The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Extremely Rare False Rape Accusations’

Posted on | March 7, 2016 | 28 Comments

 

Marc Patrick O’Leary is a serial rapist, a sexual predator who in 2011 was sentenced to more than 300 years in prison. He was convicted of four rapes in Colorado and two in Washington State. O’Leary’s modus operandi involved systematic surveillance of his targets, usually breaking into homes or apartments through unlocked sliding-glass doors and taking measures to prevent leaving behind DNA or other trace evidence. His criminal career was recently detailed at length in an article by Pro Publica that focused on one of O’Leary’s victims, an 18-year-old named Marie whose story was disbelieved by police detectives. Marie was charged with filing a false report, and the Pro Publica article is intended to lend weight to the common feminist argument that, because false rape accusations are rare, no one should ever doubt such an accusation.

The problem, however, is that this “believe the survivors” rhetoric usually arises in connection with claims about sexual assault on university campuses, and especially in regard to dubious cases where regret about a drunken hook-up, or a desire for revenge against an ex-boyfriend, appear as plausible motives for a false accusation. In the current climate, where activists have incited a “campus rape epidemic” hysteria, cases like this seem to proliferate. More than 100 male students have sued their universities saying they were falsely accused of sexual assault and denied due process in campus disciplinary tribunals. While research shows that only about 5 percent of rape charges reported to police are false, what about these campus cases, most of which are never reported to law enforcement? The lower threshold of evidence required in campus disciplinary hearings, and the fact that university administrators impose no penalty for false accusations, means that liars like University of Virginia hoaxer Jackie Coakley can get away with inventing crimes that never happened. It is one thing to say “believe the survivors” when dealing with the victims of a violent menace like Marc O’Leary, but another thing entirely when confronted with the case of a student at elite Brown University who says he was expelled merely for making out with a girl he met at a party. The bungled police investigation in the case of O’Leary’s victim Marie, whose lawsuit against the city of Lynwood was settled for $150,000, does not justify the persecution of Paul Nungesser at Columbia University by fanatical feminists who insist that Emma Sulkowicz is both sane and honest, despite all evidence to the contrary.

The public-radio show “This American Life” did a story based on the Pro Publica article about Marie’s case and this radio broadcast was deemed “problematic” by feminist Nikki Gloudemann:

As listeners, we’re left to believe that rape victims like Marie have a responsibility to prove their case to others, because doubt is the natural byproduct of “how people think.” There is virtually no explicit mention of a rape culture that unfairly places this burden on victims, and nary any implicit references either. The show, for instance, touches on the nature of trauma, but never really explains how and why rape victims, due to biological changes in the brain, may respond in ways that seem unusual—and as such, why it’s deeply problematic to expect that they behave in a certain way. It never notes how extremely rare false rape accusations are. It never discusses a culture of shame and stigma that helps explain why 68% of rapes are never reported to police in the first place. . . .
As an influential media force . . . This American Life has a responsibility to report on something as serious as rape with appropriate depth, context, and framing. In failing to do that, it not only ignored rape culture; it actively helped to perpetuate it.

Here you see the difference between rape — a violent crime — and feminist “rape culture” rhetoric, which is a dishonest propaganda tactic, a way of generalizing guilt to implicate all males in crimes they deplore. Feminists are always looking for an excuse to demonize men, and “rape culture” has become a way of making ordinary heterosexual male behavior and attitudes seem monstrous. A guy makes an innocuous joke, or compliments a woman’s appearance, and suddenly he is condemned as a misogynist perpetuating “rape culture.” Amanda Marcotte has called men who disagree with her “rape apologists,” accused her critics of “supporting rape because you hate women,” and smeared skeptics of the Rolling Stone UVA hoax as “rape truthers.”

Skepticism about the false “1-in-5” statistic — a feminist myth about campus rape produced by “Statistical Voodoo and Elastic Definitions” — does not mean that one is “denying that rape is real.” No matter how often Amanda Marcotte smears skeptics as “rape apologists,” what is actually at issue is a matter of public policy. Marcotte and her feminist allies are deliberately exaggerating the prevalence of sexual assault at colleges and universities in order to argue for policies that have the effect of criminalizing all sexual activity on campus. The policies advocated by feminists like Jessica Valenti, Jaclyn Friedman, Jill Filipovic and Alexandra Brodsky shift the burden of proof in such a way that an accusation of rape is tantamount to proof of guilt, and accused students say they are denied the opportunity to present evidence of their innocence in the campus kangaroo court tribunals mandated by the Obama administration’s infamous 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter.

