This is an important post. Today, there was yet another partial victory for anti-rape campaigners in the UK, possibly at the expense of innocent men and boys.
Last year in Great Britain, a woman was sentenced to eight months in jail for withdrawing an allegation that her husband had raped her. A court found she had been the victim of prolonged domestic abuse and had backed down from the rape complaint under pressure from her husband. She was jailed not because the allegation was false (police believe she was raped) but because her retraction was false. She was freed on appeal after 18 days by the Lord Chief Justice who said justice system had a duty to show compassion to a woman who had already been victimised.
In answer to the predictable maelstrom that erupted over that issue, the Crown Prosecution Service is developing guidelines to tell prosecutors when it's proper to prosecute following a woman's retraction of a rape claim. The purpose of the guidelines is to make sure prosecutions don't deter rape victims from coming forward to report their rapes. According to the BBC: The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, explained: "Our interim guidance aims to protect individuals who retract a truthful allegation as a result of pressure or fear of violence, while taking a firm approach to those who make a malicious allegation against an innocent person."
The chief executive of charity Victim Support, Javed Khan, said: "The consultation is a really welcome move demonstrating that the CPS is taking the issue seriously. We must be careful not to create any new or bigger obstacles, either directly or indirectly, that stop victims of rape and domestic violence from coming forward and reporting." Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12418120
Starmer told the Guardian: "We need to work on our approach in retraction cases. From now on, my approval for charging will be needed in these cases and we will monitor them closely. If the victim has decided to withdraw a rape allegation, we must explore the issues behind that, particularly if the victim is under pressure or frightened." Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/feb/10/rape-retracted-claims-prosecution-guideline
That last paragraph is problematic. Starmer needs to personally approve the prosecution of false rape claims for all retraction cases. The number of cases that will see the inside of a courtroom promise to be fewer, perhaps far fewer. The real problem is that Starmer knows he's being closely watched by the sexual grievance industry, and if one more blatantly unfair case creeps through, he'll find himself in a heap of trouble.
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There is nothing wrong with having fair and sensible guidelines to insure that miscarriages of justice don't occur, but the persons pushing this reform won't be satisfied with fair and sensible guidelines. It seems that anti-rape campaigners like Lisa Longstaff (quoted in the Guardian article referenced above) won't be satisfied until a policy is put in place to insure that no female is ever prosecuted for making false rape claims. Ms. Longstaff has been quoted as saying the following: "Every prosecution [of false rape claims] puts women who have been raped off reporting it." Another time, she called efforts to prosecute women for making false rape claims "a concerted witchhunt." Link: http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/alarm-spreads-prosecuting-rape-lies.html#more
Campaigns to avoid, or at least to more tightly regulate, the prosecution of women and girls who falsely report rape claims are supposedly intended to end the scourge of underreporting of rape. Vast numbers of rape victims, we are told, simply aren't reporting their rapes.
Put aside that no one can say if underreporting is a serious problem because the rape milieau is so terribly politicized, it's impossible to trust the "studies" that supposedly support underreporting. See, J. Fennel, Punishment by Another Name: The Inherent Overreaching in Sexually Dangerous Person Commitments, 35 N.E.J. on Crim. & Civ. Con. 37, 49-51 (2009). Put aside that the head of RAINN recently explained that women are not principally failing to report rape due to a fear of being disbelieved. See here. Put aside the fact that it's foolish to combat one form of criminality, namely rape, by ignoring another form of serious criminality, namely false rape reporting.
Put all that aside. The overarching problem with the premise -- that we mustn't prosecute false rape claims for fear of discouraging women from coming forward -- is that, if you listen to the sexual grievance industry, no rape reform has ever been able to combat underreporting of rape. Why, on earth, would this be any different? Let's demonstrate what we mean:
In the interest of combating all this supposed underreporting, we eliminated the requirement of corroboration (this had the practical effect of flipping the old corroboration requirement on its head: now women don't need corroboration to bring a rape claim, but men and boys arrested on her say-so need corroboration of their innocence to get the charges dropped).
That wasn't enough, they said, so we enacted rape shield laws that barred admission at trial of the accuser's prior sexual history with persons other than the defendant, and tales of the abuse of these laws at the expense of the innocent are legion.
That wasn't enough, they said, so they extended rape shield laws to civil actions.
