Tag Archives: False Charge

How often are accusations of rape or sexual assault false?

Zerlina Maxwell "automatically believe rape claims"
Should we “automatically believe rape claims” like Jackie’s UVA rape claim?

The purpose of this post is to make the case that claims of rape and sexual assault should be made to the police, investigated by the police, and then proceed to trial. We should not punish men for charges that are made outside of the criminal justice system. Let’s take a look at some previous cases and studies to see why not.

Here’s one reported by the far-left Newsweek:

Rolling Stone‘s disastrous and discredited campus rape story now has a price tag.

The magazine has settled a defamation lawsuit filed by the University of Virginia fraternity at the center of the 2014 blockbuster feature by Sabrina Erdely, which was retracted after key details in the story were called into question. According to reports, Rolling Stone will pay a settlement amounting to $1.65 million.

The article, which was published in late fall 2014, described an alleged brutal gang rape of a student named “Jackie” at a UVA fraternity. The story drew wide attention and triggered a police investigation, but it was officially retracted in April 2015 after Jackie’s claims were called into question.

Why did she lie?

The Washington Examiner reports:

Documents have shown that Jackie likely made up the gang rape to try and win the affection of fellow student Ryan Duffin. She had tried other lies to get his sympathy, including pretending to have a terminal illness. When that didn’t work, she tried to make him jealous by inventing an attractive man who would constantly say she had a crush on someone else and he didn’t understand why.

When that didn’t work, she went on a fake date with the fake man, and then claimed she had been gang raped. That didn’t win his affection either, and the two eventually stopped talking.

She lied, because she wanted to get affection and sympathy from a boy she liked.

Here’s another featuring a student at Hofstra University, reported by the NY Post:

The Hofstra freshman who had a raunchy restroom romp and then cried rape made up the twisted tale because she didn’t want her schoolmates — particularly her new boyfriend — to think she was easy, the beau told The Post yesterday.

“I think she needs a psychologist. She probably felt like, ‘They’ll think I’m a slut,’ ” her boyfriend, who asked not to be identified, told The Post.

Danmell Ndonye, 18, who had accused five men of gang rape, admitted the truth only when prosecutors confronted her after learning of a cellphone video that captured the whole sordid episode and showed she had willingly participated, officials said.

She lied because she didn’t want her boyfriend (and others) to think that she was a slut.

Although she made a false rape accusation, she never received any jail time. In fact, she was never even charged.

Another, reported by the Associated Press:

Nikki Yovino, 20, of South Setauket, New York, was sentenced Thursday in Bridgeport Superior Court. She agreed to serve the jail time when she pleaded guilty in June, just before jury selection was to begin, to misdemeanor charges of falsely reporting an incident and interfering with police.

Yovino was attending Sacred Heart University in Fairfield when she reported being raped by two school football players at an off-campus party in Bridgeport in October 2016. But police said she later admitted making up the allegations so she wouldn’t ruin a relationship with another student.

[…]Both players remained unidentified until Thursday, when Malik St. Hilaire came forward to speak at the sentencing and confront Yovino. The Connecticut Post reported Yovino rolled her eyes and smirked as St. Hilaire talked about how the allegations affected his life.

She lied, because she didn’t want to ruin a relationship with her boyfriend. And of course there are cases where the woman just wants to get revenge on men for sex she consented to, but that later made her feel bad, as in the Duke University lacrosse case. False accusations of rape or sexual assault are used by people to get attention and sympathy, or to get an alibi when they’ve done something wrong, etc.

Clearly, there are cases where people lie about rape and sexual assault. That’s why we need to get the police involved, and not punish anyone except in the ordinary way that laws and courts punish. Let’s take a look at some studies to see how often false charges are made.

What do the studies show?

Fox News article from a prominent equity feminist, Wendy McElroy cites several studies, here’s one:

[…][The] study conducted by Eugene J. Kanin of Purdue University… examined 109 rape complaints registered in a Midwestern city from 1978 to 1987.

Of these, 45 were ultimately classified by the police as “false.” Also based on police records, Kanin determined that 50 percent of the rapes reported at two major universities were “false.”

[…][E]ven a skeptic like me must credit a DNA exclusion rate of 20 percent that remained constant over several years when conducted by FBI labs. This is especially true when 20 percent more were found to be questionable.

False accusations are not rare. They are common.

