Eighteen months. That seems about right. Since Mr. Cummings was arrested, jail time seems appropriate. Again, we see the excuse that she has mental health problems (of course, it may not be a lie), but that didn't prevent her from getting jail time.
A woman who made a false rape allegation that led to an innocent man being arrested has been jailed.
Rosanne England, 21, cut and then tore her underwear and scratched her own face before telling police a masked stranger had entered her house.
Derek Cummings, 59, who had never met England, was arrested because he fitted the description and had no alibi.
England, of Holbury near Southampton, admitted perverting the course of justice and was jailed for 18 months.
Winchester Crown Court heard England told officers the man had asked to use her phone and toilet because his car had broken down.
She said after entering her home he donned a joke dog mask and attacked her in May last year.
"I do not want to see a 21-year-old woman jailed but she knew I had been arrested and I was totally innocent"
Derek Cummings
The businesswoman gave Hampshire police a detailed description and officers launched a manhunt and produced an e-fit.
Mr Cummings, a married father of two teenage daughters who was at a sport and social club nearby, fitted the description and could not offer an alibi because he had been walking his dog in nearby woods alone.
He was arrested and held for 28 hours while samples were taken before being released on police bail.
However, the Forensic Science Service discovered that England’s clothing had been cut before being torn and 24 days later she finally admitted to police the allegation was completely untrue.
Mr Cummings, who had suffered abuse from the public, was exonerated.
The court heard that England suffered from mental health problems and was receiving psychiatric help.
Affects ‘real’ victims
Mark Florida-James, prosecuting, said: "This allegation of a stranger attack was taken very seriously.
"The cul-de-sac where Miss England lived was cordoned off and the force aircraft was used to search the area.
"It is unfortunate he (Mr Cummings) was in the wrong place at the wrong time and bore a resemblance to the description.
"But at no point was there any evidence that Mr Cummings was involved.
"It was completely made up and fabricated and he was totally innocent."
Sentencing England, the Recorder of Winchester, Judge Keith Cutler, said that such an allegation could have left Mr Cummings facing a jail term of at least eight years.
He said: "There is a real effect of all this for women who are genuine victims of this horrendous crime of rape. If people make false claims it impacts on genuine claims and how they are treated."
Mr Cummings said he still had trouble from people close to where he lives in Fawley, Hampshire, who wrongly believe "there is no smoke without fire" and he cannot go into certain pubs.
"My family has been through hell," he said.
"I do not want to see a 21-year-old woman jailed but she knew I had been arrested and I was totally innocent. I have mixed feelings about her."
Link:
http://www.rocketnews.com/2010/01/woman-jailed-for-false-rape-claim/
Posts
22 comments:
"Mental problems" are not a defence to a crime. Legal insanity is something entirely different and oddly enough people who really are insane never seem to make these sorts of allegations. What we refer to today as "mental problems" is just normal female behaviour and are the norm for females. The police used to be criticised for not taking rape allegations seriously although I doubt there was any basis for this. I think it's safe to say that most rape allegations are false and the police in the past who deal with these allegations all the time probably knew that most were false. Anything that a female or child has to say must be taken with a very large grain of salt since their thinking and perception of reality is not the same as a rational man's. And that's when they're not making allegations with a malicious intent.
And btw, real insanity, mental defect, retardation etc etc is NOT a defence in a civil case and the person can be sued.
There is a real effect of all this for women who are genuine victims of this horrendous crime of rape.
I would have thought that the "real effect" was the arrest and subsequent destruction of Mr. Cummings' reputation, but I'm just an ignorant doofus.
They should start letting real rapists off for having "mental problems". Give 'em probation or don't charge 'em at all, that'll show 'em!
Hopefully we'll start seeing more stress placed on the actual victim here, the falsely accused, than theoretical future victims of real rape.
... when judges feel the need to explain their should-be-obvious verdict.
Anonymous - "What we refer to today as "mental problems" is just normal female behaviour and are the norm for females."
It's getting very tiresome to see the way in which nearly every women who is found to have lied about being raped in labeled to be suffering from some mental affliction.
