Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/ ... full.story


That strikes me as odd, and tricky to prove. Should all men start carrying tape recorders?

This is the case in the UK, and had been, I'd thought, nominally the case in the US - women can withdraw consent at any time.

No, silly. All men should hire a woman to watch all their sexual encounters and provide testimony in court if and when necessary.

Seriously though, I'd imagine it's more often a case of the woman would have to prove it was rape rather than the man prove it wasn't. Although that could be equally shakey, I don't think it's much more open to abuse by shitty women than it already was.

What if the woman is on top, riding away, and the man suddenly says stop? If she carries on for a bit, can we suddenly start taking them to court too?

Pretty sure, yes. Or at least sexual assault.*

Of course no jury in the world would believe a man didn'twant sex.

*EDIT - no, not rape, as the definition of rape involves the penetration of the rapee (whether orally, anally or vaginally). She'd have to be pegging you with a strap-on for it to be rape. But your example would be sexual assault, at least.

Reminds me of a George Carlin quote.

"Here's something you never hear a man say: Stop sucking my dick or I'll call the police!'

Very probably. It's extremely unlikely to ever come up though, because it'd be fairly unusual that it'd happen (at least to the extenet that that man meant "stop altogether, I don't want to do this", rather than "stop for a bit, let's do something else/save it"), but incredibly unlikely that it'd get so far as court. Most abused men never press charges even when their case would be relatively easy to prove, so if it came down to his word against hers, there'd be very little point in even trying.

Rape must be one the hardest things to bring through the court system. Although I do personally think that it is right that if a person says 'stop' and the other party carries on against their will then it should be classed as rape - how can you go about proving this?

A past boyfriend of mine was accused of rape when we were quite young (15, if I recall correctly) by someone who had been a friend of mine, and it totally knocked him sideways. This same girl had actually called the police on another five occasions, accusing rape - five different boys. Clearly she had some kind of problem and every time she eventually admitted making the whole thing up. I don't think that she was ever punished in any way for the accusations, but it affected this guy quite a lot as his (not very nice) neighbours got wind of a scandal and amplified manners - but no-one remembers that it was all found to be false allegations, only that you were accused.

Being raped is a terrible ordeal for any person (I don't speak completely without experience - I have never been raped but someone I knew grabbed me and dragged me off into a deserted building site car park one evening when I was 16 and attacked me with intent to do so, I just managed to get away to a main road and get some help) but I can also see from the experience of that lovely guy I knew that a false accusation of rape can be extremely traumatic for the accused as well - but it's such a hard thing to prove. Genetics can prove whether intercourse took place but it's so difficult to prove whether consent was given, or withdrawn, etc.

Mmm. False accusations of rape really piss me off (fortunately it's not happened to me or anyone I know, or I suspect it'd make me extremely angry). Not only do they fuck up innocent lives, but they trivialise the ordeal of people who really are raped.

At the same time, of course, real accusations of rape that aren't made because the woman is scared of being branded a lair piss me off too.

Surely that's only in the case of gang-rape

I'm really sorry

This. The system as it stands still makes it shamefully difficult for a victim to bring their case.

One of my wife's flatmates at university falsley accused a bloke of rape. The guy was cleared after they'd all left university (but not before his life was completely ruined for a good long while), and the police became very aware she'd deliberately made it all up - not least because my wife and the other flatmates could all testify (when the police finally got around to asking them) to her having sounded quite happy about it at the time and going on about it in the morning as it had been her first time.

The reason she did it? She was heading towards getting a third in her law degree, and the university bumped her up to a 2:1 due to the trauma she claimed she'd been through. And she was a bit mental as well, to be honest.

She's now a practising barrister, FFS.

It's a shame not just for the bloke who has his name dragged through the mud but because this sort of thing really makes it more difficult for the many may genuine victims.

How's about anonymity for the accused until they're found guilty, eh?

That's almost unbelieveable. So, he was cleared in the end and the police knew it was all nonsense yet she still practices as a barrister? What a bitch.

Sadly trufax. It took our excellent boys in blue ages to come to the conclusion she was lying, by which point she'd gotten her degree after selling her sob-story to the university.

The police were considering going after her for perverting the course of justice but couldn't prove it, for some reason.

It's disgusting - she should have her license to practice law removed.

Innocent until proven guilty, though.

I have every sympathy with people who suffer rape but at the same time false rape does my head in.
It can rip lives and the lives of the person accused apart and if I find people who have made such false accusations I'd be more than likely to rip them apart.

I'd hate to have to prove or disprove cases in court, must be a fecking nightmare.

