A recent post on another site got me to thinking about this.
Considering the number of stories we run here, it should be obvious to most people that if there is a bias in the justice system, it isn’t against those who report rape. In fact, the justice system has done all it can to facilitate prosecution on behalf of them. Rape shield laws make it almost impossible to enter into evidence the past sexual history of the accuser (some even preclude the past history between the two). Some states don’t allow evidence showing prior false rape accusations. Fed. R.Evid. 413 and its state law progeny allow evidence of the accused's purported propensity to rape (the only rule of law that allows this) by allowing the admission of prior “rapes” into evidence (proven by a preponderance of the evidence, and including even those for which he was previously acquitted).
But consider this: based on the number of stories we run here, if there is such a bias against rape victims, how is it that so many people are arrested on charges of rape that turn out to be a false accusations?
Does law enforcement make mistakes when investigating some rape allegations that are true? I’m sure it does. After all, they are human. But the repeated accusation that the justice system is biased against rape victims is belied by the plethora of stories of people spending years behind bars for alleged rapes they didn’t commit. People like William McCaffrey and Anthony Cole. A bias in the system against rape victims would mean they wouldn’t have gone to prison.
I can’t speak to the experience of those who actually are raped, but I would presume that the vast majority (if not all) would like to distance themselves from such a traumatic event. Really, that is no different from someone who has been falsely accused of rape. The number of times, both in articles, and in emails we receive, the statement “I just want to put it behind me, and move on with my life” is said, shows this. But since those who lodge false accusations never experience that kind of trauma, they have no need to distance themselves from it.
Yet, in almost every story we run on this site, false accusers have been willing to submit to a rape kit, which we know is an unpleasant experience. So why is it, knowing how unpleasant the evidence gathering process is, that someone would be willing to file a false claim? It is because these people know that the system isn’t biased against them, but that it will actively believe them, work to support them, and prove their claim.
If not, no one would EVER go to jail, or even be arrested on a false rape claim. False rape claims flourish precisely because there is no bias against rape victims.
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28 comments:
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Based on my own personal experiences I think that those who falsely accuse do so for the following reasons.
1. Revenge
The number of times I read cases of false rape accusations where revenge was the motivation behind it are astounding. Everything was ex-partners who are trying to get back at their spouses, to students accusing their teachers for poor grades.
2. Regret
This is another common reason that I see for false rape accusations. The accuser doesn't deny being in a sexual relationship, but ends up regretting it somehow. Rather than be accountable for their own actions, they blame someone else with a false accusation.
3. Compensation
The accuser is seeking some form of payout via victims compensations and views making false accusations as the easiest method of obtaining that compensation.
I feel that the number of false accusations will continue to escalate until the legal system clamps down on those making them. Until the legal system does so, fra will continue to make life difficult for those who have been accused of them, and for those who are actual rape victims.
This is unbelievable:
Fed. R.Evid. 413 and its state law progeny allow evidence of the accused's purported propensity to rape (the only rule of law that allows this) by allowing the admission of prior “rapes” into evidence (proven by a preponderance of the evidence, and including even those for which he was previously acquitted).
I don't see how it's possible for a prosecutor to get away with this. If a man had been found not guilty of a rape in the past his lawyer (or he) would file a motion to expunge the record which means that in contemplation of law the whole thing never happened.
I also don't understand what you wrote about "preponderance of the evidence" since this would only apply in a civil case. Are you saying that if a man lost a civil case for some "sexual crime" like harassment or something like that, that can be used as evidence in a criminal case to show that he has a certain tendency. That can never be fair because companies and individuals (or their insurance carriers) may settle a case even if the person is innocent and in fact the person may be forced to do what the insurance co. wants under the terms of his policy. You see this all the time in medical malpractise cases.
The motives for false accusers are:
1. Attention
2. Attention
3. Attention
These are people who perish if they aren't being paid attention to every minute of their lives, and don't care who they have to destroy to get even more attention.
Once Bitten - your personal experience notwithstanding, there are many, many more reasons for false accusations.
