5-25-2010 United Kingdom:
A LYING woman whose false allegation of rape drove one man to suicide made the same allegation against another man and almost led him to take his own life too.
The consequences of the woman’s false allegations emerged when the second man was cleared by a jury of rape in just 45 minutes after a £30,000 trial.
But despite being exposed in court as a serial liar the 21-year-old woman will never be identified. Legal sources also said it was unlikely she would be prosecuted for perjury.
Innocent medical student Olumide Fadayomi, 27, was dragged through months of legal hell before the trial at Sheffield Crown Court saw his name cleared.
The jury were unaware of the woman’s history when they found him not guilty. Several broke down in tears after learning of the impact her deceit had on a previous man 18 months earlier.
They heard Judge Patrick Robertshaw attack the Crown Prosecution Service for pursuing a case “that should never have come to court” simply because the woman demanded it.
Judge Robertshaw said: “The evidence did not, and was never going to, prove rape. The prime overriding consideration in the CPS’s decision had been merely that the complainant wished the case to go ahead.
“It was little short of a craven abdication of responsibility for making an independent and fair-minded assessment of the case. It is quite astonishing these decisions are made by those who simply do not have experience of what happens in Crown Court because they never come into Crown Court. They sit behind desks and make decisions that result in this sort of trial.”
The judge revealed how 18 months earlier the same woman had made an allegation of rape against a young man who ended up committing suicide.
He said the case never reached court because it was “lacking in credibility”.
After being cleared last Friday Mr Fadayomi from Nigeria said yesterday: “My life has been hell for the last seven months. I thought about taking my own life. I’ve not been able to sleep properly since all this happened. My life has just been on hold.” The court heard that after failing to have the first man she accused of rape brought to court, the woman set about framing Mr Fadayomi, a stranger she met and seduced in a nightclub.
She boasted to friends: “I’ve got evidence this time.”
Mr Fadayomi told the jury the woman had agreed to consensual sex and he had no idea it was a rape trap.
The new government intends to re-introduce anonymity for alleged rapists until conviction.
Lawyer Nick Freeman, who successfully defended Emmerdale actor Lewis Linford against a false sex allegation, said judges must also be given the ability to waive the anonymity of women who make false accusations.
He said: “Women can make whatever allegations they like knowing the man will suffer the ignominy of having his name dragged through the mud while nobody will ever know who she is, no matter what lies she tells.”
But Ruth Hall, of Women Against Rape, said: “If men accused of rape got special rights to anonymity, it would reinforce the misconception that lots of women who report rape are lying.” ..Source.. Paul Jeeves
May 25, 2010
ANGER OVER THE SERIAL RAPE LIAR WHO DROVE AN INNOCENT MAN TO KILL HIMSELF
May 18, 2010
For Port Richmond man, bogus rape charge dropped, but the damage persists
5-18-2010 New York:
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - An innocent man's nightmare is over.
It's time for Adrian Angevin to get back to doing what he does best -- working with developmentally disabled adults.
"Hopefully I can get a job back," Adrian, 36, says. "With the economy the way it is, I have to go on. But it's tough because the allegations were so ugly."
Ugly? Those charges concocted by a 16-year-old girl who claimed Adrian tried to rape her in the Staten Island Mall's parking lot were brutal.
"I'd been working for eight years, taking care of my two sons, and supporting my daughter who lives in Florida," Adrian says of his old job at the Lifespire adult residence in New Springville.
A Lifespire staffer told me the Port Richmond resident was "a good guy" who never had any problems there until he "disappeared" in November.
"We didn't know what happened to him," the staffer said. "We heard he went to California."
They heard wrong.
Since Lifespire provides care to mentally-challenged adults, the attempted rape charge flew in the face of the company's code of ethics. When the charges came to light, Lifespire reps -- including Adrian's supervisor Joanne McClein -- sat down with his union delegate and agreed to let him resign.
"My [boss] told me that I either had to resign or they would fire me because of the allegations," Adrian recalls. "I didn't know what to do, so I resigned."