It used to be that feminists would get quite exercised over the catch-all white-washing excuse for badly behaving men - "boys will be boys".
Seems to me the modern equivalent for badly behaving women has become "mental health problems" - which, as you note, is really just "girls will be girls".
Serious self-respecting women/feminists should be ashamed and aghast that this has become the standard excuse for virtually all female bad choices.
Anon at 1:02: ". . . oddly enough people who really are insane never seem to make these sorts of allegations."
I'm sorry, that's just wrong.
"What we refer to today as 'mental problems' is just normal female behaviour and are the norm for females."
Dumped by your girlfriend? Negatively stereotyping a birth class is something the feminists do. We should not stoop their level.
"The police used to be criticised for not taking rape allegations seriously although I doubt there was any basis for this."
I think even the fiercests defenders of the falsely accused would say that the overriding evidence suggests you are wrong about this.
"I think it's safe to say that most rape allegations are false . . . ."
I suspect this is correct, based on all I've read from objective sources. You should have confined your comment to this because you weaken it with the angry blather.
". . . and the police in the past who deal with these allegations all the time probably knew that most were false."
Not so. By all accounts, there were far fewer false rape claims in the past -- wives did not accuse husbands of rape (it wasn't allowed), and there wasn't this epidemic of school girl attention grabbers, among many other things.
"Anything that a female or child has to say must be taken with a very large grain of salt since their thinking and perception of reality is not the same as a rational man's."
I hope you are not including yourself in that "rational man" category. A rational man is able to see grays and nuance, and doesn't insist on thinking in angry black-and-whites.
"And btw, real insanity, mental defect, retardation etc etc is NOT a defence in a civil case and the person can be sued."
Wrong, as a blanket statement. Don't have time to explain.
Sigh.
slwerner, brilliantly stated.
"Anything that a female or child has to say must be taken with a very large grain of salt since their thinking and perception of reality is not the same as a rational man's."
There are several major problems with this.
Firstly, it's irrational to lump women and children together as if they were same.
Secondly, like any other type of criminal, women who make false rape accusations are a tiny minority of women.
Thirdly, saying that women are inherently incredible is self-defeating. The problem, which is ultimately solvable, is that women are generally rewarded rather than punished for making false rape accusations. Go read the Kanin study. If making false accusations worked for men, then men would also make false rape accusations.
Fourthly, spouting this sort of sexist nonsense makes us look unreasonable.
Continuing with what SLWerner said, there seems to be quite a double standard: men are violent monsters due to "testosterone poisoning", but women are blameless for whatever behavior might be excused by their hormones.
On September 10, 2001 one of the top stories on the American news was that the National Organization of Women was protesting in defense of a woman who violently murdered all of her children. There was footage of a candlelight vigil. Their fearless leader appeared in numerous television interviews explaining how this poor woman shouldn't be held accountable for her actions due to "postpartum psychosis".
Luckily for NOW, there was much bigger news the next day. Although I'm not going to suggest that they were in an "alliance" with Al Qaeda.
Anon at 12:54: Excellent.
Anon at 1:07: Thanks for reporting -- it is so absurd that it is almost unbelievable.
On the mental illness issue, Angry Harry makes some interesting points:
"Just one more example of how the 'abuse' figures are cooked ...
Some 5% of women have Borderline Personality Disorder or something close to it. Features of this include the habitual making of false accusations of some kind of 'abuse' - often in order to seek some kind of revenge. For women with BPD, seeing oneself as a victim of someone else's actions is almost a permanent state of being. And given that some 1 million women in the UK and 5 million women in the USA have this condition, the various allegations of 'abuse' that are made every year - sex assault, domestic violence etc - are, undoubtedly, mostly the result of these women attempting to portray themselves as victims.
Furthermore, if you can believe it, the various 'data' collected on the basis of the testimony of this relatively small group of dysfunctional women is then multiplied by incompetent academics and various government departments in order to figure out what is going on in the rest of society!
Thus, and for example, if 30% of women claim to be 'violated' every year, and 5% of women are 'dysfunctional', then these latter women would not account for much of the data.