So, there’s only a 41 percent conviction rate. DNA testing exonerates 20% of men, and makes the guilt another 20% of men “questionable”. A total of 59 percent of cases didn’t result in a conviction.

In false rape cases, men can spend years in jail, until the women finally admits she made the whole thing up. There are campus cases where only the accused’s witnesses are consulted, only evidence confirming guilt is considered, the charges and evidence are hidden from the accused, the accused is denied legal representation, the accused is denied cross-examined of the accuser, etc.

A double standard

So, that’s how men accused of sexual assault and rape are treated, but what about women?

Consider this case where a female teacher got zero jail time for sexually assaulting an underage male student.  Or this case from the UK where a married mother of two was convicted of producing child pornography, but also received no jail time. It’s not just that men are being denied due process when they are accused of something. It’s that women ARE NOT being punished when they ARE found guilty of something. There just seems to be a widespread view that women are never responsible for their bad choices, and that men are always to blame for everything. What are women learning from this about how they should treat men in their own lives? Should we expect men to have friendships with women and pursue relationships with women in this cultural climate?

How will men adapt to violence against men and false accusations?

A massive decline in marriage rate
A massive decline in marriage rate (per 1,000 of population in America)

A couple of women who write for the Daily Wire keep posting scary stories of men being mistreated by women. I’m going to link to a few of their stories below, from last week. Then I want to say something about why these sorts of events are happening so frequently, and what message it sends to men who might want to have a committed relationship with a woman.

The two women writers at Daily Wire are Amanda Prestigiacamo and Ashe Schow.

Here is one from May 8th, by Amanda:

Thirty-six-year-old Kenan Basic spent weeks in jail, lost his relationship, and was repeatedly slandered after a woman falsely accused him of sexual misconduct.

According to Australia-based 7NEWS, Basic was accused of “indecently assaulting and stalking” Caitlyn Gray, a 19-year-old woman, after he stopped to help her when her car broke down late last year.

Basic apparently spent two hours fixing Gray’s vehicle. As shown by surveillance footage, the smiling pair seem happy, hugging after the car is fixed and eventually parting ways. But according to the news station, “Gray told police Basic had allegedly propositioned her for sex in return for his help before he pursued her in the car and later indecently assaulted her at a different location.” Authorities investigating the incident called Basic’s behavior “predatory.”

Months later, however, the truth about the incident finally came out: Basic never assaulted the woman. The 19-year-old confessed to police during an interrogation that she fabricated evidence and made up the assault whole-cloth.

So what lesson would a man learn from this? Well, he would learn that women can’t be trusted to be grateful when they are given help.

More:

The falsely accused man noted that he’s “never been jailed, never had a criminal record or anything.”

“I always help people, all my life,” he said. “And this was the first time a snake bit me.”

The 36-year-old said he’ll “probably never help again, ya know. I don’t want that to happen again.”

I don’t know why this woman made this false accusation. Studies show that women generally make false accusations for attention, for an alibi, to get revenge, or to get sympathy after they’ve chosen to have sex with someone who ignored them after. This case doesn’t fit any of these scenarios. Maybe she felt slighted because he didn’t try anything with her, and that made her feel unattractive. But the message to good men who want to help women is clear: the risk is too great.

Here’s another story from May 11th, by Ashe:

Ah to be one of those poor, oppressed women who have fewer privileges than men.

A woman like Jazzmin Fry, who was so oppressed that when she stabbed a complete stranger — a man — with one of her stilettos for literally no reason, she only had to pay a $250 fine as punishment. Her conviction wasn’t even recorded outside of the press.

[…]The victim, Kyle Johns, 19, was taken to the hospital and needed two staples in his head to repair the wound.

What lesson will men learn from stories like this one? Well, they’ll learn that there is a double standard in the justice system, such that men are held accountable for their choices, but women are not. That’s because men are seen as responsible for their actions, and women are not seen as responsible – no matter how much harm they cause.

Ashe says:

Women in the justice system — whether in Australia, or the U.K., or the U.S. — get off much easier than men for the same crimes. One of the biggest disparities can be found in sexual assaults against minors. When women commit these crimes — whether against a young boy or girl, or teenager — they receive much lighter sentences than men do for the same crime.

As I have written previously, men who abuse children (rightly) receive harsh punishments. A 32-year-old man who sexually abused a young girl over the course of several years faced 366 years to life in prison. Yet a 25-year-old woman who pleaded guilty to raping young boys at a trailer park only received five years probation.