The teen girl who lobbed a bomb on Adrian's job told Det. William Wasson and Assistant District Attorney Anthony Katchen she fought off a man who threw a coat over her head and attacked her in the Mall's lot on May 19 last year.
Then she fingered Adrian as her attacker, the man who had stared at her, licked his lips and mouthed nasties on the S44 bus to Port Richmond High School a few dozen times between September 2008 and May 19, 2009.
Adrian admitted riding the S44 to and from work and his home near Port Richmond High School. But there were canyons in the girls' story.
That night she told responding Officer Nayron Garcia she was "followed by an unknown person, who was screaming at her," but never said a word about having a coat thrown over her head or being grabbed, as she later told Wasson.
"Officer Garcia told me ... he would have recorded those details on the complaint report," Katchen wrote in his report.
She also said she used her student Metrocard to pay for the bus. But there was no record of a student Metrocard issued to the girl for the September 2008 school term.
And she bragged of "good" attendance at Port Richmond High School.
But the Department of Education said the girl wasn't enrolled at Port Richmond High School during the 2008-2009 school year.
The girl said she recognized Adrian on a bus she rode with a student Metrocard she didn't have on her way to a school she didn't attend.
So Katchen canned the case. Why waste another second preparing a she-said-he-said trial for a she-said who really didn't know what she was saying?
"Proof that the contact was criminal or sexual in nature rests solely on the testimony of [the girl], whose credibility has been severely undermined by the relevant documentary evidence," Katchen wrote in his recommendation for dismissal.
When a judge tossed the case recently nobody was less surprised than Adrian's attorney Mario Gallucci. "I have said from day one that my client was not guilty of these charges," Gallucci said.
Just don't look for any follow-up perjury charges anytime soon. A cop friend cited an unwritten rule that you don't lock up a rape victim even if they're lying because you don't want to scare future rape victims from coming forward.
All that's left is for Adrian to try to forget three months of getting brewed, stewed and crucified by a jailhouse bunch that treats accused rapists like the stuff they kick off the soles of their bathroom flip-flops, innocent until proven guilty their behind.
"That, right there, was a nightmare," says Adrian, who could have faced the same hell for a max 15 years had he been convicted.
Now he faces job interviewers asking, "Mr. Angevin, what have you been doing lately?"
"I have been incarcerated, sir."
"Why?"
"A girl accused me of attempted rape, but ..."
"Thank you ... Next..."
Some might not even waste a thank you, innocent until proven guilty their behind.
"Hopefully, I can get back to work," Adrian says. "I don't see why I can't."
Me neither. ..Source.. Jeff Harrell
December 11, 2009
Man released after 3 years in jail for false rape charges
12-11-2009 Indiana:
A construction worker imprisoned for nearly three years was cleared by an apologetic judge on Thursday after his accuser admitted she lied about being gang raped to make her friends feel sorry for her.
William McCaffrey hugged his lawyer when state Supreme Court Justice Richard Carruthers – who also presided over William McCaffrey’s rape and kidnapping trial – threw out the conviction and dismissed the initial charges. DNA tests also had called the conviction into doubt.
“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” the soft-spoken McCaffrey said outside court. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
McCaffrey, 32, has been free on $5,000 bail since September.
Biurny Peguero, then 22, originally said three men, led by McCaffrey, raped her at knifepoint after tricking her into getting into their car after a night out in 2005.
She testified at his trial and said at his 2006 sentencing that the “tragedy changed my life forever.” He got a 20-year prison term.
Defense lawyer Glenn A. Garber later persuaded prosecutors to use new technology to retest DNA samples from an apparent bite mark on Peguero’s arm.
The initial tests were inconclusive. The new tests showed the genetic material not only wasn’t McCaffrey’s but came from at least two women, apparently friends of Peguero’s who fought with her.
Peguero confessed her lie to a priest and then to authorities this year. She claimed she was raped because she wanted her friends “to feel badly” for her, and then was afraid to back down from her story as the case continued, prosecutors said in court filings this fall.