The AMAZING truth is - false accusations are SO accepted that 'reasons' aren't even part of the equasion.
False accusations are considered such a minor, inconsequential 'problem' they are barely aknowledged. There is no need to even ask WHY, much less list or categorize them.
To do so would beg examination. Which would lead ot aknowledgement. Which might lead to...profiling...or even prevention.
About the so-called "rape shield" laws, the only people being protected are false rape accusers. Barring a liar's history of prior accusations is particularly malicious.
I mean, what are the chances of an innocent rape victim having a prior history of false rape accusations? The odds against it are ridiculously high.
Why would anybody want to allow a false rape accuser to slip in under the radar?
Ok, I'm not well at the moment my heads unclear, so my posts may have spelling/grammer errors in them and be badly phrased. Apologises in advance. Also the list I wrote wasn't susposed to be an all exclusive list of the only reasons they occur, just a list of what I've discovered through my own personal research.
Anon@3:43AM My post was badly phrased. The term personal experiences should be changed to personal research. I've only ever experienced one false rape accusation, and that one time was enough.
Having said that, the reason behind my reserach is simple. I need to understand why false rape accusation occur. It dumbfounds me completely that someone can do this to another person. I am sure that there are many other reasons as you claim, I'd be interested hearing them.
Anon@3:39AM I agree with you that attention is one of the reasons, but it's not the only reason.
I've just thought of another reason to add to the list, fear. Sometimes a person is afraid that someone else in their lives (e.g parents or partners) will find out about their behaviour (e.g affairs, pre-marital sex) and take action against them. So in order to place the blame on another person, they make a false accusation.
Sorry once again for the messy posts. I guess I shouldn't be typing whilst medicated.
Rape hysteria was the major instrument for the Klu-Klux-Klans rapid rise to power. Rape hysteria is the major instrument for the gender / Raunch feminists rise to power.
As a famous president once said after the barbaric rape lynching of the black man came to a halt 75 years ago, He said that the mass hysteria that lynches the black man now, (IF LEFT UN_CHALLENGED) will consume all men later.
Where are the bold men of the law that are supposed to stand up against this irrational / mass hysteria that has again turned our nation again into lynch mobs.
The first perversion and the final perversion, lies in the fact that perverts run our justice system, these perverts have there own "agendas", and its not protecting innocent men.
Wheres the ACLU when you need them??? Maybe as the song "American pie" suggests, "Jack flash is off sitting on a a candle stick"!!
"False rape claims flourish precisely because there is no bias against rape victims."
Imho, a better way to put it would be "False rape claims flourish precisely because there is no bias against rape accusers." Only a tiny minority of them are actual victims.
Anti lynching laws didn't come into effect until the 1960's. That's less than 50 years ago. Not a long time at all in the scheme of things.
I, too, would like a more complete analysis of false rape accusations.
That would be an eye opening disclosure, indeed.
If we had that information, perhaps more men would be able to avoid it happening.
Knowledge is power, after all.
The fact that false rape accusation spike toward finals is knowledge every guy in college should be armed with.
Who makes the most FRAs would be vital to know - is it college girls nearing finals? Good for guys to know, as in "make a note -no drunken party sex with an unstable co-ed close to finals".
Where is the ACLU in all this, you ask?
Waiting for your call.
You gotta ask for help. They aren't roaming around looking for cases.
You gotta ask.
"Yet, in almost every story we run on this site, false accusers have been willing to submit to a rape kit, which we know is an unpleasant experience. So why is it, knowing how unpleasant the evidence gathering process is, that someone would be willing to file a false claim? It is because these people know that the system isn’t biased against them, but that it will actively believe them, work to support them, and prove their claim."
Answer: Munchausen's syndrome.
I made a comment about this on FRS on 5 January 2010 @ 11:45 AM.
From one of the links I posted:
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/295127-overview
"Mortality/Morbidity
Four features of factitious disorder that are particularly prominent in Munchausen syndrome significantly increase morbidity and mortality risk.