[…]In 2012, University of Michigan professor Sonja Starr researched the gender disparities in federal criminal cases and found that “men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do” and that “Women are … twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted.”

Men are very aware of disparities in the criminal justice system, but when I talk to women about it, they are rarely aware of it. But this is just one example of an area where men are at a disadvantage, and the problem only gets worse as more and more feminists take control of legislation, law enforcement and criminal courts. Almost every man knows a story of about how divorce courts treated a man badly, whether it be with unfair alimony or child support, false accusations, or even jail. And it seems like all the momentum in society is to make everything better for women, and worse for men. This is easily seen by looking at studies of how the public schools – which are dominated by  female teachers and administrators – discriminate against boys.

Here’s a third one from May 13th, by Amanda:

A false accusation of sexual assault turned deadly last month in Utah when a teen girl’s brother sought vengeance over the claim of sexual assault that never was.

A 16-year-old girl, whose identity has not been revealed because she’s a minor, told her 17-year-old brother that Michael Fife, 62, sexually assaulted her on a Cache Valley Transit District (CVTD) bus. The 17-year-old tracked down Fife and physically attacked him when he got off the bus; wounds from the altercation left him dead.

According to Logan Police Department, reviewed surveillance footage from the bus revealed that the alleged assault never happened.

According to the police, “the video showed Mr. Fife walking past the girl, but no sexual assault occurred.” Did she lie just to see what effect it would have on her brother?

My thoughts

Here is a fourth story about an NFL player who refused to have sex with a woman, and he was falsely charged with raping her, as reported on May 10th, in The College Fix.

This one is important, because this guy lost millions of dollars in salary, because he was kept out of the NFL two years, when his accuser had no evidence whatsoever. That’s how unfair the system has become for men, and men with more to lose have more reason to avoid any relationships with women. Men with more money have more to lose to a false accusation. And these stories are so common in our age.

When a man measures up how much a woman adds to his life, and compares it to the risk of being cleaned out on a fact-free false accusation, it’s not a good value proposition. Women often look at things only from the woman’s point of view, and so they are mystified by how men could think like this. They just can’t seem to put themselves into men’s shoes to understand how dangerous women have become to men. And then men get told how weak and cowardly they are for refusing to ask women out, for refusing to commit, etc.

I think that the only women who are safe are women who have put in the effort to learn about these injustices towards men. If you are interested in a woman for a relationship, then ask her to name a few challenges that men face in this anti-male society. Ask her if she has a male relative who has faced a false accusation. Ask her if she has experience battling for men’s rights. If she doesn’t stand up for good men before marriage, she won’t respect you after marriage.

Women of the previous generation knew how to prepare herself for wife and mother roles, and present herself to a man in order to persuade him to marry her. Too many women in today’s generation have lost that ability to be feminine. They have lost the ability to be a real friend and support to a man. They don’t want to nurture his ability to be a masculine leader in a home.

It is rare to find a woman who is putting in the work to learn about things like abortion, divorce, and same-sex marriage. Most of them are instead focused on single motherhood by choice, delaying marriage for career, surrogacy, etc. Most women aren’t prepared to fight against anti-marriage, anti-child forces, and men sense from this that they aren’t serious about marriage as it really is: a self-sacrificial commitment requiring female and male natures.

Most young, unmarried women take on the priorities of the culture: animal rights, global warming, equal pay, abortion rights, gun control, higher taxes, single payer healthcare, public schools, etc. But most know very little about how to prepare themselves for a husband, or prepare themselves to provide for their children.

How does the lynching of Brett Kavanaugh affect Christian men who want to have an influence?

Brett Kavanaugh, his wife, and his two daughters
Brett Kavanaugh, his wife, and his two daughters

Well, on Friday, I asked one of the atheist senior software engineers I work with how he felt about the Kavanaugh nomination. He told me three things. First, that they shouldn’t give a job that lasts “40 years” to someone who got angry about being accused of being a gang rapist. Second, he had not followed the Kavanaugh news for a week. And third, that Trump was a horrible President, and hadn’t don’t anything right.

Here is a comprehensive summary of the Kavanaugh confirmation process from famous religious liberty defender David French.