That wasn't enough, they said, so we eliminated the requirements of force and resistance, and boys who mistook their girlfriend's acquiescence as consent went to prison.
That wasn't enough, they said, so we eliminated the mens rea requirement for rape in many jurisdictions.
That wasn't enough, they said, so laws were enacted in the UK, and policies were put in place by the US news agencies and outlets, that granted rape accusers anonymity. No similar anonymity was afforded the presumptively innocent accused who are often destroyed by false rape claims.
That wasn't enough, they said, so we lengthened and eliminated statutes of limitations for rape. And middle-aged men suddenly were being arrested for rapes they allegedly committed in high school and college.
That wasn't enough, they said, so the UK started paying women to report rapes allegedly perpetrated against them, even rapes that did not involve physical force, adding a financial incentive for women to lie about rape. Men destroyed by false rape claims are entitled to no such compensation.
That wasn't enough, they said, so we enacted laws that forbade rape accusers from taking polygraphs. Men accused and convicted of rape were not excused from submitting to polygraphs, or from being subjected to penile plethysmograph testing, a sort a junk science polygraph of the penis.
That wasn't enough, they said, so we enacted rules on college campuses whereby young women who report they've been raped cannot be charged with underage drinking. Another incentive to lie about rape.
That wasn't enough, they said, so we enacted draconian Federal Rule of Evidence 413, and many states adopted similar laws. With this law, unlike any other criminal charge, including murder, robbery, even planning the World Trade Center attacks, a rape trial in federal court and in various states allows evidence of the defendant's commission of prior offenses of sexual assault to show that he has a propensity for committing the crime at issue. This rule, which is unique in all of American jurisprudence and widely condemned by legal scholars, allows the jury to hear about the defendant's prior acts, whether or not the defendant takes the stand. Even mere accusations of prior sexual offenses that occurred years before -- and even criminal allegations for which the defendant was acquitted -- are admissible if the alleged prior act is proven by just a preponderance of the evidence (far lower than beyond a reasonable doubt).
In the end, after all those reforms, the sexual grievance industry continues to insist -- guess what? -- that rape, and underreporting of rape, are still rampant.
Why? Let's not mince words. Because, of course, the sexual grievance industry needs underreporting to "explain" why a crime they claim is rampant has relatively few reported cases. That's why.
My educated guess is that tales of vast underreporting are hokum, smoke and mirrors conjured up by persons whose livelihood depends on the existence of a crisis only they can solve.
So, will this new UK policy combat underreporting? Not a chance. And my fear is that it is just one more step toward allowing women and girls to lie about rape with impunity. Literally.
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19 comments:
Nice summary of the reforms. Thanks.
Really good article.
WAR (Women Against Rape) in the UK have been the problem on this side of the pond.
And I too believe they are in it for the money. WAR claimed over £200,000 in grants from the National Lottery since 2005 to peddle their misleading statistics.
Whever I get the opportunity in the comments sections of the British online daily newspapers Im going to call them out on it.
Trust me, WAR are not going to get away with it.
Keir Starmer (from article) - ”If the victim has decided to withdraw a rape allegation, we must explore the issues behind that, particularly if the victim is under pressure or frightened."”
Outside of what we might term “Intimate Partner Rape”, what is the actual likelihood of any (real) rape victim being pressured or threatened into recanting? I would guess that if a real rape victim were to be afraid of anything, it would be coming forward in the first place. Once a suspect is named, that suspect would have a difficult time gaining any further access to the alleging victim.
As a bit of an aside, I’ve observed that one thing that prosecutors can easily get a judge to allow a wire-tap for is the possibility of witness intimidation. If a victim notifies police or prosecutors that they are being contacted by a defendant or representatives of a defendant (family, friends, and even lawyers), judges seem to have no qualms about issuing a wire-tap warrant. And, those who do try to intimidate a witness, if caught, are prosecuted under felony statutes, including the possibility of federal prosecution if their actions extend across state borders.
The real-world likelihood of an alleging rape victim being intimidated into recanting would seem to me to be very small indeed.