Peguero, who is now married and uses the name Biurny Gonzalez, pleaded guilty Monday to perjury. The 27-year-old faces up to seven years in prison at her sentencing, set for February.
Carruthers apologized, calling the case “a catastrophe” for both McCaffrey and the criminal justice system.
“I convey to you my personal regrets for having participated, though unknowingly, in the injustice,” said Carruthers, who had called the supposed attack “disgusting” during McCaffrey’s 2006 sentencing.
“Given the startling turn of events, I now retract what I said about you,” Carruthers said, later adding, “I wish you well.” ..Source.. Indiana Daily Student
December 8, 2009
Palm Bay woman faces charges in false-attack report
12-8-2009 Florida:
A Palm Bay woman faces charges after confessing she lied about being attacked by several men because she didn’t want her husband to know she went to a bar.
Kelly Lynn Burns, 45, of Palm Bay, was charged with providing false information to law enforcement officers after Palm Bay police investigated claims of a sexual battery, but found no physical evidence to match Burns’ allegations. Police said she told investigators she had been sexually battered by three to four men after leaving an arcade.
Palm Bay police said Burns reported an attack on Aug. 28, prompting an extensive investigation that lasted through November. Burns told police she was forced to take a pill by her assailants, but spit it out in the mud, reports show.
Police found no evidence of mud on the woman’s clothes or any pills in the dirt at the site of the purported attack.
Later, Burns e-mailed police, saying she wanted to withdraw the accusations.
Burns will have a Dec. 14 hearing on the charges. ..Source.. Florida Today.com
Conviction
12-8-2009 New York:
BIURNY PEGUERO, 27, has been indicted on multiple counts of perjury. The crimes charged in the indictment occurred on September 30, 2005 and September 26, 2006.
On October 7, 2005, William McCaffrey was indicted by a New York County Grand Jury for three counts of Rape in the First Degree, and one count each of Kidnapping in the Second Degree, Unlawful Imprisonment in the First Degree, Assault in the Second Degree, and Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Third Degree. The charges arose from allegations of a sexual assault by three males, including McCaffrey, alleged to have taken place on September 18, 2005, inside a vehicle driven by one of McCaffrey’s associates from upper Manhattan to a secluded area of the Bronx.
The complainant in the case was PEGUERO. She testified before the grand jury and, later, before a trial jury that McCaffrey and two of his associates offered her assistance in moving her friend’s car, which was illegally parked in a bus stop. PEGUERO swore in both proceedings that she was then taken against her will over a bridge and raped by the three men after having been threatened at knife point.
On October 4, 2006, McCaffrey was convicted of all charges after a jury trial conducted before State Supreme Court Justice Richard Carruthers. On October 20, 2006, Judge Carruthers sentenced McCaffrey to determinate terms of 20 years imprisonment on each count of Rape in the First Degree, 18 years for Kidnapping in the First Degree, and 7 years for Assault in the Second Degree. McCaffrey received an indeterminate term of imprisonment of 1⅓ to 4 years for Unlawful Imprisonment, and 2⅓ to 7 years for Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Third Degree. All sentences were imposed concurrently, resulting in an aggregate sentence of 20 years imprisonment.
In the spring of 2009, PEGUERO recanted her testimony and admitted she had perjured herself before the grand jury and at trial. Her recantation was thoroughly investigated and the District Attorney’s Office consented to McCaffrey’s release from prison on August 31, 2009.
PEGUERO was indicted for six counts of Perjury in the First Degree, a class D felony. She pleaded guilty today to two counts of Perjury in the First Degree. One count relates to her perjurious testimony in the grand jury accusing McCaffrey of rape and the second relates to her testimony at trial accusing McCaffrey of rape.
The potential minimum sentence for each count of perjury is probation, and the potential maximum sentence is 2⅓ to 7 years incarceration. While those sentences can be imposed consecutively, the Court has promised PEGUERO that she will receive a maximum of 2⅓ to 7 years incarceration. Sentencing is scheduled for February 9, 2010. ..Source..
