The original post is not about “false rape” exactly. If you scroll up to the top and read the original chunk of text then you’ll understand what the subject of conversation was.

I’m guessing you’re new to blogs? They aren’t message boards, exactly, which perhaps you’re more familiar with. In a blog, the blog owner (or in this case, one of the blog posters) writes a little mini-essay or article which is called a post. That’s up top. Then people respond to the mini-essay or -article.

Imagine that there were a bunch of people sitting in a room talking about evidence for global warming, and you heard the word “climate” and so you came in and started talking about el nino. The subjects aren’t unrelated, but they aren’t identical.

No harm here, and no foul. Don’t worry about it. Just giving you the low down on how the blog thing works so that next time you google and find one you won’t be surprised when people are a little off-put that you’re changing the subject.

That is all. Carry on.

I went to google…looking for the answer to my question and typed in “False Rape” …A link led me to this website…the very first thing I saw was people having a convo about FALSE RAPE… I did notice that no one had made a comment since April 15th 2007…but I said hey it’s worth a shot…so …I asked the question that I wanted to know….Heaven forbid that I didn’t look at the right column and see that this was not the subject of conversation anymore.

GET OFF MY A** PLEASE!

I had a question about some one making FALSE RAPE accusations on someone…I’m sorry if I got off the subject from the “18 recently commented posts.”

You got to be kidding me….I’ve never even used this website before and all I was looking for was one answer!!!!!…I ask a simple question and now I’m lacking humor? Ha I guess….

I thought that your comment was pretty funny wrt what I’ve written in the above paragraph and so I commented in kind. I thought my comment was pretty funny and I’m sorry you didn’t get it. That’s what the lack of {humor} tags will do.

I guess I started some conflict in this website and I do apologize. I’m new at this and all I wanted was an answer for my question.

I will stop posting comments so I do not offend anyone else…but thank you and everyone else.

That is all I am saying…

Did you even read the original post?

I’m shocked and depressed by my apparent lack of reading comprehension. All these years spent reading and commenting here and I had no idea! I guess it’s time for some remedial classes for me.

em’s probably using a different definition of false.

The standard definition (used when people say “2% of crimes are false reports”) is, AFAIK, that “false” = “malicious.” I don’t think it even includes misidentifications.

The layperson tends to define “false” as “even if you were right about what you say I did, it wasn’t illegal.” In other words: if I didn’t commit the crime, accusing me is a false accusation. Obviously this is much more prevalent than malicious accusations. This uses the legal definition, which causes a lot of the problem.

Anyway, in my opinion, it seems fairly obvious the second definition is more likely to result in “false” accusations for rape than for many other crimes. This is because the legal and moral definitions of rape are extremely disparate, while the legal and moral definitions of most other crimes (theft, assault, murder) are more in sync. If you could peek into the minds of thieves and their victims, they’d probably have a vaguely similar idea of what theft is. The same can’t be said for rape–the perceptions are completely different.

Legal rape is a small subset of moral rape. If you have a large group of victims who believe they were raped (e.g. morally raped) and only a small subset of those rapes are actually legally rape (which is generally the case, because rape LAW doesn’t match rape MORALITY very well), then any defendant who falls in the gray area is going to think they were falsely accused.

MRAs often take it further still, what with using a finding of “not guilty” to prove the non-existence of guilt. Fortunately that’s been debunked in enough places so it’s getting rarer.

No evidence. Just personal experience. I’ve talked to more people falsely accused of sexual crimes than any other thing. That’s why I said it’s just a personal belief, nothing verifiable.

Iirc, the 2% number exists because it’s lifted from the overall average of falsely-accused crimes (no source, vague recollection here). So, even the 8% from the FBI is “higher than average”. That’s my point. That’s four times more than average, but still a small percentage, like I was saying.

To assign blame to anyone before you know all the facts are in is bigotry, pure and simple - bigotry that extremists on both sides are guilty of. Personally, I think that only a small percentage of rape accusations are false, but still far more than other crimes, and thus enough that you have to keep the possibility in mind.

Is there any solid evidence that rape accusations “are false… far more than other crimes”? (Such as a study of randomly-selected crime reporters subjected to identical treatment to investigate if the report was false, for example, which found that false reports of rape were more common than false reports of, say, arson or robbery or assault?)

As a result, some people will be mistakenly (but not maliciously) accused of crimes–misidentification can be a bitch. Rape is certainly not exempt from that. (incidentally, the number of people mistakenly accused is probably larger than the number of people maliciously accused. Those are often mixed up.)