* The first is dangerous manipulations of the patient's own body, including the ingestion of chemical toxins, self-infection, aggravation of wounds, and so on. Although patients with Munchausen syndrome are generally medically knowledgeable and sophisticated, their manipulations sometimes result in unintended serious injury, permanent disability, or death.
* Second, the patients place themselves at risk for iatrogenic illness and injury by repeatedly engaging in deceptions that cause medical care providers to perform risky diagnostic and treatment procedures. In some cases, the resultant damage is part of the patient's plan. For example, a patient who pretends to have a malignancy may desire the adverse effects of chemotherapy, or a patient may simulate adrenal gland dysfunctions with the intention of having an adrenal grand removed. In other cases, the iatrogenic damage results from unintended medical accidents such as adverse medication effects, allergic reactions, or surgical complications. Because patients with Munchausen syndrome subject themselves to so many medical procedures, their lifetime risk of experiencing an unintended adverse medical event is many times greater than that of the average person.
* Third, patients with Munchausen syndrome frequently provide incomplete or false medical history information that intentionally or accidentally causes increased morbidity or mortality risk. For example, they may experience dangerous adverse medication effects because they withhold information about known drug allergies, or they may suffer surgical complications because they fail to inform the medical staff that they have taken anticoagulant medications.
* Finally, although patients with factitious disorder or Munchausen syndrome are more likely than typical patients to claim illness or injury, they are no less likely than anyone else to actually become ill or injured. However, for genuinely ill patients with a known history of factitious medical complaints, medical staff may delay or withhold necessary tests and treatments to minimize unnecessary iatrogenic risks and to avoid reinforcing patients' inappropriate behavior. As with the boy who cried wolf in Aesop's famous tale, patients with Munchausen syndrome may be unable to mobilize the serious attention of medical staff when they truly need it."
So women with Cluster B personality disorders and those with Munchausen's Syndrome will go to great lengths to have expensive procedures done. A rape kit done on someone with Munchausen's would likely not be uncomfortable and in fact may be pleasurable because it is meeting their psychological need for attention and sympathy.
Sir anonymous, I find yer "munchausen" theory very interesting and need to examine further!!
Mr Anonymous, yer maunchausen theory may shed some light on why it may be the same girls that are making false rape accussations over, and over, and over, ( As I was the second guy my false rape accusser, accussed of raping her that year).
If this is the case, (which known serial false rape accusers prove this theory), why is the medical establishment, and (most pointiently) the "law enforcement community", in effect strengthening and enabling this sick behavior, at the expense of unwitting and innocent men and boys.
Where is the ACLU in all this, you ask?
Waiting for your call.
You gotta ask for help. They aren't roaming around looking for cases.
You gotta ask.
And 3 months later you get a letter that they cannot help you.
CBGirl
"Mr Anonymous, yer maunchausen theory may shed some light on why it may be the same girls that are making false rape accussations over, and over, and over, ( As I was the second guy my false rape accusser, accussed of raping her that year). If this is the case, (which known serial false rape accusers prove this theory), why is the medical establishment, and (most pointiently) the "law enforcement community", in effect strengthening and enabling this sick behavior, at the expense of unwitting and innocent men and boys."
Answer: Follow the money and the false meta-narrative that exists that claims that women never lie about rape.
Note also, Munchausen's Syndrome has a variant called Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy which you can read about here.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/munchausen.htm/printable
Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy has been touched on in popular television and movie productions and documentaries.
