This is why we have this Web site. In the story beneath this comment, a young man was permitted to rot in jail for months after his false accuser recanted. I have been scratching my head trying to fathom one legitimate reason why he should have remained locked up all this time, and I can't think of one. Not one.
One or more prominent rape feminists are scrutinizing this site, apparently disgusted that we would have the temerity to speak up for a class of victim they happily ignore, and deluding themselves that their oppostion to our site helps rape victims when it does exactly the opposite.
False rape claims like the one in this story hurt and often destroy innocent men and boys, but they also do terrible harm to the credibility of all women and girls who cry rape. Every serious student of the subject agrees with that. Rape feminists who are disgusted that we hightlight, underscore, and sound the alarm about stories like this, and who would prefer to stick their heads in the sand about false rape claims in general, do rape victims a grave disservice in the interest of advancing a political agenda. Rape victims should say to hell with the rape advocates and join us in condemning and in trying to reduce false rape claims -- because the crime of rape is being trivialized by women who lie about it. I repeat what I've said before: the day the prominent rape advocates start taking this problem seriously is the day I go away. Shame on all of you for not caring about the young man in the story below and all the others like him.
And, by the way, the young man in the story is black. Big surprise. I have no idea if there was a racial element to this case, but every time I hear of a case where the treatment of the innocent male seems excessive even by false rape standards (where unwarranted and excessive incarceration is the norm), chances are the victim of the false rape claim is a young black male. That is not to suggest that young white men are treated fairly when it comes to false rape claims.
One final note: there was no adjudication here to definitively declare that the claim was "false." Thankfully that wasn't necessary because the police have determined that sex was consensual. In any event, even if the claim was merely unfounded (with no one being able to say with reasonable certainty what happened), this would in no manner excuse the fact that a young man was permitted to be locked up for months on a "he said/she said" claim (actually three "hes" versus one "she"), and in the face of a recantation. If the police wanted to continue to investigate the claim after the recantation, that certainly might have been warranted, depending on the facts. What was not warranted was depriving a young man of his liberty for months. Issue a restraining order against him if you must, but don't lock him away like a criminal.
I am literally sick to my stomach over stories like this.
Read the story and go to the original site to see the video -- the tears of the young man's mother should be our tears as well.
HERE IS THE STORY:
Teens cleared of rape charges
Mastic (WABC) -- Three teenagers accused of gang raping a 14-year old girl in a Mastic home back in October have been cleared. But one of them spent months in jail, even though girl recanted her story just three days after the incident.
Tyquan Dawson and two other teens, ages 15 and 16, were arrested for rape.
On Friday the Suffolk County District Attorney's office dismissed the charges, saying the sex was consensual and no force was used.
"I'm angry due to the fact that my son's name is getting slammed," said Tyquan's mother Sharon. She added that she was relieved, but also still angry at the accuser.
Lawyers for the teens want to know why the DA's office didn't reveal the fact that the girl dropped the rape accusation, and why Dawson had to stay in jail for so long after.
The DA's office says it was the parole division that kept him locked up.
Link: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=7234580
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"The DA's office says it was the parole division that kept him locked up."
Here's a possible answer as to why he was held as he was.
If the parole division is involved it means (absolutely) that he had a prior conviction, for which he was on parole. It is quite possible that the circumstance surrounding the group-sex also included a parole violation, which, in keeping with court order, would require his incarceration.
It's likely that he'd have been in violation if drugs and/or alcohol were part of a party they were at, or if he had been convicted of sex-related crime which would have required him to have no contact with girls.
Still, that the DA's office didn't reveal the recantation is problematic. Such exculpatory evidence is required to be shared with the defense. Even if the DA's office doubted the recantation, ans wished to continue investigating, the defense should have been allowed to used the fact that the recantation existed to argue for their clients release.
I am at a loss as to how innocent activities relating to group sex could legally be a violation of parole. Without any more evidence, it could be an administrative delay -- the "incident" had to be reviewed by the parole board.
We have deviants running our government, and not leaders. Leaders protect the innocent.
Archivist - "I am at a loss as to how innocent activities relating to group sex could legally be a violation of parole."