Besides, as we’ve seen in so many accounts documented on this site, most recantations come as a result of the accuser being confronted with evidence suggesting that no crime had occurred. Of course, the SGI will also suggest that the police pressure victims into false recantations. But, I doubt that real victim, facing little chance of being punished even if police didn’t believe her, would falsely recant. It’s not as if they are being placed in an interrogation room, held for hours, then brow-beaten so that they might be tempted to recant just to escape the immediate intimidation (as some young men have seemingly done). Far more likely that any “pressure” put on them is simply to note that “there appear to be some discrepancies” (or, something along the lines of, “there is video surveillance…”), to which the women simply “fold”, knowing that they’ve been caught-out.
Additionally, if they are being “pressured” about their statements and claims, must women intuitively understand their feminine ability to put equal or greater pressure back on any man by simply crying.
SLW, excellent points, as always. We know the drill: one case is blown where a woman is treated unfairly, and the government has to revamp its policy. I can point to hundreds of false rape claims that should have been prosecuted, but weren't, or that should have resulted in a greater sentence. No revamping of policy is ever warranted when that happens.
AntiFeministMedia - ”WAR (Women Against Rape) in the UK have been the problem on this side of the pond.”
Is that the same group the became apoplectic over the number of women in the UK being prosecuted form making FRA’s, including Gail Sherwood, and also against anonymity for those accused of rape?
Yes they are (http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2010/05/war-against-presumptively-innocent.html)
Archivist - ” We know the drill: one case is blown where a woman is treated unfairly, and the government has to revamp its policy.”
The particular case here involved a “marital rape” which created a situation in which other “family issues” and the roles of other family members could come into play.
But, such rape situations are not the norm. In most cases, there is no “family issue” to be considered, and little chance of parties contacting the victim on behalf of the accused.
Thus, if a woman does report a rape, she has already overcome the biggest hurtle (of intimidation) that she would be likely to face. So, if she were to recant, it seems more likely that she did not do so due to any intimidation.
I would imagine that the goal of W.A.R. is to “muddy the waters” surrounding recantations of FRA’s. By merely suggesting the woman would do so due to intimidation set the stage for them to begin claiming that intimidation is the main reason for recantations.
There was a story last week (http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/police-woman-filed-false-rape-report.html) in which a police investigation determined that an FRA had been made, and the woman making it was arrested. I noted the lack of reporting, which made no mention of the reasons why the police concluded as they did. I didn’t go into it very deeply then, but to me the problem becomes that the lack of information leaves the door open for the SGI to claim that such cases are really situations in which the “patriarchal” police are treating female victims badly, and falsely claiming that those victims are themselves being falsely accused of making FRA’s (I think that the reporter in that story did just that, seeking the woman’s side of the story as opposed to getting the account from the police).
If W.A.R. can successfully plant the message that woman are being intimidated (by their attackers, by family and friends, or even by the police themselves) in recanting, any time a news account of a recantation does not include extensive details, it can easily be proffered that the reason for the recantation came down to a matter of victim intimidation.
Those in the SGI are very clever at winning the battle of public perception.
Rape law as it stands is pure misandry and an outrage. Most of that list should be overturned. The judicial system is pure misandry like it's always been.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/jolly_rancher_heads_back_hell_australia_C8uwfQpetNC6sGfbo1LM2L;jsessionid=559C0E8DDC89EF0540129A5487285DB6#comments
The situation faced by the SGI is more or less the same situation faced by ever successful lobby group/social movement. The more they achieve, the more they have to exaggerate what still needs to be done in order to continue to justify their own existence.
Changing laws and policies in order to appease feminist lobby groups is akin to appeasing terrorists. It simply emboldens them to make further demands. You end up with a situation where you have a lot of rather aggressive dogs snapping at you, with not many bones left to throw to them.
SGI = Sexual Grievance Industry for those not in the know.
slwerner said...
Outside of what we might term “Intimate Partner Rape”, what is the actual likelihood of any (real) rape victim being pressured or threatened into recanting?
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Quite high, considering that in this day and age it is not that hard to find out where someone or their family members live and threaten a person with harm to themselves or their family members unless they retract their accusations.
While I am all for going after women who make allegations that are PROVEN to be false (either by them constantly changing their story or other things), there has to be a little leeway for people who are threatened into removing charges.
It doesn't do us anymore good to go down the road towards if a woman's accused rapist is not convicted, the woman in question is arrested for making a false claim.... that is going to turn a LOT of people like myself who would support you in other situations against you!
When in doubt, it's always rape.
Anyone who says otherwise
should be prosecuted.
