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False allegations and attrition

Which belongs on the other thread as I told him in my reply. Claus is mixing the sex assault poll thread, this one and the male/female violence thread. And Pardalis is as well.
 
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Late to this thread, but this is from a 2006 Australian study carried out in the state of Victoria:

Study of Reported Rapes in Victoria, 2000-2003


Key findings

Offenders were charged in only 15 per cent of reported rapes examined.
This suggests the attrition rate for rape may have increased, despite reforms designed to improve the numbers of investigations proceeding to prosecution.
• Police did not proceed with more than 60 per cent of investigations.
15.1 per cent of rape complaints were withdrawn.
46.4 per cent of rape complaints resulted in No Further Police Action.
21.3 per cent of rape complaints were ‘still ongoing’ or could not be determined on the basis of the information in the case records.
• Only 2.1 per cent of reports were designated by police as false.
The belief that false allegations of rape are rife, is therefore challenged by the evidence.
• 26 per cent of cases in this study involved victims with a psychiatric disability or mental health issue.
They were among those least likely to result in charges being laid against the offender and twice as likely to be determined as false.
• Where complaints were withdrawn, no statistically reliable profile of the characteristics of cases could be established.
These cases did, however, involve slightly older victims, who were more likely to have used alcohol and/or other drugs around the time of the offence.
• Offenders were proportionally more likely to be current or former partners in cases where the complaint was subsequently withdrawn compared to cases where charges were laid.
Some of these allegations were made against offenders who were, at the time of the rape, under family violence intervention orders.
• Characteristically rape victims who were most likely to see charges laid were:
male; physically injured; medically examined; not influenced by alcohol or drugs at the time of the offence; subject to other offences alongside the rape; and, raped by offenders well known to police for previous sexual offending. This is despite the overwhelming majority of rape victims (92.5 per cent) being female.
• Cases that resulted in No Further Police Action were typically more likely to involve:
younger victims; victims who were acquainted or who had a cursory relationship with the offender; and, victims who had consumed alcohol or other drugs around the time of the offence.
Click to expand...


More detail about false allegations from the same study:

‘False complaints’

False complaints represented just over 2 per cent of the 850 records considered across the entire sample. There were at least another 70 cases where police members suspected or were sure that the allegations were false, however the outcome of the investigation was classified in different terms, such as ‘no offence detected’ or as a case for NFPA.

Cases classified as false reports are distinguished by the degree of certainty with which Police members expressed that the allegations were false and an increased likelihood that the victims in these cases could, or in fact were, charged with making a false report.

The characteristics of these cases are:

• all 17 of the victims in this category were women, aged between 15 and 45;
• seven of the 17 victims were recorded as having a disability, primarily mental health or psychiatric issues;
• of the 17 victims, 11 were previously known to police, mainly because they had made previous allegations of rape and non-rape offences or had prior convictions. One woman was known due to having taken out an intervention order related to the alleged offender himself (a former partner);
• the main relationship categories were strangers, current or former partner, friends, acquaintances or men whom victims had met on the night;
• the majority of victims reported the rape within 24 hours and most referred to a single incident;
• twelve of the women in this category underwent medical examinations, with half found to have sustained physical injuries, with one woman needing medical treatment and another requiring hospitalisation; and,
• five of the offenders were known to police prior to the offences being reported, either through involvement in person or property related offences or as the subjects of intervention orders relating to family violence incidents.

Without exception, CIU or investigating members were confident (13 cases) or at least suspected (3 cases) that the allegations were false.11 By contrast, SOCAU members were more ambivalent or at least less inclined to record or make judgements about the veracity of the women’s accounts. In seven cases, there was no indication or no particular view expressed by SOCAU members about the victim or the case. However, in six of the 17 cases, members believed it was likely that the allegations were false.12 In at least 10 of the 17 cases, members indicated that the victims themselves did not want the investigations to proceed. There were, however, six cases where victims wanted the police to continue investigating.
Click to expand...


I've also pulled out some findings relating to issues brought up in another thread regarding male victims (all but one involving male offenders) and female offenders:


98. Male victims were more likely to see charges laid (27.1 per cent compared with 14 per cent for females). No male victims (n=64) were charged with false reporting or were involved in cases where police doubted their credibility. Male victims were also less likely to withdraw their complaints (8.5 per cent compared with 15.7 per cent of female victims).

[…]

116. An unexpected finding is that male victims are significantly more likely to be involved in cases that proceed. The fact that the victim’s gender could be isolated as a ‘predictor’ beyond the influence of other variables suggests ‘being male’ might be influencing police decision-making. This is an important finding given male victims have historically been amongst those groups least likely to disclose sexual assault or to feel confident to make a police report (Neame & Heenan 2003).