October 22, 2009
WV- Woman recants story of West Virginia abuse
10-22-2009 West Virginia:
(CNN) -- A 22-year-old woman whose claims that she was abused in a trailer in rural West Virginia in 2007 helped send six people to prison now says she made up the story, her lawyer said Wednesday.
"She is recanting her entire story," attorney Byron Potts told reporters in Columbus, Ohio, about his client, Megan Williams, who moved there after the incident. "She says it did not happen. She fabricated it."
He added, "She wanted to get back at her boyfriend. She was mad at him."
In 2007, police acting on a tip found the black woman in a trailer with cuts and bruises. She said she had been stabbed in the leg and beaten, sexually assaulted, forced to eat feces and subjected to a racial slur by her white captors.
The suspects included a mother and son, a separate mother and daughter, and two men. All are still jailed, according to the prosecutor who handled the case.
The incident, which drew extensive media coverage, stirred outrage around the country. Civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton called for the incident to be investigated as a hate crime.
Last year, all six defendants pleaded guilty and were given terms of up to 40 years in prison.
Potts said his client was coming forward "to right the wrong perpetrated on these six individuals." He added that she told him all her injuries except for the bruises on her face were self-inflicted. The bruises, he said, were from an altercation she had had with her then-boyfriend before the incident in question.
Potts described Williams' feelings as "total remorse; that's why she's coming forward. She is remorseful for having these people spend time in jail."
Asked if she was being pressured to recant, he said, "No, she's not being pressured into this."
Williams had been expected to speak herself, but Potts said she would not appear before the news media because she was afraid for her safety.
He said she was "fully aware" that she might face criminal charges, "but she still wanted to go forward with this."
Brian Abraham, the former Logan County prosecutor who handled the case, defended the convictions. "The case wasn't based on her statements," he said, noting that Williams never testified in the case. "The case was based on the evidence discovered by the police, including the confessions of the six defendants."
He added, "All six of them have been in jail without filing appeals. If they file something afterwards, the evidence was pretty overwhelming for the charges on which they were convicted."
The current county prosecutor, John Bennett, said he could not comment on whether the case would be reopened. He said he represented one of the suspects in 2007 and so would let a judge decide how to handle the potential conflict of interest.
Sharpton said, "If they are being held under false information and she misled authorities, and if the authorities went solely on her testimony, then they should be released." But he added, "If there are other circumstances around the recanting, we should know what they are." ..Source.. by Dugald McConnell
October 20, 2009
How Often Do Women Falsely Cry Rape?
10-20-2009 National:
The question the Hofstra disaster left dangling.
How often do women falsely cry rape? Because of the 18-year-old Hofstra student who recanted after telling police that five men had tricked her into a bathroom and then gang raped her two weeks ago, that question has been flying around the Internet. As Cathy Young notes in Newsday, the answers often fall into one of two camps. "Many feminists argue that the problem of false accusations is so minuscule that to discuss it extensively is a harmful distraction from the far more serious problem of rape. On the other side are men's-rights activists, claiming that false accusations are as much of a scourge as rape itself."
But isn't the rate of false rape charges an empirical question, with a specific answer that isn't vulnerable to ideological twisting? Yes and no. There has been a burst of research on this subject. Some of it is careful, but much of it is questionable. While most of the good studies converge at a rate of about 8 percent to 10 percent for false rape charges, the literature isn't quite definitive enough to stamp out the far higher estimates. And even if we go by the lower numbers, there's the question of interpretation. If one in 10 charges of rape is made up, is that a dangerously high rate or an acceptably low one? To put this in perspective, if we use the Bureau of Justice Statistics that show about 200,000 rapes in 2008, we could be looking at as many as 20,000 false accusations.
If true, that also means, there are LIKELY, up to 20,000 registered sex offenders placed on public registries, annually, that should not be there. Per state that would be 400 offenders annually.