(fixed)
Christopher - ”Quite high, considering that in this day and age it is not that hard to find out where someone or their family members live and threaten a person with harm to themselves or their family members unless they retract their accusations.”
I take it your fairly new around here?
First off, I based what I stated about low likelihood of witness intimidation based on what I know about the rate at which it is seen in regards to other crimes. Outside of matter involving family members, actual witness intimidation's and/or attempts to intimidate witnesses are rare. However, when family is involved, there is almost always some level of intimidate/coercion/begging that will happen.
What seems to prevent people from taking advantage of the enhanced ways to “find” someone and trying to contact them is that the penalties are so ridiculously high for witness intimidation – not just the criminal penalty of it as a crime in and of itself, but also in that it can be used against the party on who’s behalf it was done in the on-going prosecution of previously charged offense.
Rape is but a small subset of all criminality, so if witness intimidation outside of matters involving family, it’s hard to imagine that rape allegations would be any different.
But, that’s the “small issue” with your post.
Christopher - ”It doesn't do us anymore good to go down the road towards if a woman's accused rapist is not convicted, the woman in question is arrested for making a false claim....”
Again, it seems your new around here, so I imagine you can be cut some slack for have no clue what your talking about
No one here has ever called for women to be charged and prosecuted on the basis of their rape allegation not being proven (read that again, and then go back a search the archives for even one instance wherein some has called for such).
The stance here has ALWAYS been that ONLY those who are proven to have made false charges. In fact, your assumption that any of us would ever have suggested that women be charged if their claims cannot be proven is actually rather insulting.
But, as you are new, perhaps we can overlook your ignorance regarding that issue.
slwerner said...
First off, I based what I stated about low likelihood of witness intimidation based on what I know about the rate at which it is seen in regards to other crimes.
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You had better get a new rate then. While I don't support false rape accusations, I have relatives in law enforcement who say that they have about 50% of their cases go down in flames for serious crimes (murder, rape, etc.) because the person in question doesn't want to testify because they have been threatened by someone else.
They have also proven that by showing me the papers in question from the witnesses where they said that they had been threatened, but even after the judges saw those things they refused to do that whole 'read the witnesses statements into the record' thing because the witness was still alive and just unwilling to testify.
I believe that false rape accusations are about 50% of the accusations out there (coming from my own experience being accused 3 times of that by girls who I was babysitting when I was younger), but I also know that people can and are on a regular basis threatened into not testifying.
Sure, if you get rid of ONE person in a criminal organization, that person cannot harm you.... but what about his friends?
Christopher - "You had better get a new rate then. While I don't support false rape accusations, I have relatives in law enforcement who say that they have about 50% of their cases go down in flames for serious crimes (murder, rape, etc.)"
[Part 1]
Sorry, but I too have friends and family in LE, including my wife, who is a long-time prosecutors. Out of hundreds of cases she's taken to trial, and thousands that she’s handled, the only ones she's ever had witnesses intimidated into recantation involved either young children or where family members (or very close friends) were involved.
Overall, “successful” witness intimidation is uncommon. Even attempts at witness intimidation are not near so common as you claim. And, when it becomes known, felony charges are available to charge anyone who’d even try.
At arraignments, defendants are specifically advised against contact with the complaining witness, or having anyone else do so. If a witness notifies LE that they are being contacted, this allows for LE to petition the court for warrants to further investigate. People do get “busted”, charged, and even imprisoned for attempted witness intimidation.
As a result, few people are willing to put their necks on the line to try to intimidate witness. The notable exception would involve gangs/organized crime. But, rapes are typically individuals who are not “protected” by their affiliations – especially the men we see in so many stories here who are blind-sided by an ex, a “hook-up”, or even just a woman they had some minimal contact with.
Even where gang members are involved in crimes, my wife has prosecuted cases wherein there weren’t even attempts to intimidate the witnesses. She even once nearly prosecuted a man with gang ties for a rape that turned out to be simply a matter of the girls seeking revenge when, after she initiated sex with him, he didn’t want her as his girlfriend. That girl experienced no efforts to intimidate her. In fact, she only recanted after hearing the lengthy sentence that the guy was facing (as a person with a criminal history).