[…]

204. There were five female offenders in the study, accounting for less than one per cent of offenders. All but one victim was female and all of the victims were known to their offenders.

205. Neither SOCAU nor CIU members expressed any level of disbelief toward the allegations made against female offenders. One case resulted in NFPA, two cases were noted as still ongoing and charges were laid in two cases. There were no withdrawn complaints.

206. Females were also involved as ‘secondary offenders’ in another seven cases, six of which involved a male offender with whom they had a relationship at the time of the offence.
Click to expand...
 
Fiona its pretty obvious that one of your favorite things to do is to talk about how women are victims. Why is that?

And its interesting to me to see that you seem outraged at the suggestion that women would lie about something like this. I ask why? Being a rape victim is something that gets a woman a lot of poor thing attention. Its definitely something a mentally unhealthy woman could do. Women are not exempt from lying. We went over this in another thread months ago where you refused to believe that large numbers of women could lie about getting pregnant on purpose.

Women absolutely lie. People who are desperate will do desperate things. No matter how much the person is victimized and truly a victim, it doesn't change the fact that they might lie. Two reasons for lying about rape to me are getting attention, and feeling guilty for sleeping with someone when they were drunk. Next morning regret.

To me rape is about violence, not sex. So a guy having sex to me is not enough to make it rape. A guy forcing a woman is going to involved holding her down, dragging her, hitting her, beating her, yelling, screaming and attack plus massive resistance to some degree by the woman. The after effect will be a state of shock.

A woman who goes home with a man after going out for drinks, goes up to his apartment, gets half undressed and starts making out and then he wants to and she's not sure but one thing leads to another ......is not rape. That's sexual regret that the woman wants to put on the guy. And the whole "I was so drunk that he took advantage of me" doesn't wash with me either.

If you were too drunk to be held accountable for your actions it's your own fault, and if you get off the hook, why can't we let the men off the hook for being too drunk to be held accountable either? Should we start saying "Not guilty by reason of intoxication" for murders as well?
 
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truethat said:
Fiona its pretty obvious that one of your favorite things to do is to talk about how women are victims. Why is that?
Click to expand...

That's not obvious to me and a quick search of Fiona's posts shows that your statement is simply untrue. Not a good start to your post, first claim and it's untrue and not only that it took me less than minute to find out that your statements wasn't truthful.

What research did you do to come to such a conclusion or did you just jump to a conclusion?

truethat said:
And its interesting to me to see that you seem outraged at the suggestion that women would lie about something like this. I ask why?

...snip...
Click to expand...

Any evidence to support this claim? I've read this thread and certainly there is no evidence in this thread to support this claim.

I like to ask you a "why" question.

Why are you wanting to undermine the credibility of someone? (Albeit not succeeding.) Has something in something Fiona posted struck a bit close home to you?

truethat said:
Being a rape victim is something that gets a woman a lot of poor thing attention.
Click to expand...

What a utterly disgusting attitude to hold.
truethat said:
Its definitely something a mentally unhealthy woman could do.

...snip...
Click to expand...

Evidence?

truethat said:
Women are not exempt from lying.

...snip..
Click to expand...

For once we agree on something, but since Fiona (or anyone else) has not claimed that women are exempt from lying or even that anyone has said some women do not lie about being rape what has it got to do with anything Fiona has posted?

truethat said:
We went over this in another thread months ago where you refused to believe that large numbers of women could lie about getting pregnant on purpose.

...snip...
Click to expand...

Given that so far you have either not provided any evidence for your claims or the evidence shows your claims are false pardon me for suspecting that will turn out to be another lie. However before I decide that any evidence?

I have to say your apparent obsession with Fiona could easily be explained by the fact that you have problems with women who are your intellectual superior. Note - I am not claiming this, all I am saying is that it could be an explanation, unlike you I am not going to jump to a conclusion about your motivations.

truethat said:
Women absolutely lie.
Click to expand...

And water is wet - so what?

truethat said:
...snip...

To me rape is about violence, not sex. So a guy having sex to me is not enough to make it rape. A guy forcing a woman is going to involved holding her down, dragging her, hitting her, beating her, yelling, screaming and attack plus massive resistance to some degree by the woman. The after effect will be a state of shock.

...snip...
Click to expand...

Care to provide the studies that supports your many claims?

truethat said:
...snip...

A woman who goes home with a man after going out for drinks, goes up to his apartment, gets half undressed and starts making out and then he wants to and she's not sure but one thing leads to another ......is not rape.

...snip...
Click to expand...

And no one has said it is... this is called a strawman.

truethat said:
...snip...
If you were too drunk to be held accountable for your actions it's your own fault, and if you get off the hook, why can't we let the men off the hook for being too drunk to be held accountable either? Should we start saying "Not guilty by reason of intoxication" for murders as well?
Click to expand...