Quite - though if the Police knew that she'd lied (the details given over this aren't detailed, so I am unsure as to what this means) and the guy had his name cleared then it's a bit of a wash-out. the thing is, two people were involved - her and the guy accused - she has gone on to use teh alleged rape as a tool to a career, wheras she has wrecked part of this man's life.

If the police 'know' that she was lying, then they owe it to this guy to press for some kind of conviction against this girl - he deserves it. he's been used as a tool and falsely accused of a hideous crime simply to bump someone's marks. If Mr Chris's wife and other flatmates were so privy to the conversations afterwards then I can't see how they'd fail to take it to court and win.

They couldn't prove intent, though. It's not just that she lied, it's that she had to be lying maliciously. She was pretty messed up, so they let it drop. They shouldn't have, and I can't believe that they were so stupid as to do so, but there we are. No one twigged that it was probably to do with the grades until after the fact.

All very sad, and very messed up. If I do come across her (I know her name) I'll make a point of asking her about it loudly in front of her colleagues.

Plus, you'd be surprised at the number of apparently open and shut cases that get reported to the police that the police just plain can't be arsed to follow up.

FTFY

About 18 months ago a friend and I were walking through a churchyard when we chanced upon a couple having sex. We giggled and continued on our way. The next week, we heard on the local news that a girl was claiming she had been raped, and from the day, time and location given, we decided it must've been the couple we saw. To us, it certainly didn't look like she was being attacked - obviously we didn't stand and gawp, but there didn't seem to be any struggle and the noises being made sounded more of pleasure than of struggle.

The police came round to interview us about it a few weeks later, and, after hearing our side, told us that what we'd said matched with what the other witnesses said, and that they thought it was unlikely that she'd been raped. The girl was 17 and drunk, so in all likelihood had just regretted what she'd done. I can't remember the statistics, but the policeman who interviewed me told me that there many false rapes reported every weekend in Wigan alone. Surely there should be anonymity for those accused, as the "no smoke without fire" brigade ignore trivialities like innocence.

On a more personal note, about 10 years ago an ex-girlfriend of mine had told someone that I raped her, not knowing that the person she was telling was also a friend of mine who knew that she was talking bollocks. (She was a bit mad.) It upset me a bit at the time - who else has she told? Why would she say that? If I had raped her, why would she continue to speak to me?

Maybe she enjoyed it so much - err, hang on. That doesn't work.

Remember the story of that stupid teenage tart who got completely sloshed and her mates put her in a taxi? The taxi driver duly took her home, and she woke up the following day and, rather than admit how legless she'd been, accused him of rape and utterly ruined his life (as he's a Muslim, he's been ostracised). Fucking bitch.

There was a good Student Grant where Grant finally scores only for the girl, having read too many tabloid papers, to accuse him the following day of rape (her counter to 'but you grabbed my cock and stuck it in!' being 'I felt THWEATEN BY IT, GWARNT!') because she's a stupid fucking tart. After she testifies in court and describes in detail the ridiculously erotic things she did to Grant prior to them engaging in sex, the case is thrown out.

I didn't know of this one. Was the stupid accusation itself enough to turn everyone against him?
If he did nothing there would have been no evidence against him.

As if evidence means anything when you've been on the front page of the Mirror.

I make them print a front page retraction about me aswell as her being sentanced.

Most people would at least know the truth, not that it would make everything ok but a bit better.
Bitch.

Yeah, good luck with that. I'm sure the Mail will soon apologise for the outright lies on absolutely every single front page they've ever printed, too.

To be honest if I was falsely accused/a paper printed lies about me I would spend most of my time making sure they did damn well apologise.
Huge task or not.

I can understand where you're coming from - I'm stubborn enough and hate slander enough to feel the same way, but it'd be totally futile, and even if they ever did stick a tiny reluctant apology in some corner of the mag between porn ads, they'd just come up with new lies the next day. You'd be a modern Sisyphus.

And people still won't believe you. You still don't have your job back, she still hasn't been named and you're still an outcast.

Plus the retraction would be in a small box on page 83. I've only ever seen one retraction on the front page ever, ironically for the McCanns who are, at best, guilty of child abandonment, reckless endangerment and negligence and at worst, quite possibly murder.

Still something worth fighting for.

True but fundamentally ultimately useless to you.

There are 2 solutions.

1 - Name rape accusers.

2 - Give the accused anonymity.

Also, make the punishment for a malicious accusation of a crime the same as that for the actual crime.

I can't see why the accused in every crime doesn't have anonymity. Until you find them guilty, they don't deserve the punishment of public humiliation, surely?

I agree Craster, far too many peoples lives are ruined for no reason.
Dudley, useless or not, worth trying.

I completely agree. But certainly in the case of being accused by a member of the public they should if they're accuser does.