And of course, some people will be maliciously accused of crimes, where the accuser knows that the accused is innocent. Rape is not exempt from that, either.

Of those incorrectly accused folks (all non-true accusations), some may even be convicted. Rape is not exempt from that, either.

What can be DONE about them? Not much, really. Though it hurts to say so. Sometimes there are simply unavoidable consequences of a given system: sort of like “losing” the lottery (as opposed to ‘not winning.’)

It’s simply a tradeoff. If you want to stop incorrect convictions by changing the court system, you’re going to end up letting more actually-guilty people go. If you want to make it easier to sue people who misidentify their attacker, you’re going to provide a disincentive for reporting–and you’ll end up getting fewer reports. If you want to make it simpler to sue accusers for defamation and slander, you’ll make it less likely that people who are justified in their accusation–but who might have trouble proving it–will accuse the offender.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly “MRA-ish” about discussing false accusations and the harm to the accused, and I don’t think there’s anything particularly, (um, what’s the opposite of MRA again?) “FRA-ish” about discussing true, unpunished, accusations and the harm to the victim.

The main thing that rumples my tie is when people (from either side) ignore the tradeoff. There is almost always a tradeoff.

The tradeoffs may be worthwhile, but they are there.* And I think that acknowledging that is a good way to keep other people from controlling the issue (I agree with Amp.)

*My favorite example: rape shield laws. Because they are designed to limit the defendant’s ability to cross-examine the accuser, they are, generally speaking, defendant-negative. Therefore, they enhance the likelihood of convicting an innocent.

Tradeoff? Sure. Worthwhile tradeoff? Yup, absolutely–they offer huge benefits to the victim in comparison to the cost to the accused. It’s better to admit the tradeoff and recenter the discussion to the VALUE of the gains (which is an argument we can win) than it is to deny thetradeoff exists at all.

I find it freaky that we can get numbers ranging from 2% to 60% on such an important subject. I tend to distrust either side, and just settle on this knowledge: men and women are capable of doing terrible things to each other, and are capable of being victims. To assign blame to anyone before you know all the facts are in is bigotry, pure and simple - bigotry that extremists on both sides are guilty of. Personally, I think that only a small percentage of rape accusations are false, but still far more than other crimes, and thus enough that you have to keep the possibility in mind.

Concealing the identity of rape victims from the press is a good idea… but imho, the identity of EVERYONE involved in a sex-crime court proceeding should be concealed from the press until a verdict is in. Rape trials should not be public spectacles.

Don’t you think the world would be better off if the Kobe Bryant or Duke Lacrosse cases had played out in court _before_ the public finger-pointing began?

That said, given how old this post is, I have no objection to thread drift to a related subject; it’s not like this discussion of false rape accusations not reported to police is preventing or drowning out another discussion going on here.

I sometimes worry that feminists have given too much ground to MRA priorities when we feel that we have to deny that false rape accusations are a legitimate topic of discussion. (I’m not talking about Mandolin here, I’m just bloviating about the general situation). When we do this, we cede all discussion of false rape accusations to MRAs and anti-feminists, which is a bad thing for us to do.

I have a cynical view of human nature; anything bad that one person can do to another — however weird, counter-intuitive, or against their own best interests it might be — at least a few have actually done. So yes, some innocents are slandered by false accusations of rape.

Some things happen much more commonly than others. For instance, I’m fairly certain (but cannot prove) that it’s far more common for a rapist to slander his victim by accusing her of making false accusations, than it is for a false accuser to smear an innocent man with accusations of rape. Pretty much any time a man with any friends at all or any standing in his social circle is accused of rape, his friends and allies will rally around him by saying that the accuser is a slandering liar. Actually, this can happen even if the man is friendless with no social standing.

If we keep that stuff in mind, there’s no reason that a situation such as the one Darcy describes should be beyond the scope of discussion here, especially in a context where it’s not blocking other discussions from taking place.

That said, if this thread drifts into anti-feminist territory — not just talking about a particular alleged case of false accusation, but instead endorsing or implying the stereotype that women frequently make false rape accusations, or arguing without solid evidence (not just anecdotes) that a huge portion of rape convictions happen to innocent men, no one ever takes men’s side, etc — then I’ll shut the discussion here down.

[Post-hoc edited by Amp, before any responses appeared.]