So lets see, you go out for a few drinks one night, one thing leads to another and you get very drunk; you wake up the next morning with a blinding hangover and find that some bloke persuaded you to go back to their apartment and repeatedly had sex with you all night, you'd just think "Oh well I was drunk it's not his fault".
 
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I don't really need to add to the post above mine, but:
truethat said:
To me rape is about violence, not sex. So a guy having sex to me is not enough to make it rape. A guy forcing a woman is going to involved holding her down, dragging her, hitting her, beating her, yelling, screaming and attack plus massive resistance to some degree by the woman. The after effect will be a state of shock.
Click to expand...
Incorrect, and it is cause for gratitude that legal precedents are in stark disagreement with your "claim".
 
CyCrow said:
As for the high attrition, it's natural that cases that have no conclusive forensic evidence, no independent witnesses etc. are hard to prosecute. Presumption of innocence means that we cannot accept a 50/50 chance of guilt, we require a higher standard of evidence. So it comes down to the credibility of the alledged perpetrator and victim.
Click to expand...

I think this is the most important point here. No matter what your views on men and women, no matter how much you trust the police, no matter how much you think people lie, rape cases are always going to have very high attrition rates. In most cases there will be a maximum of two witnesses, and physical evidence will usually be somewhere between a small amount and none. As pointed out previously, it's not just hard to get evidence against a particular suspect, it can be hard to even prove a crime was commited at all.

Given all that, is a 15% charge rate really that surprising? Innocent until proven guilty. Guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. When all you've got is one person's word against another, of course that will mean the majority of cases never even going to court. Is that unfortunate for the people who genuinely were raped but have no way to prove it? Of course. But without removing the foundations of civilised legal systems, there's really no way to avoid that. The various straw men arranged against either side don't need to come in to it at all. The cost of convicting more guilty people is convicting more innocents as well, and that will always be the case.
 
I have enjoyed several discussions with Fiona on this matter, and while I find her views very interesting I must admit that they are well supported by the evidence she suggests. I even had to change one of my long-held views after the weight of these discussions crashed down on me one morning.

(See Fiona, I did listen!)

~ Matt
 
truethat said:
Fiona its pretty obvious that one of your favorite things to do is to talk about how women are victims. Why is that?

And its interesting to me to see that you seem outraged at the suggestion that women would lie about something like this. I ask why? Being a rape victim is something that gets a woman a lot of poor thing attention. Its definitely something a mentally unhealthy woman could do. Women are not exempt from lying. We went over this in another thread months ago where you refused to believe that large numbers of women could lie about getting pregnant on purpose.

Women absolutely lie. People who are desperate will do desperate things. No matter how much the person is victimized and truly a victim, it doesn't change the fact that they might lie. Two reasons for lying about rape to me are getting attention, and feeling guilty for sleeping with someone when they were drunk. Next morning regret.

To me rape is about violence, not sex. So a guy having sex to me is not enough to make it rape. A guy forcing a woman is going to involved holding her down, dragging her, hitting her, beating her, yelling, screaming and attack plus massive resistance to some degree by the woman. The after effect will be a state of shock.

A woman who goes home with a man after going out for drinks, goes up to his apartment, gets half undressed and starts making out and then he wants to and she's not sure but one thing leads to another ......is not rape. That's sexual regret that the woman wants to put on the guy. And the whole "I was so drunk that he took advantage of me" doesn't wash with me either.

If you were too drunk to be held accountable for your actions it's your own fault, and if you get off the hook, why can't we let the men off the hook for being too drunk to be held accountable either? Should we start saying "Not guilty by reason of intoxication" for murders as well?
Click to expand...

If the woman says "NO", drunk or not, half dressed or not, and the man doesn't stop, it's rape.
 
truethat said:
We went over this in another thread months ago where you refused to believe that large numbers of women could lie about getting pregnant on purpose.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, that thread where you repeatedly shown that you consistently:
- refused to provide evidence for your claims;
- look at evidence contradicting your views that others provided;
- posted tons of incoherent off-topic rambling posts;
- strawmanned your opponents to hell and back;
- engaged in multiple leaps of logics, stereotyping and double-standards;
- ran away when it became clear that your position was untenable?

That thread? Or was it that other thread, where you also did all of those things?

Yeah, still nothing new under the sun, I see. But do go on and say that it's only rape if there's physical violence. The meltdown should be amusing.
 
Anecdotally, I've known of two instances of false claims of rape, one of which was an actual allegation against an individual, one of which wasn't. I also know of one person who has claimed to be pregnant when she wasn't.

Darat said:
truethat said:
Being a rape victim is something that gets a woman a lot of poor thing attention.
Click to expand...
What a utterly disgusting attitude to hold.
Click to expand...

