GOOD ARTICLE ON FALSE RAPE CLAIMS !!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: mensdaily
By Robert Franklin, Esq. | Apr 28, 2009
This article is a must read (Seattle Weekly, 4/14/09).

It's an attempt to deal somewhat comprehensively with false rape allegations. It has its faults, certainly, but it places many of the issues before the public in a fairly balanced way.

The article includes the actual experience of a college teacher falsely accused of rape by a student. It describes the surreal experience of his suddenly being told out of the blue that he was accused and would be charged and arrested. It describes his nine days in jail awaiting an arraignment that never came.

And it branches out and discusses the rate of false rape allegations including Eugene Kanin's studies and quotes some mental health experts opining on why people make false claims of being crime victims. It also contains this statement by forensic psychologist David Dixon, who evaluates criminal defendants, including those who are charged with making false claims, prior to sentencing. Dixon believes that most people who make false criminal allegations do so due to psychological disorder, and, "in his experience, most of those cases are set in motion by women."

The article then goes into why women are more likely than men to file false claims, and there it's not as convincing as I'd like. It quotes Susan Shapiro Barash, whose book, Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets: The Truth About Why Women Lie, inquires into the subject.

But there are problems with Barash's book. First, it's based on a study that looks like S.L.O.P., or Self-selected Listener Opinion Poll . That is, Barash sent out some questionnaires about women and lying and apparently took at face value the answers of the 500 who responded. The problem with that approach is that those results are very unreliable. The people who respond to such a request aren't representative of the population generally, so their answers can't be extrapolated to the rest of us.

And Barash's answer to the question "why do women lie about being victims of crime more than do men?" doesn't ring true. Her answer is that women lie because they're good at it, and that isn't convincing. Being adept at something that's morally wrong and in some cases criminal, doesn't mean the person engages in the behavior. I have a friend who's an excellent marksman, but he only shoots at legal game, not human beings.

I think Eugegen Kanin adequately explained why women lie about rape. The reasons they gave him are fairly simple and straightforward. The want revenge against a man, to cover up an infidelity or to get attention. I'd like to add that those are fundamentally exercises of power, which I think adds to the attraction of making a false claim.

And of course it's larely free of consequences. The student in the article linked to got off with eight days on a work crew, probation through 2010 and a promise to seek psychological care. I can't imagine anyone seeing that as a deterrent.

And all that contradicts the article's title, "The Lie that 'Just Happens.'" False rape allegations don't 'just happen.' There may be rare instances in which we can't figure out why she did it; we may think it's a variation on Munchhausen's Syndrome by Proxy or something else. But let's be clear - the vast majority of the time, we have very good knowledge about why women lie about rape. It's not obscure or inscrutable.

The article also touches on how little stands between a man falsely accused of rape and a long stretch in prison. The accuser of the man in the article fabricated emails she claimed he'd sent her. Those were easily traced to her computer, not his, and her lies fell apart. But, as his attorney makes clear, if it hadn't been for that "mistake" on the woman's part, his client would be looking at trial in a "she said/he said" case.

That's a place no man wants to be, but any man can find himself.