ON MARCH 30, 2006, at 11.58pm, 15-year-old Patrick Waring was in bed in his Perth home when the door to his room was pushed open. He might have been expecting it to be his parents - but they were 400 kilometres away on holiday. Assuming it to be his older brother, Michael, Patrick looked up to find instead several plain-clothes policemen standing in the doorway.
Ordered from bed, Patrick was advised that he was being arrested for the rape of a teenage girl that had occurred earlier that day. Though he denied ever having met the girl, Patrick, accompanied by Michael, was taken to a nearby police station. Frantic calls were made to the boys' parents, who immediately started driving back to Perth.
By the time they arrived at the station, it was all over. Patrick had been charged with rape and remanded, with a bail hearing set for the following Monday.
''We were disappointed that Patrick wasn't able to be released to us over the weekend,'' father Terry Waring says in Every Family's Nightmare. ''[But] we felt that it was just a process and that we would be able to get him back on the Monday.''
But Terry Waring was wrong. Patrick would not be released for another year and only after a long and painful journey through the West Australian criminal justice system.
''What happened to Patrick could happen to any of us,'' says filmmaker Ed Punchard. ''As our film shows, if the police ever get a hold of you, you can find yourself on an express train that is very hard to get off.''
Punchard first heard of Patrick Waring after he had been on remand for a couple of months. ''We deconstructed every component and it became pretty clear that a miscarriage of justice was taking place,'' Punchard says. ''And so we started shooting, with the family's approval, and followed them right up to the moment Patrick was acquitted.''
Despite Patrick insisting that he had never met the girl, the police case seemed strong. Patrick's number was on the girl's mobile phone and the call log showed that he had called her at the time of the alleged attack. In a photo line-up, the girl had positively identified Patrick as her attacker. There was also CCTV footage of the girl walking along a nearby train platform, followed closely by a man who clearly fitted Patrick's description. But still Patrick maintained he had never met her, a denial that, in the eyes of the police, only seemed to reinforce his guilt.
Because of the violence of the attack - the allegation was that the girl had been raped anally at knifepoint - the judge dismissed the bail application, leaving Patrick awaiting trial in jail, where he was beaten up and routinely strip-searched. After three months of this, the family turned for help to Robin Napper, an independent forensic investigator and former British detective superintendent.
''I told the family I was not a gun for hire,'' says Napper, a 30-year veteran of sexual investigations. ''If I thought Patrick had done this I would tell them.''
But Napper quickly discovered a litany of basic policing errors, starting with the night of Patrick's arrest. ''The police had broken every forensic rule in the book,'' Napper says. ''They took the girl in the clothes she said she had been attacked in, put her in the back of a general-purpose police vehicle and drove her to where she said the crime actually happened. That is a complete no-no.''
Police cars are so full of contamination as to render the girl's clothes worthless as forensic evidence. The police then did the same with Patrick: rather than remove the clothes he said he'd been wearing, they drove him to the station in a general-purpose vehicle.
The police also conducted the first forensic examination of the crime scene at night. ''The only way to examine a crime scene properly is in daylight,'' Napper says. ''But they never did that.''
Transcripts of the interviews also showed that the girl had repeatedly changed her story, something police never bothered to question. The DNA evidence was also damning: there was no sign of Patrick's DNA in the intimate swabs from the girl and no sign of the girl in the intimate swabs of Patrick. But still the case went ahead.
While Patrick had initially denied ever meeting the girl, this was a lie. He had met her, on the day of the attack, when he had briefly chatted to her outside the cinema. Patrick and the girl exchanged phone numbers, and Patrick had attempted to call her, but that was as far as it went. Swept up in a crime he did not commit, Patrick panicked, and denied ever having met the girl.
As Punchard explains: ''It could have been brought to a halt on several occasions but it wasn't. And one of the reasons it wasn't is that the police just assumed they had their man.''
It's a problem of mentality, he says, of modern eliminative policing versus old nominative policing. ''Unfortunately,'' Punchard sighs. ''It's a problem we're still struggling with in this country.''
Link:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/a-parents-worst-nightmare-20100602-wyxx.html
Posts
33 comments:
You know, when it comes to holding a person in custody, I think police and the courts should be required to put their money where their mouth is.
When a person is remanded in custody a presumtivly innocent person is being imprisoned without trial.
This is allowed as a matter of faith in the system so that the bloody handed murderer doesn't walk off after their crime. If, however, the suspect is found not guilty then they shouldn't have been imprisoned in the first place, as that imprisonment was based on evidence which is now demonstrably insufficent to prove guilt.