It isn't an attitude, it is an observation. How accurate it is in general, I wouldn't guess. I did know a girl a few years after high school (girlfriend of a friend) that claimed that she was raped. She made the claim when she was first dating my friend. She didn't specifically accuse anyone; it was a nebulous, unnamed attacker and her claim was of a past occurance. She admitted to her boyfriend about a year later to making the whole thing up. I never learned *why* she claimed to have been raped, but my assumption is that it she did so to get sympathy. This is significantly different than someone accusing a specific individual of rape and filing a police report. I would guess that a woman that claimed to be raped for attention seeking or sympathy seeking purposes would probably do something similar: claim to have been sexually assaulted by a nameless, faceless assailant. It's just easier to pull off.

I do know of a case where someone did file a police report and falsely accuse a specific individual of rape. A man I knew for many years when I was younger (and worked with for 8-10 hours daily for a couple of years) was arrested in his class at high school on charges of rape. The police came into his class, and announced so that everyone could hear "you are under arrest for the rape of Soandso" and he was subsequently frog-marched out of the school. The claimed time of the rape happened to coincide with the time of a state semi-final high school football game, in which this man was a running back and high profile player at a game that was witnessed by literally hundreds of people. When confronted with his alibi, the girl admitted to making a false accusation. She had become pregnant as a result of having consentual sex with her boyfriend and tried to explain the pregnancy to her father by claiming that she was raped. Understandably, her father wanted to know who the perp was. The girl saw the accused man's name in the newspaper in the sports section, and gave his name to her father. She had never met him, he lived 30 miles away, and she had essentially just pulled his name out of a hat. If he had not had such an iron clad alibi, he would have forever had a sullied name in that community.

As far as women lying about a pregnancy, I do know of a woman who has twice claimed to be pregnant when she was not. I don't know if she really believed that she was pregnant or not. I was told because she had told me that she was pregnant and I was not to bring up the pregnancy as a topic of discussion; apparently that was therapist's orders. Both times that the woman became "pregnant", it was subsequently ended by a "miscarriage". I feel sorry for her husband.

Those things *do* happen, but I'm not going to make any assertions about frequency.
 
Darat said:
So lets see, you go out for a few drinks one night, one thing leads to another and you get very drunk; you wake up the next morning with a blinding hangover and find that some bloke persuaded you to go back to their apartment and repeatedly had sex with you all night, you'd just think "Oh well I was drunk it's not his fault".
Click to expand...

Yes. Exactly. Notice the word "persuaded". If you voluntarily drink, smoke, snort, or inject a substance that will impair your judgement and/or lower your inhibitions, you are responsible for your subsequent actions and decisions. If you are persuaded to go to someone's apartment and persuaded to have sex, no it is not "his fault", at least not legally or morally. You have just as much culpability as he does...it was a consensual act. If he slips something into your drink without your knowledge, that is completely different. If you voluntarily get drunk/stoned/wasted and pass out, and he takes advantage of that to have sex with you while you are passed out, that again is different.

You are basically saying that a woman is not responsible for her actions if she voluntarily becomes inebriated. Would you apply the same concept to males?
 
MikeMangum said:
Yes. Exactly. Notice the word "persuaded". If you voluntarily drink, smoke, snort, or inject a substance that will impair your judgement and/or lower your inhibitions, you are responsible for your subsequent actions and decisions. If you are persuaded to go to someone's apartment and persuaded to have sex, no it is not "his fault", at least not legally or morally. You have just as much culpability as he does...it was a consensual act. If he slips something into your drink without your knowledge, that is completely different. If you voluntarily get drunk/stoned/wasted and pass out, and he takes advantage of that to have sex with you while you are passed out, that again is different.

You are basically saying that a woman is not responsible for her actions if she voluntarily becomes inebriated. Would you apply the same concept to males?
Click to expand...

Look, it's really simple:

If a person is incapable of making an informed chioce you should not be taking advantage of this incapacity, however it came about.
 
So if a man "go[es] out for a few drinks one night, one thing leads to another and [he] get very drunk; [he] wake up the next morning with a blinding hangover and find that some [woman] persuaded [him] to go back to [her] apartment and repeatedly had sex with [him] all night", has he been a victim of sexual assault?

Keep in mind, he is the one who willingly impaired his judgement, and as far as the woman is concerned, he gave his consent. If you believe that scenario constitutes sexual assault, is there a specific blood alcohol content threshold beyond which a person cannot give consent? Is the potential sexual partner responsible for determining the BAC of their prospective partner? If they are both drunk, who is the guilty party?

If you believe that scenario isn't sexual assault, would it be sexual assault if the genders were reversed?

The ultimate question is this: are you responsible for your own actions and decisions when you are intoxicated of your own free will?
 
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