Being on parole usually (maybe always) requires that the parolee not use drugs or alcohol, and requires them not associate with other convicted felons (typically named individuals) or known gang-members.
His remand into custody for a parole violation may have had nothing to do with the sexual activity, but rather with some other violation which came to light via the FRA. The simple fact that the parole division was involved means that custody had likely already been transferred from the judicial district (county jail) to the state level, and the DA's office would no longer have had a direct say in his continued incarceration (assuming that NY Dept. of Corrections works in the same way as Colorado's).
What would be troubling, and what I would imagine that your getting at, would be if his transfer to the parole division were based on nothing more than his arrest on suspicion of a felony offense. If that were the case, the recantation should have placed the charges in doubt so that he incarceration should have been returned to the care, custody, and control of Suffolk County, allowing him the chance to bond out.
I do understand your concern regarding the appearance that the DA's refusal to consider the distinct possibility that the charges had been false to justify his continued incineration, however, if it were determined that he had definitely violated the terms of his (drugs use found by testing, for instance), would have taken presidence.
Off-topic...
Someone had suggested backing up this site in case it needed to be moved elsewhere.
I would recommend the following free software:
http://bloggerbackup.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=12201
This site is too important not to backup one way or another. In fact, I think the blog should be mirrored somehow and/or setup to be archived on http://www.archive.org.
Archive.org has the "Wayback Machine" database which can show snapshots of websites as they appeared as far back as 1996.
See example: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://falserape.net
Makes for a great research tool when sites get shut down (for whatever reason).
I don't read it that way. His release coincided with the police determination that sex was consensual -- the timing suggests he was released because the police finished their investigation. Based on the sketchy information we have, the most reasonable reading of the story was that the kid on parole was kept in jail solely because he was on parole while the police investigated this claim. The REAL question: what took them so long?
Thanks Anon. Steve has it backed up but I am sure he will review your suggestion cafefully. We have been thinking of taking this blog to the next level in any event, and we're about to do it.
Thanks Anon. Steve has it backed up but I am sure he will review your suggestion cafefully. We have been thinking of taking this blog to the next level in any event, and we're about to do it.
Archivist - "Based on the sketchy information we have..."
The "Sketchiness" of FRA reports being a pet peeve of mine, I wanted to see if I could find more.
Given that you also take issue with the rape claims as reported, you'll love this one:
'Hofstra defense' in Mastic teen rape
" You could call it the Hofstra defense, referring, of course, to the fury at Hofstra University last month when a female student said she'd been gang raped by four men, though she later admitted she'd been a willing participant all along.
"We knew when Hofstra happened that there would be longstanding consequences," said Alyson Ryan, with Victims Info Bureau of Suffolk County.
It's no surprise to Ryan that Hofstra has popped up as a defense argument in another case. In fact, she says the Hofstra hoax has done a major disservice to victims of sex crimes, many of whom already feel they have no place to turn.
"One out of seven are raped in their lifetime and that doesn't get front page coverage, so it just seems like we're still very quick to blame the victim to judge the victim and make it hard for them to come forward," Ryan said. "
Now victims advocates are claiming that the trouble arising from Hofstra is it will be used by rapists as a defense.
Archivist - "I don't read it that way. His release coincided with the police determination that sex was consensual -- the timing suggests he was released because the police finished their investigation."
From Mastic Rape Case Against 3 Teens Dismissed:
"Mastic residents Rasheed Manuel, 16, and Tyquan Dawson, 18, and a 15-year-old Bellport boy were arrested and charged with rape on October 19. Suffolk prosecutors consented to releasing the three on their own recognizance on October 22."
Looks like DA was willing to Tyquan Dawson released on his own recognizance on October 22. It seems something else must have come up for him to have been retained in custody - perhaps on a parole violation.
Thanks, slwerner. The news accounts don't lie, and we've seen a rash of false gang rape claims in the past few months. Women clearly feel enormous shame and regret after engaging in group sex, and this is a recipe for false rape claims.