Those who have commited this imprisoning, who have violated the public faith, should be held liable for loss of earnings and damages.
Automatically.
The moral of this story for the falsely accused is to tell the truth as accurately and precisely as you can to your attorney and to the police (if you talk to the police at all). By Patrick's lying about not meeting the girl, even if it was only briefly and outside of a theatre, his lie put fuel on the fire of an already profound and out-of-control injustice. We need to educate all young men about the justice system and the perils they face.
This case is also an object lesson about cellular phones and telecommunications law:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/01/5919.ars
Your cell phone records are available to anyone (for a price).
There's nothing in this piece that makes me think Patrick is guilty or innocent. He lied about meeting her and did call her.
The moral of this story is to teach everyone to never NEVER speak to the police without an attorney.
Even falsely accused attorneys have been ensnared for breaking this rule.
People freak out, panic - and lie when confronted with horrific allegations by horrific authorities.
People who scrupuliously tell the truth are convicted. Easily. You don't talk to cops under any circumstance. Ever.
It is very well documented that innocent people confess to crimes all the time - under that same pressure. DNA exonerations are rife with such 'confessions'.
I'm sure you sleep well at night not worrying about someone kicking in your door to arrest you for rape, Posie. But should it happen to you - I don't wonder if you wouldn't react the same way.
Many, MANY boys go through life being accused of things they didn't do as a matter of routine.
"Uh-uh I didn't do it I know nothing" is a common reaction even before they even know what they are NOW being accused of.
We don't know the history of this boy, or what lead up to his responding the way he did.
So quit being a bitch.
This video could save your life:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865#
Don't Talk To The Police by Professor James Duane
Don't Talk To The Police by Officer George Brusch
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865#docid=6014022229458915912
So don't, don't, don't, don't EVER do it.
Jared, excellent comment. The other point is this, when we jail men and boys for an accusation of rape, why is it fair that only the wealthy can get out by posting bond?
Anon at 5:50: Exactly. We've made that point before: if you lie to police about an inconsequential matter, you enhance the likelihood of wrongful arrest. That's unfair, but we've seen it over and over.
Posie, what are you smoking? There is no evidence of rape, Posie. Get it, Posie? A boy doesn't need to prove that something didn't happen. A lie about something else doesn't prove rape, Posie. Go troll somewhere else (Georgia, perhaps?), please.
Anon at 8:07: Right. If this boy had an attorney at the outset, it's unlikely they would have done this to him.
Posie, you are banned. We have many readers who have been falsely accused, and your hateful comments are triggering.
You also are grossly ill informed. We've demonstrated time and time again that false rape claims are a very significant problem. Spend a few weeks reading through this blog and perhaps that will curb your misandry.
For misandrists like Posie:
The overriding evidence suggests that false rape claims are a significant problem, and that the victims of false claims are not rarities. No one knows for certain the percentage of false rape claims. A leading feminist legal scholar recently acknowledged: ". . . the statistics on false rape accusation widely vary and 'as a scientific matter, the frequency of false rape complaints to police or other legal authorities remains unknown.'" A. Gruber, Rape, Feminism, and the War on Crime, 84 Wash. L. Rev. 581, 595-600 (November 2009) (citation omitted).
But it is erroneous to assert that only a tiny percentage of rape claims are false because no one can make that assertion with any degree of certainty. The prevalence of false rape claims is neither known nor knowable. Here is why: for every rape claim reported, only a relatively small percentage can be definitively called "rape." This is beyond dispute. Approximately fifteen percent end in conviction and of those we know that some innocent men and boys are convicted. We also know that some claims reported (the numbers vary depending on the study) are outright false. But in between the claims we are reasonably certain were actual rapes, and the ones we are reasonably certain were false claims, is a vast gray area consisting of a group of claims that cannot properly be classified as "rapes" -- because we just don't know. That's the nature of a rape claim. The claims in this vast gray middle area often suffer from evidentiary infirmities. For example, for some such claims, while the claimant herself might think a rape occurred, her outward manifestations of assent did not match her subjective disinclination to engage in sex, so it wasn't rape.
