I wonder if Helen felt that Catholic Priests special attention by media was unwarranted or out of balance. Though no one really knows the figures the percentage of offenders is very low (one is however to many). It would be interesting to see how many doctors or teachers who offend and yet rarely make the news. I am in no way defending the Catholic Priests and am not a catholic myself but I imagine being from the left that Helen would be happy with as much media coverage as possible in certain cases.

There has been serial rapist and perverts attacking women in Brisbane. To their credit Channel Nine and the Courier Mail have given extensive coverage. However, I also noticed that there was a fair few blogs on the CM's blogspot (I didn't see any published in the CM proper) asking why the CM and Channel Nine offered little coverage for the annual Reclaim The Night march.

Aqvaris says: "68% 0f the total allegations are proven unfounded prior to any courts involvement." Why do you always deflect attention from the issue when it involves abuse of mostly females? Why are you trivialising the seriousness of the problem addressed in the article?

Rape cases often don't proceed to court because of the difficulty of proving beyond doubt the offence. The evidence has to be overwhelming to get a conviction or even to proceed with criminal charges.

Gee you just have to look at the Hurley case to see that. Unless the rapist admits the offence or is caught in the act the chance of a conviction are very slim. In your doubtful example you say that 68 percent were "unfounded". So what you are saying is that these people confessed to making vexatious claims. Therefore you shouldn't have too much trouble digging up the numbers of those convicted for making these supposedly false allegations.

Why do you place such value on the words of people that are supposedly proven to be unreliable? Of course because it supports your apparent belief that rape victims are just evil feminists trying to make men look bad.

Or is it that your cynical opinion of victims of rape and your obvious neo-conservative approach won’t allow you to consider the possibility that the victims didn’t want to proceed because of the trauma of years of court cases? Or is it that the police (you are talking criminal proceedings aren’t you) DPP didn’t have enough evidence. This is usually the case when things don’t proceed and is that somehow this has been interpreted as being “unfounded”. Often rape victims don't see justice? Editors consider this trauma when reporting.

RObert and ronnie,
Let me reiterate for you the crux of my post.
"There can be no justice concerning rape/sexual assault or date rape,(and I'll add here sexual harassment) as long as it is available to women to use as a tool to defame an innocent man and the woman face zero consequences for their actions. Like wise there can be no justice for domestic abuse nor parental child molestation cases as long as women can use these accusations to frame an innocent man and the women face zero consequences for their actions."

The "statistics" I gave were to represent how rape is dealt with, how the "stats" are manufactured and reported. How many reported cases are false? Why are mens names reported in the news but, womens are not? Why when the allegations are proved false there is no retraction and public apology in the paper to restore that fellows good name? Why this one sided approach to rape?

The article wasn't just about "womans rape" it was also suggesting justice. Well... there can be no justice with out the truth. If you honestly want justice you can not demand spin control and manufacture numbers to create an exaggerated condition. Truth, honesty and justice are inseparable. And there will be no truth or justice as long as those who control rape statistics have a one sided approach and maintain only such numbers that benefit their cause. And news papers should not report rape/sexual assault cases until the courts are finished with them.

One woman raped is one woman too many. Conversely one man falsely accused is one man too many.

Well gee, aqvarivs, what is the solution?

I'm the first to admit that our legal system is not perfect, but would argue the following

1. An alleged perpetrator escaping charge does not NECCESSARILY make them innocent

2. The legal system cannot put an end to false accusations by members of the public. It can make the penalties for false accusations severe. But let's be clear that anyone could accuse some one they know of rape in a social context and there would be very little the legal system could do about it. However, men or women making these claims with no basis in truth would pretty quickly find themselves ostracised by their peers and community - and sometimes more than the one accused.

3. It is the responsibility of a victim to tell the truth about the crime they allege has been committed against them, but it is not their personal responsibility to assemble a case against the perpetrator. That is what the DPP is for. If every victim of sexual assault (or burglary, for that matter) had to establish a strong evidence-based case for the allegation to be taken seriously, we'd all be on CSI.

I agree that it is absolutely devastating to all concerned when a false accusation is made. But I'd argue also that there are very few victims of sexual assault who treat it with the lightness that you attribute to the woman "running late for work".

I'd also point out that sometimes people's view of what constitutes assault can be very different, leading victim and alleged perpetrator to an almost insurmountable schism in their understanding about the alleged attack. But it is the law that makes the ultimate determination in regard to reported sexual assault, not the victim.

What disappoints me about these discussion threads is that there seem to be a heap of people out there who seem to take the position that a false accusation is as bad as or worse than a violent rape. I think if you asked most people what they'd rather experience, the choice would be pretty clear.

seether, I've not been the victim of either but I'm also not convinced that a false accusation is any less harmfull than a rape. The level of violence is a factor in the harm which makes any judgement difficult. Both impact in different ways and both can have long term impacts.

I suspect that the level of harm (apart from the physical) is massively impacted by the victims disposition, the type of support they get etc. A false accusation can leave the victim isolated from their support networks, cost them job and future career opportunities and leave them with the sense that they will never fully move on from it.

Both are horrors which all of us should reject.

R0bert

Hi RObert,

I agree with you that people's resilience in either case is dependent largely on the kind of social support they have around them.

I guess I'm not arguing (either) that a false accusation isn't bad. I'm just not convinced that it's as bad as being raped. And I guess I'm reacting also to the idea that this is something peculiar to women (and angry that the same people who say rape doesn't only happen to women ALSO claim that it's women who use alleged rape as a weapon against men). Let's not forget that it isn't only women who use false accusations as a means of revenge: it's the basis of the Black Shirts harrassment of the new partners of their former wives also.

Additionally, I'd argue that there are lots of communities where speaking out as a victim can have all of the similar kinds of consequences that you describe - social isolation, psychological torment, suspicion, fear and hatred, and a similar level of frustration, in the sense that the only thing that sustains people in that circumstance is that they know they are telling the truth.

It's probably surprising to no one that I have a similar problem with people who use the term "rape" as a descriptor for things that aren't anything like it (some Government minister once likened meeting with his state counter-parts as being "like a pack-rape", which of course, it was nothing like).

Thanks for your thoughtful response to my comment. I am thinking about it.