So, yes, FRAs hurt rape victims. But the solution isn't to pretend FRAs get too much publicity. How could that be? Take Hofstra -- the initial news report of the "rape" got loads of scary publicity. Is is surprising that follow-up reports showing the claim was a lie got a lot of publicity? And that's typical -- the rape advocates love it when the initial claim gets a lot of publicity, but heaven forbid that the news of the falsity should get equal publicity! No, the solution isn't to pretend FRAs get too much publicity. The solution is to fight to minimize FRAs.
P.S. Good follow-up re: the parole issue, slwerner.
P.S. Could the arrest itself, and then the investigation (which only concluded last Friday) be a parole violation? That's what I suspect happened.
A couple of suggestions for which I have no financial interest other than using these services myself:
When you take this to the next level, consider bluehost.com for web hosting and networksolutions.com for DNS. You'll want/need the private registration services offered by Network Solutions https://www.networksolutions.com/domain-name-registration/private.jsp, and having designed websites for years, I have found that Bluehost http://www.bluehost.com has the best set and greatest number of features (including security features) for the price.
Bluehost lie.
According to their own advert, for $6.95 a month you get unlimited hosting space, bandwidth and domains.
If that were true, you could simply pay them $6.95 and host the entire internet there.
Patently absurd.
bluehost are patently lying.
Go with someone who charges slightly more, but makes honest promises about what you get for your money.
Bluehost isn't lying, AfoR. Not everyone uses the same amount of disk space; disk space and shared servers are relatively inexpensive; and not everyone who can use the service does (or would want to). Thus for any individual, it is unlimited, since most individuals are not storing exebytes of data on the web. Unlike you, I've hosted dozens of websites there for nearly ten years and can vouch for their hosting services. As such, it is merely a suggestion to our sponsors (and they will do what they will).
Cheers.
--The 3 part Anonymous Poster
Bluehost *are* lying.
Just the same was as ISP's who tout "unlimited" downloads and then traffic shape you to dial up speeds when you try to use it.
I used to be a hosting company back when the web was young.
"Unlimited" means without limit, without restriction, without control, without limitation, of any kind, of any degree, whatsoever.
Therefore Bluehost lie, blatantly, up front, about the fundamental properties of what they are trying to sell.
The declaration that they have hosted several sites for you is a non sequitur.
Sorry AfoR, One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions. :)
Thanks for posting this. I'm from the area and the false rape accuser is also black. I posted about this in my Facebook when it first happened and, predictably, everyone jumped on the kids and protected the victim. Rightfully, some said that they're innocent until proven guilty.
When I found out about the recantation I posted it on my FB and not a peep was heard. No one came to the defense of these poor kids that were falsely accused.
What upsets me, also, about this is that the press had absolutely ZERO problem posting the names and ages of ALL THE ACCUSED (yes, even the minors. I checked on the page I had bookmarked from one of the local papers and their names are still in the article). Yet no one, save friends and peers, will know who this girl was.
This may be a useful tool for you at FRS in the future.
http://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcrim_attorney/AttorneyWelcome
I typed in Tyquan Dawson and didn't find anything pertaining to the rape case (accusation) but I DID find something pertaining to possession of a stolen credit card. He's got a court appearance scheduled for March. But the date of the summons (or when he got caught with the credit card) was in December, almost 2 months after the alleged rape.
So I'm still wondering what it is that had him held in prison by the parole board.
I am very sympathetic. My nephew has been in a juvenile holding facility for the past month now and was just convicted of rape. He was convicted with no evidence, an expert Ob/Gyn from Stony Brook even took the stand to state that there was no penetration involved and that the only finding was irritation in the vaginal area which could have been from use of a tampon,soaps,detergents.No one understands how Judge David Freundlich can sleep at night knowing that he convicted this 13 year old boy off of an accusation with absolutely no evidence.Also no one is understanding how the conviction can be rape if no penetration was found.This girl aslo changed her story 3 or 4 times.She told one doctor that the penetration was in the vagina while telling another doctor that it was in the rectum.I am convinced that you are guilty until proven innocent instead of innocent until proven guilty.So now we await the sentencing of my 13 year old nephew who I am sure will be scared for the rest of his life that hasn't even started yet off of a mere accusation.His lawyer is currently in the process of an appeal, but as long as God knows the truth, he will be the true judge.
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