But if, as appears to be the case, only 1% or 2% of women claim to be 'violated' every year, and 5% of women are 'dysfunctional', then the likelihood is that these 'dysfunctional' women are the ones making nearly all of the claims.
As such, 'professionals' who extrapolate the evidence gleaned from the collective testimony of these women to the rest of society are either charlatans or incompetent.
Mostly, one discovers that they are both.
...
'MOST of the women arriving at the refuge centres were MORE violent, even toward their children, than were the men they were supposedly escaping from.' Erin Pizzey - the very founder of the refuge movement for battered women in the UK "
Source: http://www.angryharry.com/esRapeBaloney.htm
"Again, we see the excuse that she has mental health problems (of course, it may not be a lie), but that didn't prevent her from getting jail time."
In fairness, this whole "mental issues" excuse is being widely used by both men and women anymore. Men, like Tiger Woods and Steve Phillips, who take advantage of their high sexual market desirability (amongst women) to engage in extra-marital affairs, when caught, are now using the sex addiction meme to explain (away) their bad choices/bad behaviors.
Jay Leno often jokes about the celebrities who screw-up in one way or another who, as a readily transparent PR move, check themselves into rehab so as to blame their bad choices/bad behaviors on their addictions.
Sadly, the public will largely give those who claim addiction/mental issues a pass whenever they get help/treatment.
I think that the ability of celebrities to effectively use such ploys serves to feed the tendency for those who make any number of bad decisions to also wish to claim mental/emotional/substance issues.
It seems to work well for celebrity men (and women) and also for ordinary women (although, it doesn't seem to work near as well for ordinary men), so it seems likely we will continue to see such allusions to things beyond one's control for the foreseeable future.
The real problem is that, much like FRA's diminishing the credibility of real rape victims, the over-use of mental issues excuses/defenses will cast doubt on those who truly do suffer from mental issues.
On a different tangent to this discussion, I also see the lack of detail in the reporting as to possible motive for the FRA as also serving to provide cover for the mental issues excuse - and the associated belief that FRA's are primarily made by crazies rather than cold, calculating women.
A woman staging a rape hoax such as this begs the questions "Is she crazy? Is she desperate for attention?"
But, what if there was a more rational motive that we simply aren't being informed of. Perhaps she just needed an excuse to cover for some other bad behavior - such as illicit sex? We aren't told if she's in a relationship, or any other facts that might serve to explain her FRA as a very rational (even if twisted) and calculated move.
Look at how this guy got arrested - he was the first nearby guy the cops found that matched a fake profile given by some woman.
It's got to the point that whenever men see a crime scene being marked out, they should get in their cars and get as far away as possible before the police come and haul away whoever's stupid enough to be available for questioning. Nearest guy that matches is guilty - and rape law being what it is, once they've got you, you need to prove your innocence (and even that's no guarantee).
It all reminds of 19th century Russia - and look how that panned out.
"On a different tangent to this discussion, I also see the lack of detail in the reporting as to possible motive for the FRA as also serving to provide cover for the mental issues excuse - and the associated belief that FRA's are primarily made by crazies rather than cold, calculating women."
You're making an assumption that "crazy" and "cold, calculating" women (and men) are a mutually exclusive group. They are not. Those with Cluster B disorders (narcissistic, histrionic, borderline) definitely can be both cold/calculating and "crazy" (as defined by being a danger to themselves and others):
http://angiemedia.com/?p=19
I've seen the behavior mentioned in the link above in college in the co-eds in my field of study, but didn't fully recognise or understand it until years later when I was falsely accused.
"Mental health issues" and resulting excuses may not only be trite, but also true. At any rate, the mentally ill are not all institutionalised; walk among us; may well know right from wrong, and still be a danger to themselves and others -- all while appearing to function well in society. As such, those individuals should deserve no special treatment under the law.
Finally, recent research on borderline personality disorder shows that the incidence in the population is somewhere around 6% with it being evenly split between males and females. You have to experience being around these types of people to fully understand their social destructive capacity and their ability to manipulate everyone and everything around them including the legal system. The reason "mental problems" are trotted out so often is that the description fits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape
FRS is linked in.