When the captain of the Yale University basketball team is expelled and his teammates are accused of “supporting a rapist” because they believe his expulsion was unjust, skepticism seems entirely warranted.

Nikki Gloudemann’s phrase “extremely rare false rape accusations” is misleading. If 5% of the accused are innocent, is that “extremely rare”? Well, according to federal statistics, gay and bisexual people are 2.3% of the U.S. population, and are thus even more “extremely rare.” Furthermore, is it in any way fair or responsible to suggest that the typical sort of he-said/she-said campus date-rape scenario involving two drunk teenagers is comparable to the brutal crimes of a violent predator like Marc O’Leary? Whatever the Yale Women’s Center says about Jack Montague, I’m pretty sure he’s not a knife-wielding sadist. When feminists like Jessica Valenti declare their intention to “redefine rape,” shouldn’t we become suspicious of such a project?

If you ask questions like that, you’ll be branded a “rape apologist” and maybe banned from Twitter, too. Truth is dangerous in an age of lies.




 

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

28 Responses to “‘Extremely Rare False Rape Accusations’”

  1. Fail Burton
    March 7th, 2016 @ 10:32 pm

    Supremacists lie as often as they breathe. Apparently false rape charges are 3 times more common than lesbians, and yet it’s mum on fake rape accusations while lesbianism is ballooned out of all proportion to their actual numbers. Trangender assaults must be statistical zero of all assaults and firemen are probably twice the population of all transgender. There is no joy in Lesbianville, or proportion. Give a fireman a courage award, not some mentally ill freakish narcissist.

  2. Unreliable Consent
    March 8th, 2016 @ 1:29 am

    This American Life has a responsibility to report on something as serious as rape with appropriate depth, context, and framing

    There is virtually no explicit mention of a rape culture
    _________________________________

    Feminists want everyone to frame rape as they do and mainstream media outlets aren’t playing along

  3. Unreliable Consent
    March 8th, 2016 @ 1:52 am

    https://twitter.com/DateOffCampus/status/707096184100356096

  4. robertstacymccain
    March 8th, 2016 @ 6:00 am

    Indeed. Feminists are promoting a certain narrative about rape — one that demands a change in culture — and demonizing everyone who questions that narrative. People with common sense are skeptical of the “just so” framing of this narrative, because it requires us to ignore facts and logic.

  5. Fail Burton
    March 8th, 2016 @ 6:30 am

    Modern feminism is a fraud. If women were 95% of all accidental deaths in the workplace feminists would be shouting that from rooftops; instead it’s crickets because in fact the opposite statistic is true. That statistic also is proof women make conscious choices which jobs to avoid; the unpleasant ones.

    There must by now be a combined total of thousands of lectures, Tweets, blog posts and articles in the media about women insisting on diversity in the tech sector. And yet has anyone ever seen a single feminist insist on diversity in the virtually 100% male supermarket distribution warehouses? Women don’t want to work in a freezer warehouse bundled up like a bear in 10 to 15 below temps. That is yet another clear proof that women make choices and that feminists are hypocrites. It also accounts for the more properly named income earnings gap, which is not a wage gap. Consistently different choices mean consistently different earnings. If women are not in the warehouse then they are in the warehouse offices, salaried, with no chance at overtime. The men in the warehouse on the other hand can sometimes double their yearly wages with overtime, and many choose to do exactly that.

    In just a few words I’ve torn modern feminism to pieces. An easy thing to do since it is a fraud based – not on reality – but on an irrational suspicion of everything men do in relation to women.

  6. Jeanette Victoria
    March 8th, 2016 @ 7:02 am

    So true

  7. RS
    March 8th, 2016 @ 8:17 am

    There is virtually no explicit mention of a rape culture that unfairly places this burden on victims. . .

    It’s worth mentioning that the “burden” (of proof), is not placed on the “victims.” It has been assumed by society as a whole, because it is society which applies the sanction against antisocial behavior. Indeed, using the word “victim,” implies a fait accompli. The proper term is “accuser.” And yes, the accuser provides evidence, but that is in the service of society which seeks to preserve safety and order for its members.