Here’s what’s in it:

  • the overall pattern of sensational accusations being made, then unraveling after investigations prove them false
  • the left’s insistence that Kavanaugh disprove the allegations, rather than the accusers having to prove them
  • the left’s claim that Kavanaugh’s defense against the allegations shows that he doesn’t have the temperament for SCOTUS
  • the evidential problems with Christine Ford’s accusation
  • the evidential problems with Deborah Ramirez’s accusation
  • the evidential problems with Julie Swetnick’s accusation
  • the charge that Brett Kavanaugh committed perjury when talking about his drinking and his high school yearbook

Let’s focus on the most credible accusation from Christine Ford:

It’s an assault that verges on attempted rape. But the evidence simply doesn’t support this claim. In fact, her claim is worse than just “uncorroborated,” it’s contradicted – sometimes even by her own testimony and her own evidence. And her behavior since bringing the claim raises further doubts about its veracity.

Consider the following, undisputed facts about her testimony and the evidence she’s provided. Not one of the witnesses that she’s put forward have backed her version of events – not even her own friends. At best they’ve said they have no recollection of the party. Her friend, Leyland Keyser, went further, declaring through her attorney that “Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.”

Moreover, Dr. Ford herself has provided conflicting accounts of her age at the time of the attack and the number of attendees at the party. Even the evidence of the details of the attack isn’t uniform. Her therapists’ notes allegedly indicate that four boys were present, not just Kavanaugh and Judge. She claims these notes are erroneous, but contemporaneous notes of a conversation are almost always far more reliable than a years-later recollection of that same conversation.

Dr. Ford’s conduct since coming forward has also been disturbing. When making a serious claim against another person, it is the obligation of the accuser to come forward with evidence. Instead, she has withheld evidence – including her complete therapists’ notes and the complete polygraph record. She has defied the Senate Judiciary Committee and refused to fully cooperate with its investigation. In a civil litigation context, the persistent refusal to hand over relevant evidence can lead to dismissal of a plaintiff’s claim. In this context, it should at the very least lead to a negative inference about the contents of the withheld evidence.

The article did not cover the sworn statement of Ford’s boyfriend, which directly contradicted her testimony under oath. This would open her up to charges of perjury, if pursued. And the article also didn’t mention how many of her stories meant to delay the confirmation process were falsified after being investigated, e.g. – her fear of flying which kept her from testifying on time.

What the Kavanaugh lynching means for Christian men

I am concerned about what young Christian men will have learned from the false accusations against Kavanaugh. Is it worth it to be sober and chaste in order to do well in school, and get good jobs? Well, the message of the Kavanaugh fiasco is that everything you do can be undone with a few false accusations. If you rise too high, then the secular left can destroy your reputation, your career, get you fired, destroy your finances by forcing you to defend yourself in court, etc. Good degrees and good jobs take a lot of hard work and self-sacrifice, especially in a time when progressives are receiving preferential treatment. Is it worth it to try?

Suppose a young Christian man were clever and avoided all alcohol and sex in high school and college, like I did. Suppose he did two STEM degrees in order to get into a male-dominated field like I did. I’ve worked in FT100 companies that aggressively promoted abortion and gay rights. I saw women who were outspoken proponents of same-sex marriage get promoted over conservatives with real STEM skills. Imagine I were going for a promotion in competition with a leftist woman. She could make up any story she wanted without any evidence in order to get me fired.  This is what the Kavanaugh case clearly shows.

One final point. Is it worth it for a Christian conservative man to get married and have children in an environment like this? If a man is fired from his job on a false charge, it puts a serious strain on his marriage. I am watching what gay activists are doing to Christian business-owners right now. Death threats, vandalism, organizing protests, negative reviews… trying to make it impossible for Christians and conservatives to earn a living. Trying to make it so that their children starve. Christian men who want to have an influence aren’t stupid. They count the cost of every decision before making it. A man who has a wife and kids is simply not as free to be who he really is and say what he really thinks as a man who is unmarried and who uses an alias.

A lot of Christians seem to like to say how great it is that they focus on “spiritual things” while ignoring politics. Well, when those Christians see secular leftists climbing into power and ruling over what Christians can say or do, I hope they will remember that all it takes for evil men to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Every time the secular left puts on a show of intimidation, more and more young Christians will get the message: you can’t win, so don’t try. The secular leftists are fascists – they will use power, threats of violence, and violence itself in order to neutralize the influence of those who make them feel ashamed of what they are doing.

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