I discovered it wasn't just inaccurate, it was a reckless disregard for the truth, akin to a lie. They continue to insist that false claims are a "myth" -- every week I find myself responding to one or more newspaper articles where sexual assault counselors are quoting spreading that lie. I routinely invite these people to dialogue about facts -- they never do. And, oh, yes, I know they read this site. Carefully. They will often comment on things we've written, but never take the debate to us. And, of course, they don't welcome us debating on their sites.
I make sure, to the extent I am able, that we are posting objectively verifiable information, as opposed to wild, gender divisive screeds. I believe that the truth is its own "balance" and that posting anything other than the truth would render our site unbalanced.
Our advocacy might be offputting to the uninitiated, and perhaps that's because we are at war with persons who openly wish for us to be brutally raped (I kid you not) -- all because we dare cite law review articles that disprove their two percent canard and otherwise spread the news that false rape claims are not a myth. More and more we see that we are dictating the public discourse on this issue -- for the first time, rape crisis feminist sites are responding (ineffectively, of course) to what we write.
I am happy to have anyone point out, with objectively verifiable fact, how we are looking at the issue myopically. I take exception to your comment that I label anyone who wants to expand the discussion as misandrous. That is not factual. Do not confuse comments with posts. While I don't do that, I will tell you what else I don't do here: I don't allow uninformed opinion to masquerade as discussion worthy of being taken seriously. We are familiar with every serious, unbiased study on false rape claims (as well as the ones commissioned by the sexual assault cottage industry). We are familiar with the literature in the area and with the double standards enacted in law that help increase reporting rape and rape convictions while not providing any protections for the presumed innocent, many of whom turn out to be falsely accused. And we are familiar with all the recent false rape cases and many of the historical cases. If people would like to comment on these, we are happy to engage them. I welcome disagreement, and many comments have had the effect of changing my thinking on important matters -- to do that, the comments have to be grounded in fact and reason.
Black men more than any other group, until recently, have been victims of the venom of false rape claims.
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