Regardless of what the actual number might be, every impartial, objective study ever conducted on the subject shows false rape claims are a serious problem. As reported by "False Rape Allegations" by Eugene Kanin, Archives of Sexual Behavior Feb 1994 v23 n1 p81 (12), Professor Kanin’s major study of a mid-size Midwestern U.S. city over the course of nine years found that 41 percent of all rape claims were false. Kanin also studied the police records of two unnamed large state universities, and found that in three years, 50 percent of the 64 rapes reported to campus police were determined to be false (without the use of polygraphs). In addition, a landmark Air Force study in 1985 studied 556 rape allegations. It found that 27% of the accusers recanted, and an independent evaluation revealed a false accusation rate of 60%. McDowell, Charles P., Ph.D. “False Allegations.” Forensic Science Digest, (publication of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations), Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 1985), p. 64. See also, "Until Proven Innocent," the widely praised (praised even by the New York Times, which the book skewers -- as well as almost every other major U.S. news source) and painstaking study of the Duke Lacrosse non-rape case. Authors Stuart Taylor and Professor K.C. Johnson explain that the exact number of false claims is elusive but "[t]he standard assertion by feminists that only 2 percent" or sexual assault claims "are false, which traces to Susan Brownmiller's 1975 book 'Against Our Will,' is without empirical foundation and belied by a wealth of empirical data. These data suggest that at least 9 percent and probably closer to half" of all sexual assault claims "are false . . . ." (Page 374.)
I can sympathise with the boy for telling what seemed at the time like a very minor little white lie.
Thankfully for me by the time I found myself in his shoes I had already seen the excellent "Don't talk to the Police" youtube video some couple of years prior.
This is what caused me to zip it and demand a lawyer.
The lawyer is what caused me to avoid telling any lies whatsoever, no matter how small, no matter how white, no matter how insignificant.
The lawyer and the video are the reasons I made bail, not the complete and utter lack of evidence of alleged crimes that never happened, nor the farcical and ridiculous accusations themselves... 100% down to the lawyer and the video... heed these words, one day they may literally save your life.
The kind of double standards misandrists like Posie are willing and able to apply never cease to amaze me. Compare her comment above
"He lied about meeting her and did call her."
with what she posted below this story of a woman recanting a rape lie that she made when she was a teenager:
"She was 14."
In other words if it is teenage boy then his innocence has to be doubted despite the facts that he probably lied out of panic and the DNA evidence favors him, while when it is teenage girl, here crime is excusable because of her age.
If you do not think that a young woman can be expected to foresee the ramifications that a crime such as a false rape allegation will have to her victim, why is it any different in the case that it is a young man instead and the crime is a false testimony? Or even an actual rape, had one occurred?
Sonny, excellent. The thing who wrote that comment, it seems, will say anything to further her misandrist agenda.
For the benefit of Posie...
The accuser, who remains anonymous to this day, admitted her lies in court.
Her accusations were designed to defraud the state of Western Australia of victims compensation of up to $A50,000. They were pre-planned and originally had targeted the young man she met at the theatre, a tryst she organised for this purpose.
Meeting Waring subsequently she chose to target him instead because, as she admitted in court, she believed that would make it easier to win compensation. At one point during the trial she claimed being raped by both young men.
The current publicity is, I believe, an effort to win some form of compensation for the real victim - Patrick Waring himself - who had a year of his life stolen by a lying fraud artist whose identity remains a secret.
gwallan,
I assume you were able to pull up court transcripts for this. Would you have a link to any of it?
Thanks.
There's nothing in this piece that makes me think Patrick is guilty or innocent.
***
C'mon, Posie. You can be more honest than that.
Of course you think he's guilty. You ALWAYS believe the women, no matter how many lies she has told in the past.
Banned, of course someone quoting real statistics, and not individual world over stories, would be banned. Afterall better that people on this board get whipped into some sort of woman hating frenzy than discuss the real issue that 90% of attackers get off in the UK. Fortunately our justice is not racist.
Rape is a problem, false accusation is an issue too but not one tenth as big.
Subjective is a defence lawyer's dream. In most cases of supposed grey areas the rapist would have to be a cold calculating sexual predator not to know whether he's engaged in consensual sex.
Many women retract the reports because they do not want to sit through court.
Anyway you guys carry on hating women and we'll see how differently you feel when it's your grandmother/mother/daughter/sister/friend who is raped.
xxxx
And I'm a mother of both sons and daughters, I am not in a position to be a man hating idiot who thinks all are rapists,.
But being the sexist whore that you are, you'd rather see your sons in prison than see your precious daughters knocked up at a party following drunk sex. That's really terrific, doll.
If it were up to women like you, any piece of filth in a skirt could falsely convict any man, including the sons who you pretend to care about. You're disgusting.
You know, I apologize to the blog for my language, including the name-calling.
I let this obvious troll bait me, and dummy that I am my irritation gets the better of me. I should know better.
What a surprise that I am called a 'sexist whore' on this blog.
Women hating vile little specimens, I feel sorry for you all.
But being the sexist whore that you are, you'd rather see your sons in prison than see your precious daughters knocked up at a party following drunk sex. That's really terrific, doll.