Another clinical indicator worth more research is the relationship between Fibromyalgia and Borderline Personality Disorder (and other Cluster B personality disorders)
Chapter VIII from the book linked below is some of the first research I've found on the subject:
https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=4550
"Borderline Patients in Medical Settings
In medical settings, patients with BPD may demonstrate “medicalized” psychopathological symptoms, rather than the traditional psychological symptoms that were previously described. Medicalized symptoms include diffuse somatic symptomatology of unverifiable pathology (i.e., somatic preoccupation; Sansone, Wiederman, & Sansone, 2001), the sabotage of medical care (e.g., interfering with wound healing, avoiding treatment to prolong illness; Sansone, Wiederman, & Sansone, 2000), the exaggeration of medical illness (Sansone, Sansone, & Gaither, 2004), and unrelenting chronic pain syndromes (Sansone, Whitecar, Meier, & Murry, 2001)—all seeming to foster the role of medical victim (i.e., a
medically debilitated social role). For many, it would appear that childhood victimization culminates in adulthood victimization, which in medical settings appears to culminate in the role of the medically debilitated victim. This debility, of course, may be ultimately legitimized by society through disability compensation. In support of a relationship between BPD and disability, we found that, among disabled primary care patients, the prevalence of
borderline personality symptomatology was approximately 72%, compared to 26% among nondisabled controls (Sansone, Hruschka, Vasudevan, & Miller, 2003). In keeping with the psychological theme of victimhood, in medical settings, borderline patients may evidence other problematic behaviors related to care. For example, they may precipitate mismanagement by provoking providers into the over-prescription of medications (particularly analgesics and benzodiazepines), demand unnecessary invasive laboratory tests (e.g., laparoscopies, cardiac catherizations) and surgeries, and submit to unusual treatment strategies (e.g., self-administration of analgesics via catheter, intra-rectal administration of estrogen) (Sansone & Sansone, 2000). All of these behaviors reinforce the illness role and are potentially self-damaging."
False rape accusations and Munchausen are similar in a lot of ways. The goal is usually the same: attention.
The progress of medicine was characterized by the recording of symptoms of a disease leading up to death, disability or recovery. There was no necessity to understand the cause initially - the important thing was to document recurring patterns and give these patterns unique names, so that the onset of symptoms could be matched against current knowledge and a diagnosis made.
Remedies and understanding of the disease follow.
This same process could be applied to False Rape Accusers. It's probable that False Rape Accusation isn't a single-cause disease at all, but a blanket term describing the outcome of many different motivations, some of which Once Bitten has listed.
It's rather telling that of all the thousands upon thousands of universities around the world, and the preponderance of FRA as a recurring phenomenon, I know of no formal classification of False Rape Accusers - but one can find experts in obscure dead languages once spoken by only a few people, and more experts on the rarest of birds or bacteria.
Another two reasons for False Rape Accusation:
1) the desire to exercise control over someone. e.g. Female hitch-hikers have been known to threaten a driver to take them hundreds of miles out of his way or face a rape charge.
2) to induce intimacy. The false accuser tells a new boyfriend that she was raped by one or more former boyfriends. She may or may not actually name the former lovers, and probably never approached police, but it's a false rape accusation all the same. Its purpose is to create a fast intimacy by appealing to the new lover's protective instincts. This may well be the most common form of FRA, as the risk of adverse consequence is lowest.
Yet, in almost every story we run on this site, false accusers have been willing to submit to a rape kit
I think that the simple minded female making the false allegation believes that if she takes the test that this somehow shows that she's telling the truth. Even when the test comes back and shows that the DNA is not that of the accussed, the female will still insist that the guy raped her. Females seem to believe that if they lie and insist enough that this will make what they're saying believable even though the evidence is 100% against them.It sort of reminds me of when the cops show the thug a videotape of him holding a gun on the bank teller and he keeps insisting that it's not him on the tape. Or the slut girl who insists her bf is the father of her kid even though he can prove with medical evidence he's been sterile all his life lol
It is very rare to hear of a case in which the prosecutor dropped the charges because the rape exam came back negative.
The motto is: "No evidence? No problem."
"don't see how it's possible for a prosecutor to get away with this. If a man had been found not guilty of a rape in the past his lawyer (or he) would file a motion to expunge the record which means that in contemplation of law the whole thing never happened."
The problem is that the process is not automatic for expungements in most states. Sometimes there is a waiting period, especially if a case was no-billed. New laws have been enacted in some states that prohibit cases to be expunged if DNA samples have been taken.
Anonymous said...
It is very rare to hear of a case in which the prosecutor dropped the charges because the rape exam came back negative.
The motto is: "No evidence? No problem."