Legal scholars used to be routinely suspicious of rape victims. "Surely the simplest, and perhaps the most important, reason not to permit conviction for rape on the uncorroborated word of the prosecutrix is that the word is very often false," a Yale Law Journal article opined in 1952, echoing a view voiced since at least the 17th century. These views remained mainstream into the 1970s, if not later. As Marcia Clark said yesterday recalling the 1977 rape charges against Roman Polanski, "Those were the days when folks still believed rape was 'easy to charge and hard to disprove.' " And that old adage couldn't have been further from the truth. Prosecutors well knew that unless the victim was Snow White, the case was toast."
You can see what Susan Brownmiller was up against when she wrote her path-breaking feminist tract, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, in 1975.
In her book, Brownmiller said that only 2 percent of rape allegations are false, citing findings by the female police in a New York City rape squad. The problem is that while this statistic has been widely repeated, with dutiful mentions of New York-based "research," no one has ever tracked down its source. This we learned from a comprehensive review of the literature on false rape charges published in the Cambridge Law Journal in 2006. The author, Philip Rumney, finds a couple of small studies that back up the 2 percent claim but isn't confident of their methodology.
Rumney's survey of the terrain is the best we found. He also takes aim at the findings on the other end of the spectrum—the research that purports to show that the rate of false allegations of rape is in the range of 40 percent, as well as the flawed (but often cited) work that makes a crazy high jump to as high as 90 percent. The 40 percent figure is usually attributed to a 1994 article by E.J. Kanin in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Kanin looked at 109 reports of rape to police in one small Midwestern metropolitan area over nine years. His pool was small. The police he studied always offered the victim a polygraph—perhaps signaling they doubted her veracity. And Kanin himself "warns against generalising from his findings" and points to reasons for questioning them, as Rumney explains.
The hugely high 90 percent false rate is several degrees more suspect. The citation for it is usually a study in Scotland by police surgeon N.M. MacLean of only 34 rape complaints made from 1969-74. Complaints were labeled false if they were made after a delay. Or if the victim didn't look "disheveled" or upset or seriously injured. But those factors don't necessarily indicate that a rape charge is trumped up. When police use stereotypes about rape to sort real allegations from false ones, they can do victims a real disservice, as this model paper from the Oregon Attorney General's Sexual Assault Task Force explains. In a 1981 study of 16 reports that claimed the victim admitted to making it up in 14 of them, one case was disproved because the police decided the woman was too large for the alleged rapist to have taken off her "extremely tight undergarments" against her will. Need we say that this not the critical eye we want from the cops?
Rumney's smart debunkings leave us with a group of American, British, Canadian, and New Zealand studies that converge around a rate of 8 percent to 10 percent for false reports of rape. Not all of these studies are flawless, but together they're better than the rest of the lot. They include a massive 1997 report on sexual assault by the U.S. Department of Justice, which includes data from 16,000 local, county, and state law enforcement agencies. The DoJ found that "in 1995, 87% of recorded forcible rapes were completed crimes and the remainder were classified as attempts. Law enforcement agencies indicated that about 8% of forcible rapes reported to them were determined to be unfounded and were excluded from the count of crimes."
If 8 percent to 10 percent is about right for false reporting of rape, based on what we know so far, how should we think about that number? Rumney says he's not sure whether crying wolf is more or less likely over rape than over other crimes, because the comparative research is even less conclusive. So that's a question that appears to have no answer at the moment. (A 2001 Department of Justice report says that the rate of false reports is similar for other crimes, but it also gives the 2 percent figure without a source, so we're skeptical.)
What is clear, however, are two problems that are the flip side of the same coin. False charges of rape are an absolute nightmare for the men caught in their net. And the specter of made-up allegations is a real problem for law enforcement—which means they are also a problem for women who are telling the truth. Let's take the men first. We've heard from many of them in e-mails and comments since the Hofstra incident. Here is one story, equal parts heartbreaking and thoughtful:
My girlfriend was raped several years ago. I was falsely accused of rape less than a year ago. I contacted her (I had known her before her incident) because I was desperate for someone to talk to who would understand what I was going through. To my great relief, it turned out that we understood each other very well. From the initial stages of suicidal thoughts and not being able to function to the long-term fear, mistrust, and guilt that are facts of our lives, it turns out that her experience of being raped and mine of being falsely accused of rape were very similar. … One important difference, though, is that when she was violated, she received a great deal of help (medical, legal, psychological). Apart from family and friends, I was on my own. My legal and psychological problems had to be dealt with by me at a time when I couldn't eat, sleep, or think (except, of course, about killing myself).