  8. Unreliable Consent
    March 8th, 2016 @ 8:21 am

    Accepting the rape culture narrative means embracing feminism, a slippery slope to the intended cultural-change grand prize: feminist preschool infiltration.

  9. Dana
    March 8th, 2016 @ 9:05 am

    Our host wrote:

    While research shows that only about 5 percent of rape charges reported to police are false, what about these campus cases, most of which are never reported to law enforcement?

    And that’s the point: universities have to start taking the position that rape accusations must be turned over to law enforcement, because college administrators have neither the time nor the training nor the inclination for criminal investigation.

    After all, if a student can make the report to the university, she has already crossed the reporting threshold: it shouldn’t be much more of a step to make the report to law enforcement.

    If the alleged rape is reported only to the university, then the most the university can do is expel the suspected rapist. But, if the accusation is true, the rapist is getting away with a felony, and remains out in the community, able to rape other victims. All that the college-educated feminists are doing is changing the demographic of his victims.

    Let’s put this another way: the bishops have been excoriated, and some dioceses have faced criminal charges, for not reporting allegations of child sexual abuse to the police, and simply moving offending priests around to other parishes, where there are no stories about his offenses. Everybody knows that was wrong, but that is exactly what reporting rape allegations solely to the universities does, moves the alleged rapist out of that school, and into another potential victim population.

  10. DeadMessenger
    March 8th, 2016 @ 12:20 pm

    And society would be less burdened in all cases if there were never any false accusations. It would therefore help if feminists called out false accusers, but oh no, that doesn’t fit the narrative.

  11. DeadMessenger
    March 8th, 2016 @ 12:32 pm

    Indeed. If I were a college student and I were a victim of ANY crime, I would take my complaint to the po-lease, who could actually potentially do something, rather than the same people who turn class registration into a federal production.

    I sure wouldn’t dash down to some bureaucrat’s office with a tale of “Haven r…r…raped me” unless I knew that I wouldn’t be prosecuted for a false accusation.

    We’re all in agreement that some cases are really rape, which is a horrible crime, and those perpetrators need a smackdown by the long arm of the law. The fact that colleges don’t see this just goes to show that, in reality, they are more interested in covering up crimes rather than protecting students from them.

  12. Dana
    March 8th, 2016 @ 2:58 pm

    It’s more than that: unless a rape is reported promptly, to the police, forensic evidence is lost. I understand that about the last thing a rape victim wants is to have to go through the ‘evidence collection,’ which includes a pelvic examination, but that’s the unfortunate nature of the crime.

    If the feminists were really interested in preventing rape, they would concentrate their education efforts on persuading women that they have to go to the police, or the emergency room, promptly, to help prevent their assailant from assaulting other women.

  13. DukeLax
    March 8th, 2016 @ 3:44 pm

    When Gender-feminists perverted our legal system ( got state law enforcement to no longer charge false rape accusers..and to manufacture faulty and inflammatory statistics for them)…they planted the seed of a poisonous fruit………

  14. DukeLax
    March 8th, 2016 @ 3:48 pm

    The ” Only 5 % false” number…is a number gender-feminists told state law enforcement to “cook up” for them …or they will get no more Eztra federal pork bloating dollars. So state law enforcement started using protocol perversions and semantics games…..re-defining what the meanings of is, is……to cook up the numbers gender-feminists wanted…and secured their eztra federeal pork bloating dollars.

  15. theoldsargesays
    March 8th, 2016 @ 4:15 pm

    The accused students need to step up…
    1. Categorically refuse cooperation with campus bureaucrats
    2. Initiate contact with law enforcement themselves by visiting local law enforcement and saying “I have been accused by _____ and and the university I would like you to look into it.
    If this gal was in fact raped and it was not me then you need to find this rapist that’s running around loose.”

    Shove it right back in their faces.

  16. Jeanette Victoria
    March 8th, 2016 @ 5:04 pm

    What does a guy do when “a woman with a penis” cries rape? It’s coming!