Apr 18, 2010 6:07:00 PM
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/culture/family/2705-feminist-gulag-no-prosecution-necessary
Quoted from the above:
Feminists have been the most authoritarian pressure group throughout much of American history. “It is striking what an uncritical stance earlier women reformers took toward the state,” Gottschalk observes. “They have played central roles in … uncritically pushing for more enhanced policing powers.”
What Gottschalk is describing is feminism’s version of Stalinism: the process whereby radical movements commandeer the instruments of state repression as they trade ideological purity for power.
@ Anonymous 18 Apr 2010 5:20 PM
who said...
"It's probable that False Rape Accusation isn't a single-cause disease at all, but a blanket term describing the outcome of many different motivations, some of which Once Bitten has listed."
In considering False Rape Accusations, we can look at several theoretical models to explain why false rape claims occur: Independent Co-Occurrence, Common Causality, Spectrum, and Predispostion.
An Independent Co-Occurence Model asserts that any given disease or psychological condition has no genuine relationship to false rape claims. Their independent co-occurance in a given case is simply one of random chance.
A Common Causality Model asserts that any given disease, set of symptoms, or psychological condition and false rape claims share a common etiology -- the same phenomenon causes both to occur but have slightly different presentations and disease processes in the same individual. So, for example, an individual with fibromyalgia who makes false rape claims does so because of some third, underlying, root-cause.
The Spectrum model proposes that any given two diseases or sets of symptoms (like pathological lying and false rape claims) share similar causes as well as similar courses -- the diseases or conditions are not really distinct from one another, but are actually versions of the same phenomenon. They both exist as closely related spectrum disorders.
In the Predisposition Model, one syndrome precedes the other. By doing so, the first condition heightens the risk of developing the second condition. For example, a person with Borderline Personality Disorder as a preceding condition would heighten the risk of that person making a false rape claim.
Whether any of these relationship models describes the comorbidity of any given disease, set of symptoms, or psychological conditions with making a false rape claim needs to be researched further.
Don't forget the behavioral model -- the response to a false rape accusation is most often positive for the accuser.
Look at two behaviors. Rape has almost no motive and severe punishment. False accusation of rape has numerous practical motives and almost no punishment. So based on that, which would behavior would occur more frequently?
Don't forget the behavioral model -- the response to a false rape accusation is most often positive for the accuser.
Look at two behaviors. Rape has almost no motive and severe punishment. False accusation of rape has numerous practical motives and almost no punishment. So based on that, which would behavior would occur more frequently?
Anon:Munchausen Syndrome is just a name that Dr Asher gave to people who exhibit a cetain pattern of behaviour. I see no point in rehearsing the so called symptoms listed in the DSM. In fact, I'm totally against it because it attempts to legitimize these attention seeking evil anti social bitches and place them into the category of a "sick" person which they are not because they know exactly what they are doing by the fact they that try to hide it and know what they are doing is wrong and illegal.perhaps some of them do not have insight into why they do these things but they still know what they're doing is wrong. This could never be used as a legal defence for the crime of filing a false rape report. There are people who do have serious psychiatric disorders (severe schizophrenia, organic brain disease or damage, very low IQ etc etc) but these people are so mentally disorganised, aimless and clueless that they barely even understand what they're doing and are easily recognised. This would meet the legal standard of insanity but females who plot and file false reports are not legally insane. They are just bad people who refuse to live by the rules of society. They are no more "ill" than a bank robber or someone who murders for money. They all do it for some gain whether it's for money or for attention.
They are very, very bad people who belong behind bars -- which is where their victims go, all too often.
Anonymous said...
Where is the ACLU in all this, you ask?
Waiting for your call.
You gotta ask for help. They aren't roaming around looking for cases.
You gotta ask.
And 3 months later you get a letter that they cannot help you.
CBGirl
Apr 18, 2010 11:54:00 AM
1)You received a letter like that? What did it say, exactly?
2) You ask again. And again. And again. You organize and write letters from concerned groups - such as FRS. And ask again.
Eventually, they will help. For decades they refused to help those accused of child crimes. The day care witch hunts went unabated. They are now finally stepping in to stop ex post facto cases.
The time is right. Now.
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