On the law enforcement end, we heard from Steve Cullen, an Army attorney who's worked extensively as a prosecutor. He offered this cogent—and dire—explanation of the reverberations when women cry wolf about rape:
False reports have an incredibly corrosive impact on how sexual assault accusations are policed. Police treat sexual assault accusers badly—much worse than the lawyers do—much worse than the courtroom does. Forget what you see on "Law and Order SVU," the police end absolutely discourages victims from reporting. Why is this so? Because cops suspect just about every victim is another false accuser, because either he/she has personally dealt with such a problem, or has heard stories from his or her cop buddies to this effect (and yes, in my experience female cops can be even worse offenders). This police behavior is bad, and counterproductive—but it's real. Putting a real stigma on false reports might combat this a bit—and make it a little easier for actual victims at the police station.
False reports also have a disproportionate impact on juries. How I'd hate to be prosecuting a sexual assault right now. Often in sexual assault prosecutions there's no debate as to the sex, but everything falls on proving lack of consent—and can only be proven through a convincing and persuasive victim's testimony. Often, that victim's testimony has to overcome some less than ideal circumstances—she was drinking, people observed her flirting with the perpetrator etc. That's something she can own up to, and overcome on her own. What she can't do on her own is extinguish jury members' memory of reading of some spectacular false accusation case in the newspaper last month. Every false accusation that makes it into the news makes it that much harder for the real victims to receive justice.
If police and juries are influenced by false reports, especially high-profile instances of false charges, like the Duke lacrosse case or the Hofstra case, why wouldn't those reports influence victims, too? Up to 60 percent of rapes go unreported. The Hofstra story will only make more women wonder if the police will believe them.
This is sobering. As, of course, is the whole topic. We're left to draw the following conclusion: False allegations of rape aren't rampant. But they don't have to be to cause terrible trouble. This is a problem that a men's rights movement shouldn't trump up. And also one that feminists can't dismiss. ..Source.. by Emily Bazelon and Rachael Larimore
September 24, 2009
PA- Woman Charged in False Rape Allegations
9-24-2009 Pennsylvania:
On August 13th, a woman entered the University Police Station and reported that she was raped in the parking lot known as the "pit," located behind Dansbury Commons.
Seven days later, on August 20th, she recanted her story, saying that she lied about the incident. Laura Gruver, 22, of Bethlehem has been cited for making false reports to law enforcement and is expected to appear in court later this month.
According to an Affidavit filed by Trooper Robert Sebastianelli of the Pennsylvania State Police, Gruver claimed that she was walking to her car at 11 a.m. while "praying because she had a feeling something bad was going to happen, on campus this next semester."
She claimed that someone grabbed her from behind, put a knife to her throat, and forced her into a wooded area behind the parking lot. Before raping her, the man allegedly said "all you women want it and I'm going to give it to you."
She described her attacker as a tan white male with brown hair and brown eyes wearing a blue rain slicker.
On August 20th, Gruver completed a four page written statement about the incident and signed the document which specified the act of making false statements as a third degree misdemeanor.
Hours later, Gruver returned to the Swiftwater State Police Barracks stating that she had lied about the incident and admitted to placing a pair of underwear and glasses in the wooded area. She said that she lied about the rape because she was having academic and personal problems.
On the morning of the alleged incident, ESU police officers acted quickly to secure the crime scene and canvas for any potential evidence or witnesses.
"She was a very believable victim but her story was outrageous," said University Police Chief Robin Olson. "Our job is not to doubt, it is to assist. I have to take that information and act on it as if it is true information."
