ninaf,

Re your comment "...under-reporting, not falsified reporting is the biggest issue facing rape survivors." This maybe correct as far as issues facing rape survivors go, but falsified reporting is the biggest issue facing alleged rapists and it should also be for the justice system but it is not.

The Waikato Times in NZ, reported some years back that 30% of the alleged sexual assaults reported to the Hamilton police were revealed to be without substance which leaves the question of how many of the remaining 70% were without substance but which could not be established. Further here in Australia we have the highly publicised incident in Coffs Harbour where members of the Sydney Bulldogs football team were slandered by women in the north coast town whose stories were later uncovered as porkies. People discussing these issues in public forums should not forget these things.

What needs to happen, is that where it is clearly shown that a person misreported a crime such as rape, that person should be given the same sentence as the alleged rapist would have received if convicted.

I suspect then we will have more "alleged" victims in gaol than rapists.

Roscop,

Were the two separate allegations against the footy team "porkies", or was there insufficient evidence to proceed? Do you have any information that you can provide that the allegations were false?

As to false allegations in general, many women and more children and young men than you'd care to imagine present to emergency departments following sexual assault. Of those a very small number agree to police involvement. Some just want the experience behind them (and many show signs of PTSD and such later); others are well aware of the usual futility in obtaining justice.

Of the small percentage that go to court, actual conviction rates are disturbingly low.

"In 1996-1997, the number of findings of guilty for “sexual assaults” in New South Wales was 10 per cent of the number of offences reported (Cook et al. 2001: 44). In Victoria, the number of convictions of rape in 1997-1999 was only 4.2 per cent of the number of reports (VLRC 2003: 81). ... [estimates] convictions have not risen above 3.1 per cent of reports in any year in the last decade (Stop Rape Now 2004). These figures are all the more disturbing when we remember that at least 85 per cent of sexual offences are never reported to the police... "

http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/pubs/issue/i4pdf/acssa_i4_reportingandconvict.pdf

"Usually the victim is a young woman, and the accused is an older man, more often than not a relative. While the complainant can have her past scrutinised, the accused - unless he (or very occasionally she) takes the stand - won't be cross-examined, and so will not be questioned about past behaviour, including prior offences. The onus is on the complainant to prove sexual assault took place, and that is not easy, particularly when children are involved. The Gatehouse Centre child abuse support service at the Royal Children's Hospital had some 150 new referrals about sexual abuse each month of last year, and only 2 per cent resulted in convictions."

http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/The-rape-of-justice/2005/05/21/1116533577568.html

Addendum:

Reading my last post I want to clarify that the conviction rates reported (there and here) are of reports to police. There are many reasons why charges are withdrawn or why cases don't proceed. As explained further in the following:

http://sa.democrats.org.au/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1426&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

"The committee reported that, of women who have been sexually assaulted, the reporting rate was somewhere between a worst case scenario of only 8.7 per cent and, at best, 33 per cent. Put another way, somewhere between seven and nine out of 10 rape and sexual assault victims do not report the crime. If we take the 2002 figures, where 628 cases were reported to the police, it represents the tip of an iceberg with the real numbers of those crimes being somewhere between 2,000 and 7,000 people.

To consider then that only 11 offenders were found guilty as charged, with four of the 11 pleading guilty (which means that only seven of the cases were actually won), we have an appalling reflection on how we in this state deal with the issue of rape and sexual abuse, and it clearly shows why legislation such as this is needed."

Includes additional figures on male victimization:

http://www.yarrowplace.sa.gov.au/booklet_statistics.html

pynchme,

With respect to the bulldogs case, I remember a fair time after the whole media circus had died down, one of the chief investigators actually complained that there was quite a lot of pressure to get charges laid (probably because of the media circus), but he really couldn't find any evidence and basically implied the woman's story had a million holes in it.

I find it interesting that you have absolutely no sympathy for men falsely accused of rape, or else just think where there's smoke there's fire. Those players had their names dragged through the mud, and the whole team was under suspicion. I remember admiring Hasem El Masri for refusing to do a DNA test as he was nowhere near the 'action' and is an upstanding citizen and deeply religious man. Yet he, and many other members of the team endured shouts of rapist while on the field and walking down the street. I can imagine you joining in the chorus.

Sure, it suits your purposes to inflate rape figures, just like adding in all the 'sexual assault' like pinching on the bum, and 'regretted sex' to mix in with the rape to make those numbers much larger. 1% of women raped is horrible enough, I don't see why you have to haul in anybody ever accused and assume them guilty when you have no idea of the actual facts just to make the figures more 'impressive'.

People are innocent until proven guilty in case you didn't know. I'm sure you'd like mandatory charges and sentences to any man accused of rape but the rest of society likes actual evidence before locking people up.

It's an effective tactic by feminist to play the 'under-reported' card, where every tiny whiff of smoke helps to create an image of a raging bonfire. Then you can lobby to protect all women at any cost to some men who are totally innocent.

Pynchme, thanks for that survey. A small extract from it is below.

Let me ask you something, and I'd appreciate a straight answer, please. Do you think that the 25% of men who responded to that survey saying they'd been assaulted would be likely to feel welcomed by the NSW Rape Crisis Centre's website? Do you think that their loved ones may have experienced vicarious trauma in the same way that those close to women victims do? The writer is a member of the Management Committee of the NSW RCC and yet her piece that started this thread is bare of mention of males as victime at all.

"# 83.8% of females and 47.4% of males reported at least one unwanted sexual harassment style experience;
# 59.3% of females and 25% of males reported at least one unwanted sexual assault style experience;
# 35.5% of females and 15.4% of males reported at least one unwanted penetrative sex experience;
# between 12.6% and 35.5% of women; and between 5.3% and 15.4% of men reported experiences when aged 16 or older which meet the legal definition of rape;"

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the NSW RCC does great work in its way, but it's still exclusivist and exclusionary on purely gender grounds and it still demonises men to achieve its ideological ends. It's the last bit I personally, never having been a victim of such an assault, am most offended by, since normal men are sympathetic to women who've been assaulted anyway. Do the counselling, by all means, but leave the feminist proselytising out of it is all I ask. Serve victims of both genders.

The more one looks into so many of the organisations that have been set up under the aegis of feminist ideology the more often one finds a deeply discriminatory and female chauvinistic culture at the core.

The Sex Discrimination Commissioner, to her credit, has raised these issues as something she would like to address but is powerless to do so under current legislative and international arrangements.

Anticeptic...

Let me be really clear and say that for all posts I make on OLO I only speak for myself, and not the RCC.

It may interest you to know that I actually do a lot of work with male survivors. I have also written a number of articles elsewhere about them and have done academic research into the specific impacts on men. This article was not about that. it was about vicarious trauma (though note I decided to focus on males experience as I agree, this is often forgotten about or overshadowed by womens experience of VC). In fact when I wrote this piece I was trying to address that imbalance and give voice to the experience of my dad, brother etc. (you may want to look at this too http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/sexual-assault-still-too-taboo-for-public-airing/2008/03/26/1206207204988.html)

It pains me that no matter what I do I get attacked. There has even been websites where guys have put up photos of me and my story and a poll to "vote how rapeable you think this chick is". All I can say is that I beleive the overwhelming majority of guys are just as disgusted as I am by these attitudes and behaviours. I have also had tremendous support from men, and I have also offered my own support to a tremendous number of male victims. I'm sorry if you feel that because I volunteer for an institution that provides free counselling to both males and females that I am some sort of devil-incarnate. But please- honestly- think about what I've been through and the fact that no organisation is perfect- I'm doing the best I can. What the F--K are you doing to help fix this problem?