[Part 2]
Now, of course, in certain "bad neighborhoods" people are reluctant to cooperate with police. But, that will be more likely to result in police not being able to build a case for charging. That’s quite a bit different than what the SGI is claiming WRT the prosecuting of false accusers. What they are claiming is that complaining witnesses are being intimidated into recanting AFTER suspects are named/charged. Outside of families, this is rare.
If you’d take the time to read through the archives here, what you will find is that a significant number of FRA’s are being discovered BEFORE any suspect is identified. Often, police cannot find cooberating evidence of the alleged crime, and when they “re-interview” the accuser, she simply admits to the fabrication. How do you insert the notion of witness intimidation by the defendant or his “representatives” – when there is NO DEFENDANT?
Now, I do believe we will, in relatively short order, be seeing instances in which the SGI will be claiming that the police are the ones intimidating women into recanting. This is another reason why I believe it is necessary to reveal the motives for the FRA as well as what evidence lead police to determine a claim to be false (which is why I noted the case in which a woman was thusly charged, but a reporter went to her to get “her side”, but not the police side).
As I stated in that discussion thread, the police would have had to have had very good evidence to have made the determination that her rape claim was false. They are NOT going to turn around and charge a woman just because her claim cannot be substantiated. They must be able to prove she lied, or they would simply drop the case, or allow it to go “cold”.
This is why your previous assertion that woman would end up being charged if an alleged attacker could not be convicted was so absolutely absurd to begin with. Anyone whose spent any time reading this blog knows all too well that even men who are exonerated are the ones who are more likely to still be considered “guilty”.
God even I didn't realize that all the smaller rule changes surrounding rape added up to something so unfair to men accused of rape, many of them falsely.
You're an invaluable resource.
What radical feminists are trying to do with their whipping up hysteria about ever expanding definitions of rape, is to shift the balance of sexual power even more towards women.
So, if he doesn't treat her nice in the morning and ask her out on follow up dates, she can claim she was dead drunk and date raped, as a cudgel. Similarly if he screws her even though she has a bf, he's forced to do everything he can to cover that up, else she can file date rape charges, and at colleges get him punished in a purely he said she said situation.
It's outrageous.
Christopher--
It doesn't do us anymore good to go down the road towards if a woman's accused rapist is not convicted, the woman in question is arrested for making a false claim....
I haven't seen anyone argue for that. Certainly the owners of this site don't.
As well from the point of view of protecting men falsely accused of rape, we don't want to punish her early recantation too much.
What I think should happen is that there be a law preventing news organizations from releasing the names of EITHER the alleged rape victor or the alleged rapist unless and until the accused is convicted.
In the same rape reform law, falsely accusing someone of rape should be made a separate crime, because of the great damage to reputation that will occur. Even with news media not allowed to give out the names of either party, she will talk and try to build support often enough, rumors will go around and guy's reputations will be severely harmed. So false accusers should be punished in proportion to the damage they cause. A quick retraction will lead to little damage.
As well it's outrageous that those accused of rape are immediately arrested before the police and extensively interrogated the accuser over a period of time, and sought corroborating evidence, or evidence that casts doubt on her story. Those accused or rape shouldn't be arrested until the ADA thinks there's a good case.
I think the real problems are laws that make it easy to file rape accusations in marriage and relationships.
I think rape charges in regular relationships should be allowed only in fairly extreme cases (real violence) and with heightened burden of proof.
Now once a woman accused a partner of rape or violence, might be sorry to know he will spend 15 years in jail. It is even in the interest of the male to give that woman a chance to back out without consequences.
It is as if you accuse your father of spanking you, and find out he would be spending 10 years in jail. You might just want to recant.
I think in these special cases there should be a way to retract without prosecution. Maybe it could be plea-bargained: retract accusation, and no counter-charges.
Maybe in cases where a woman recants there should be a requirement for additional evidence, other then just her recanting. Or it should be taken into account if she recants with no prior indication that her testimony was wrong.
If you read my blog, I am not a feminist false rape apologist.
I just say, that in the midst of vengeful false rape accusations, there might be special cases where a woman wants to recant accusations that are not really totally baseless.
I understand that rape laws are not very concerned about false convictions. Still, we should avoid false imprisonment for recanting if either
* the accused requests not to press charges or
* there is absolutely no evidence of false accusations, other then her recanting.
What are the proceedings for people withdrawing other similar accusations? Like assault, robbery, etc?
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