  17. Jeff Bridges
    March 8th, 2016 @ 5:43 pm

    The 2-5% of rape accusations are false is based on the amount rape cases that are found to be false accusations at the end of a jury trial. Very, very, very, very few false accusations of rape make it past the investigation stage. This is how Feminists, our government and MSM operate, in HALF TRUTHS.

    Making them extremely creepy and of course completely unreliable. There is nothing our government, our media or Feminists say that is truth anymore, it’s all either lies, fraud, misinformation or half truths or they simply black out important information people want to actually know.

    And what I’ve been told by my cousin who is a police officer is that about EIGHTY PERCENT of rape accusations are false. The news is exploding with them everyday!

  18. Anita Sarkeesian
    March 8th, 2016 @ 6:39 pm

    Do women lie about rape? Now we have VIDEO PROOF: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDCKp25Mk28

  19. Fail Burton
    March 8th, 2016 @ 7:07 pm

    No difference between that and anti-Semitism. Morality is literally seen to be embedded in a human form, not the actions of individuals.

  20. Fail Burton
    March 8th, 2016 @ 7:09 pm

    This is all slowly working its way through the court system. Precedents are being set, rulings made, and this will eventually go to state, regional and federal supreme courts. Laws will be changed… for the good. This system cannot withstand Title IX let alone our Constitution.

  21. kilo6
    March 8th, 2016 @ 7:22 pm

    College level reading these days, and I shudder to think of what “college level” anything will be after a few decades of Kommon Kore (a.k.a. Race To The Bottom)

    Just for the heck of it I searched The Tweets for some Godwin’s Law stuff and found this guy (hope link works):

    https://twitter.com/ScottInSC/status/707337144235331586

  22. John Rew
    March 9th, 2016 @ 1:51 am

    Has it occurred to these idiots that the majority of these types of claims have in the past been ridiculous and comprised mainly of emotion with very few facts. This would lead the police to have a dismissive attitude that occasionally would overflow into genuine cases. The right way to deal with this problem would be: 1. to have specific definitions of crimes that are as insulated from misuse as possible. 2. to alert the public of the real incidence of false allegations and their consequences. 3. to research possible indications of fictitious and real victims and train police appropriately. 4. to prosecute those who have been proven to have made false allegations purposely and maliciously. Unfortunately the feminist model is the reverse of these suggestions and self defeating ensuring that they have plenty to complain about in the future.

  23. TBITC
    March 9th, 2016 @ 7:08 am

    False allegations of rape are believed to be more common than many persons realize. These are the findings of four research studies:

    A review of 556 rape accusations filed against Air Force personnel found that 27% of women later recanted. Then 25 criteria were developed based on the profile of those women, and then submitted to three independent reviewers to review the remaining cases. If all three reviewers deemed the allegation was false, it was categorized as false. As a result, 60% of all allegations were found to be false.1 Of those women who later recanted, many didn’t admit the allegation was false until just before taking a polygraph test. Others admitted it was false only after having failed a polygraph test.2

    In a nine-year study of 109 rapes reported to the police in a Midwestern city, Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin reported that in 41% of the cases the complainants eventually admitted that no rape had occurred.3

    In a follow-up study of rape claims filed over a three-year period at two large Midwestern universities, Kanin found that of 64 rape cases, 50% turned out to be false.4 Among the false charges, 53% of the women admitted they filed the false claim as an alibi.5

    According to a 1996 Department of Justice report, “in about 25% of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI, … the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing.6 It should be noted that rape involves a forcible and non-consensual act, and a DNA match alone does not prove that rape occurred. So the 25% figure substantially underestimates the true extent of false allegations.

    And according to former Colorado prosecutor Craig Silverman, “For 16 years, I was a kick-ass prosecutor who made most of my reputation vigorously prosecuting rapists. … I was amazed to see all the false rape allegations that were made to the Denver Police Department. … A command officer in the Denver Police sex assaults unit recently told me he placed the false rape numbers at approximately 45%.”7

    According to the FBI, about 95,000 forcible rapes were reported in 2004.8 Based on the statements and studies cited above, some 47,000 American men are falsely accused of rape each year. These men are disproportionately African-American.9

    Some of these men are wrongly convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned. Even if there is no conviction, a false allegation of rape can “emotionally, socially, and economically destroy a person.”10

    References:

    1 McDowell CP. False allegations. Forensic Science Digest, Vol. 11, No. 4, December 1985

    2 Ibid.

    3 Kanin EJ. An alarming national trend: False rape allegations. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1994 http://www.sexcriminals.com/library/doc-1002-1.pdf

    4 Ibid., p. 2, Kanin reports that in the city studied, “for a declaration of false charge to be made, the complainant must admit that no rape had occurred. … The police department will not declare a rape charge as false when the complainant, for whatever reason, fails to pursue the charge or cooperate on the case, regardless how much doubt the police may have regarding the validity of the charge. In short, these cases are declared false only because the complainant admitted they are false. … Thus, the rape complainants referred to in this paper are for completed forcible rapes only. The foregoing leaves us with a certain confidence that cases declared false by this police agency are indeed a reasonable — if not a minimal — reflection of false rape allegations made to this agency, especially when one considers that a finding of false allegation is totally dependent upon the recantation of the rape charge.”

    5 Ibid., Addenda.

    6 Connors E, Lundregan T, Miller N, McEwen T. Convicted by juries, exonerated by science: Case studies in the use of DNA evidence to establish innocence after trial. June 1996 http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/dnaevid.txt

    7 http://web.archive.org/web/20050404230831/http://www.thedenverchannel.com/kobebryanttrial/2812198/detail.html

    8 Federal Bureau of Investigation. Forcible rape. February 17, 2006. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/violent_crime/forcible_rape.html

    9 Innocence Project: Facts on post-conviction DNA exonerations. http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/351.php

    10 Angelucci M, Sacks G. Research shows false allegations of rape common. Los Angeles Daily Journal, Sept. 15, 2004. http://www.glennsacks.com/research_shows_false.htm

  24. bittergubben
    March 9th, 2016 @ 7:13 am

    Regarding the article about a woman that was innocently convicted of making a false rape claim: despite that the rape was rather extreme, my impression from the story was that it was more troubling for her that she was judged as a false accuser. That her support structure and old friends turned on her. So in my reading, the article makes the case that falsely judging someone for something they didn’t do – whether it is rape or false accusations – is a serious matter. Innocent until proven guilty.

    Although false accusations are worse with worse crimes. I would rather be falsely accused of returning a library book to late and face a 10 USD fee, than be falsely accused of making a false rape claim and face mandatory counseling, supervised probation and 500 USD fee; and I would rather be falsely accused of making a false rape claim, than be falsely accused of rape and face many years in prison. Innocent until proven guilty is more important the more serious the alleged crime is, but already with a matter like being falsely accused of making a false rape claim, it is a serious matter.

    And the 2-5% part? That is the ratio of provably false claims (by some standard of evidence). It should be compared to the provably true claims. Thinking that only the provably false are false, and that the remaining 95-98% are legitimate, is as inept as thinking that if only 6% of accusations lead to conviction, then the remaining 94% of the accusations must be false.

  25. KnxGuy MGY
    March 9th, 2016 @ 5:44 pm

    Just saw headline this morning. RISE IN SUICIDE LINKED TO WOMEN, MIDDLE AGED.

    Women starting to kill themselves, HEADLINE NEWS

    Doesnt matter men suicide 10x more than women…

  26. Daniel Freeman
    March 9th, 2016 @ 7:08 pm

    I remember after the housing crash, there were concerns about the rise in the (still low) percentage of workplace fatalities that were women.

    Because men were dying less. Due to the economic slowdown. That was a problem for women.

  27. Loren
    March 10th, 2016 @ 2:46 pm

    I have said it before, if you think you have been raped, call the police, not the University Dean of Wymen’s Studies.

  28. News of the Week (March 13th, 2016) | The Political Hat
    March 13th, 2016 @ 8:30 pm

    […] “Extremely Rare False Rape Accusations” In the current climate, where activists have incited a “campus rape epidemic” hysteria, cases like this seem to proliferate. More than 100 male students have sued their universities saying they were falsely accused of sexual assault and denied due process in campus disciplinary tribunals. While research shows that only about 5 percent of rape charges reported to police are false, what about these campus cases, most of which are never reported to law enforcement? The lower threshold of evidence required in campus disciplinary hearings, and the fact that university administrators impose no penalty for false accusations, means that liars like University of Virginia hoaxer Jackie Coakley can get away with inventing crimes that never happened. […]