According to Chief Olson, reported cases of rape are uncommon on campus. Three incidents were reported in 2008 and less than three were reported in 2007. ESU has a student population of over 7,500. Chief Olson said that a majority of reported rape cases involve alcohol and are usually committed by acquaintances of the victim, unlike the report made by Gruver.
Chief Olson hopes that this incident will not deter victims from reporting incidences of sexual assault or rape. "I hope a victim would look at this situation and recognize that this was taken seriously and acted upon.
The police went to the fullest extent, so I hope that anyone who experiences this will report it," said Chief Olson. "That was one of my concerns when I came on the job and it's still a major concern of mine."
University Police Prevention Officer Richard Connell and Sexual Assault Responding Officer Brooke Lininger are currently working together to create new programs to educate the university community about rape and sexual assault.
Starting next semester, a rape defense course will be offered which will educate students on how to avoid potentially harmful situations and demonstrate defensive maneuvers.
The university has also implemented the Safe Ride Program which offers rides for students who do not want to walk on campus after dark.
The program runs between the hours of 6 p.m. and 2 a.m. and is available everywhere on campus and also runs to University Ridge Apartments. To request service dial 3063 from any campus phone. ..Source.. by Jennifer Schaadt
NY- False rape charges are rare, and dangerous
9-24-2009 New York:
It is the American way that a defendant is "innocent until proven guilty." In the instance of a sex crime, however, it often seems the victim is deemed "guilty until proven innocent." Such false assumptions are perpetuated by the small percentage of false reports that occurs.
The recanting of a rape accusation made by a Hofstra University student has raised the issue once again. Questioning the validity of a victim's statement is nothing new when it comes to sex crimes. When an accusation of rape is made, questions often loom of possible motives for the "alleged" victim to have fabricated her story.
Theories of revenge, a scorned lover and personal gain often become part of the conversation. When a person says she was raped, the blame gets distributed between both the perpetrator and the victim. When people say they were the victim of a home invasion, however, it seems much easier to place the blame solely on the perpetrator.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there are no more false reports of rape than there are of any other crime. Conversely, sexual offenses are more likely to go unreported than other types of crimes. For every one rape that's reported, seven to 10 aren't.
Feelings of shame, fear of disbelief, threats of retaliation and societal influence often serve as great deterrents to a victim's pursuit of justice. Those who do report face a long and trying road, which many say is laden with further victimization.
There's no debating that, from a legal perspective, rape cases are difficult to win. Obstacles like a lack of witnesses or physical evidence, and inconsistencies in victim statements due to the effects of trauma, are often present.
Facing stigma, disbelief and societal judgment, is it any wonder that most rape victims don't report? As a result of the underreporting and the difficulty in achieving convictions, only 6 percent of rapists will ever spend a day in jail.
Compound such grim statistics with the high-profile occurrence of a false report, and the deterrents grow even stronger. Future victims will now have an even greater burden of proof upon them. With each instance of a false report or recanted story, that burden increases.
And now, add to those deterrents the possibility of having charges pressed upon victims if they are not believed or there isn't enough evidence to prove their case. Fear of retribution can add tremendous weight in favor of remaining silent. Although it means that the perpetrator won't face prosecution, neither will the victim.
What the Hofstra case presents for us is numerous teaching opportunities: For our boys to learn that being a man does not in any way look like the actions of those five young men, whether the encounter was consensual or not. That there is honor to be found in standing up against the crowd, rather than bowing down along with it.
And for our girls, to learn to respect themselves, if they want those around them to ever do the same. It's up to them to believe in themselves and in the power of their voices. For it is only with that honor, and with those voices, that our culture can compellingly challenge the promoting and condoning of inappropriate behavior. ..Source.. by Olivia Tursi who is a counselor and community educator at the Victims Information Bureau of Suffolk: Family Violence and Rape Crisis Center in Holbrook.