Yes because i am sure you believe all girls are up for fucking just as long as they're tipsy. And why, pray tell, would my sons be locked up? Perhaps they will grow up to practice safe and consensual sex, perhaps they won't be looking for an easy lay at a party...
Calling me a whore because I don't agree that accusing innocent people of a crime is as serious as raping an innocent says so much about you. Perhaps if conviction rates were higher a person falsely accused would actually be believed to be innocent instead of the fact they 'got off' because they escaped conviction.
Jul 9, 2010 3:09:00 AM
Anonymous said...
If it were up to women like you, any piece of filth in a skirt could falsely convict any man, including the sons who you pretend to care about. You're disgusting.
Any piece of filth in a skirt, again you do sound like a man that thinks most women are up for it....
Never ever accuse me of not caring for my sons.
gwallan - "For the benefit of Posie...
The accuser, who remains anonymous to this day, admitted her lies in court."
Trying to catch up on all that I've missed during and extended vacation, I see that this new troll is spouting off the standard nonsense (don't know all that she's stated, as her posts have been removed), but she does make some allusion to "real statistics", which I assume were of the entirely unsubstantiated vast pool of unreported rapes, and the myth that only 2% of rapes reports are false (a number supposedly based on a guess by someone in law enforcement, but just as likely simply plucked from Susan Brownmiller's ample arse).
Anyway, why are you bothering her with pesky facts. She doesn't need, nor recognize facts. She goes by her feelings, and pick as choses only those things which support what she has predetermined that she will believe in.
These SoCon gynocentric women are just like their gender-feminists allies.
My own experiance with the Police was very similar. The difference was that I didn't tell them any white lies, and (foolishly maybe) answered all their questions honestly and to the best of my ability.
It did help me, because unlike my accuser, my story never changed, whilst hers changed multiple times as evidence was present to show she was lying. What amazed me was that the judge let her get away with it. Sometimes in minor ways (such as when her story contricted the report she made to the police, as presented into evidence by the police detective who interviewed her. Sometimes in big ways, such was when the jury was ordered out of the court, and lawyers argued over weither or not certain evidence should be present. Evidence that proved she was lying. The judge heard the evidence, heard her admit that the evidence was correct and conversely her previous statement in front of the jury was false, but ruled that because she didn't lie when the jury wasn't in the room, the evidence couldn't be admitted.
Here I thought the courts were places where truth was susposed to revered. *sighs* Anyway it's over now, but man did it frustrate me at the time.
But if, like in this case, the accuser is without doubt lying then she should be charged with a different crime 'The false accusation crime' tried and convicted. This would lift her anonymity.
Posie,
It seems you are unaware of the P-pass. We are slowly seeing this change, but rarely are false accusations charged. If they are, at most, it is a midemeanor charge of "filing a false police report", and usually carries only up to a year jail sentence, which usually ends up with a probation sentence. While the accused faces a felony charge, and faces from 5-20 years in prison, where rapists are considered teh lowest of the low, and face being raped repeatedly.
What pisses me off about this case, and maybe the rules are different in Australia (Gwallan, can you confirm?), but a minor cannot be questioned without a parent or guardian or attorney present (at least here in the states).
15 years old and he then spent a year in jail. And odds are, she will never be named, let alone punished.
And the vast majority of feminists, and based on most of your posts here, you, Think that is perfectly okay.
And then you wonder why men are angry, and respond to you harshly. Feminists have, for too long, vilified men, and anything male, and the vast majority of women stayed silent. And men are starting to wake up and get angry. I for one, think it is past time. There is a cultural change coming, and I think a lot of women, are going to be in a very bad spot when it happens. And you have no one to blame, but yourselves.
And why, pray tell, would my sons be locked up? Perhaps they will grow up to practice safe and consensual sex, perhaps they won't be looking for an easy lay at a party...
***
Why? Because of liars like you.
Posie,
MY son was locked up in jail for a false accusation.
As his mother, I can tell you he was raised to be kind, respectful and differential toward women.
He was popular, good looking, intelligent and very promising.
Sometimes things like that piss people off.
Jealousy is an insideously evil thing.
Don't presume something like that could never happen to your son because you "raised him right".
BTW, Posie - in spite of your professed atheism, Christian schools will be teaching your child the lessons of forgiveness, "Do unto others", and (God Forbid!) Thou shall not bear false witness".
Those lessons served my son well during his imprisonment.
Hopefully your son will forgive you.
I would sue until the b***h, her parents and the police are broke, bankrupt and on their knees begging for leniency.
Then I would sue some more.
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