"The reason "mental problems" are trotted out so often is that the description fits."
Maybe we are over-blowing the "mental problems" theme.
There was no doubt the Sodini had some kind of mental problem, as did Choi and the two kids that were responsible for the Columbine shootings. There was plenty of media commentary about their mental ill-health.
Perhaps we would be better off equating a false accuser with one of these fellows as soon as 'mental problems' gets trotted out, and see if the habit persists.
"Anything that a female or child has to say must be taken with a very large grain of salt since their thinking and perception of reality is not the same as a rational man's."
***
Anything that ANYBODY says should be taken with a grain of salt when an abuse accusation has been leveled against someone with a clean record. That's only fair. It is never okay to begin with a presumption of guilt, because we all know that police and prosecutors make mistakes.
As for the eighteen months, it's better than nothing but still seems grossly inadequate. Just think of how much time the man would have gotten if he had been falsely convicted.
"Anything that ANYBODY says should be taken with a grain of salt when an abuse accusation has been leveled against someone with a clean record."
That's something I've re-trained myself into doing ever since I started reading this site. For years I had fallen into the prescribed way of thinking that "there's probably something in it" whenever a woman cried rape, but now I'm back to how I was pre-80's. Every rape accusation is only that as far as I'm concerned, and I'm now inclined to believe that nothing happened at all unless there is some reason to believe it other than a woman's word. Even prior record won't sway me, considering how readily innocent men are jailed. No evidence, no crime.
btw, great work Pierce and Steven.
Fourthly, spouting this sort of sexist nonsense makes us look unreasonable.
As if the feminists and women (is there a difference?) care about being reasonable?! They didn't remake society by being reasonable; they remade it by being UNREASONABLE-duh! To put it another way, an old feminist bumper sticker says that well behaved women don't make history. The corollary of that is that well behaved men don't either.
The other side won by being unreasonable. The other side KICKED OUR SORRY ASSES! Do I have to remind anyone of that? Seems to me we should take a look at emulating what the other side did, since they beat us so soundly in this War of the Sexes...
Marky: Of course you can't be reasonable with the unreasonable and females are by Nature unreasonable.In cases where they may be bothersome or harming innocent men we may have to resort to brute force to keep them under control.
And Harlan, I was referring to real mental illness eg. schizophrenia. As a group they commit less crime (including murder) then the general population.And btw, even schizophrenics may not be legally insane since that is governed by the McNaughton rules and as a lawyer you should know that.
And stereotypes in general are true which means that the majority or even a sizable minority of a particular group will behave in a predictable manner.
Aside from the fact that you can't understand what a generalisation is (a femalke trait) and the shaming language you used about my being dumped by some woman leads me to suspect that you may be female.
Yes, I am a rational MAN and I know that in some cases things really are black or white and in others gradations of grey.
I also suggest that you crack open the old law books because I can see that you know nothing about civil liability.
"As if the feminists and women (is there a difference?) care about being reasonable?!"
Yes, there is a difference between feminists and women. Do I have to draw a Venn diagram for you to understand this?
"an old feminist bumper sticker says that well behaved women don't make history. The corollary of that is that well behaved men don't either."
I don't put any stock in feminist bumper stickers, and the idea that well-behaved men haven't changed history is absurd.
anon @ Feb 9, 2010 3:43:00 PM
I know from both my studies and personal experience that what you are saying is true. Although, I question recent research on BPD showing 6% evenly split between males and females. Part of the problem is that the American and British criteria for borderline differ, and some argue that it shouldn't even be categorized as a personality disorder.
Regardless, while knowledge of personality disorders might help understanding why some commit false rape accusations, it should not be considered any sort of justification or excuse, either morally or legally.
Most criminals, both male and female, have "mental problems". The problem is that society does not apply this to both sexes equally. While we often hear how a female sex offender (eg. statutory rapist, false accuser) is "troubled" or "needs help", we almost hear the same thing about a male sex offender.
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