NY- The unique power of crying rape
9-24-2009 New York:
The recent incident at Hofstra University, in which a student claimed that she was gang-raped in a men's room, has reignited the ongoing and often bitter debate about false accusations of rape. Are false rape charges a serious problem exacerbated by feminist claims that women don't lie about rape? Or is the issue being blown out of proportion to discredit feminists and cast doubt on the credibility of rape victims? Should women who bring false accusations be prosecuted or treated as troubled people who need help?
The Hofstra incident seems to be a classic case of a woman "crying rape" after consensual sex was followed by regrets. The woman said she was lured to a bathroom during a fraternity party, tied to a toilet stall with a rope and raped by five men. The men were arrested and briefly jailed before one of them produced a cell phone video filmed during the encounter, showing consensual sex. Confronted with the video, the woman recanted.
Many feminists argue that the problem of false accusations is so minuscule that to discuss it extensively is a harmful distraction from the far more serious problem of rape. On the other side are men's-rights activists, claiming that false accusations are as much of a scourge as rape itself.
In the 1970s, the feminist anti-rape movement championed the credibility of women for a good reason: At the time, the belief that rape charges are often made up out of vindictiveness or hysteria often caused victims to be treated as if they were the criminals. Unfortunately, rigid feminist dogma replaced one set of prejudices with another. Law professor Catharine MacKinnon has written that "feminism is built on believing women's accounts of sexual use and abuse by men."
Building a belief system around believing someone's claims on the basis of gender is a sure prescription for bias. In 2006, when several members of the men's lacrosse team at Duke University were charged with raping a stripper at a team party, many feminist commentators, such as New England School of Law professor and former prosecutor Wendy Murphy, insisted on a presumption of guilt toward the accused men, despite indications that the story could be a hoax. The men were eventually exonerated.
FBI statistics show that about 9 percent of rape reports are "unfounded" - that is, dismissed without charges being filed. This usually happens when the accuser recants or when her story is contradicted by evidence. Some studies put the rate of false accusations at one in four or even higher. While no one knows the true figures, it is clear that the problem is real and its consequences can be devastating. The lacrosse players at Duke lived through a yearlong legal nightmare and were publicly branded as rapists. False accusations have sent men to prison for months or even years.
Yet some of the commentary on the Hofstra case has shown more sympathy to the accuser than the falsely accused men. On Slate, Emily Bazelon writes, "Let's agree that something disturbing happened to that 18-year-old woman at Hofstra. Something she feels awful about."
The assumption is that a drunken sexual encounter in a bathroom is something that "happens" to a woman, and if she "feels awful" when she sobers up and has regrets, she deserves a measure of support and understanding. (In fact, the woman's false accusation may have been less a reaction to guilt and shame than an attempt to conceal her escapades from her boyfriend, who saw her immediately afterward.)
Meanwhile, some are expressing harsh judgment of the men for engaging in group sex in a bathroom and filming it. This is not attractive behavior, to be sure. Yet we always have been told that rape victims don't need to be angels or models of chastity to deserve support. Surely the same should apply to men who are falsely accused.
To recognize that some women wrongly accuse men of rape is not anti-female, any more than recognizing that some men rape women is anti-male. There is power in a charge as uniquely damaging as rape, and women are no less likely than men to abuse the power they have. To recognize this fact is not "backlash" but basic fairness. ..Source.. by Cathy Young is a contributing editor of Reason magazine.
September 23, 2009
PA- Pittsburgh police: Van abduction, rape a 'hoax'
9-23-2009 Pennsylvania:
PITTSBURGH - Pittsburgh police say a 15-year-old girl made up a story that she was forced by two men into a van then driven to a wooded location where one of the men raped her.
The girl claimed the incident happened just before noon Tuesday in the city's Carrick section, as she got off a bus and was walking toward Carrick High School.
But in a news release Wednesday, police say the girl had argued with her parents earlier that day and fabricated the report to keep from being punished.
Police and the Allegheny County District Attorney are discussing whether to charge the girl with making a false report to police, but no charges were filed immediately. ..Source.. by Philly.com
