I am so glad Max, that you did not take my opinions badly. I felt guilty after sending my comment that I may have presumed too much and been a bit harsh. I hope things go well for you.

I actually agreed with much of what you said to Maxx, Lizzie.

Women have been raped from the beginning of time, long before short skirts. Women in countries where they wearing burkas are raped. Rape isn't about short skirts, and I find it disgusting you keep trying to blame the victim by saying such a thing.

I will not allow the victim of false accusation to blamed, either. They cannot possibly 'know' what woman is neurotic enough to tod that, and which are not - in my son's case, it was ME that angered a neurotic woman, not him.

Our neighbor girl made a rape accusation, then recanted a few weeks later. Everyone was angry at her, and her family sold their hom and moved because of it.

The only person who defended her was my son. Himself falsely accused, he continued to befriend her when everyone else scorned her.

When I asked why, he told me she had been telling the truth - she HAD been raped. He knew the boy accused, how he spoke about women, how he treated them. The girl had agreed to meet him in an empty field to smoke marijuana, then raped her. His Aunt was a police officer who 'investigated'the rape, and intimidated the girl into recanting by threatening her with drug pocession charges. Her father was in the Army and couldn't afford the scandal.

Yet my son is a 'listed' sex offender, and this girl's rapist goes around saying he was falsely accused

Frankly, it creeps me out that you continue to make those victim blaming statements about shorts skirts, Maxx.

You may be a false accusation victim, but blaming the victim is a rapist's mentality.

Unlike rape victim's advocates,and God knows *I* know people are falsely accused, I don't give anyone a blanket "I BELIEVE YOU" stamp of approval.

It's a complicated issue.

Max's comments creep me out too. Just to clarify, I stand by what I said to him. I was not sure about the way that I said it in reflection. I feel the same way about my comments to you onlyone.

Max, I don't enjoy this process much - you seem to be in a very difficult place but your focus on womens clothing does not paint you in a good light. That may be a generational thing but it sits poorly in my mind as well.

Your point about taking precautions has some validity, sometimes the retoric does go too far and ignores reality. You appear to be taking it in the other direction.

To use the locked property analogy - if the people in the next suburb over (expensive mansions etc) leave their houses unlocked then the old place in my street which has a large fence and is locked is at greater risk of being burgled than it would otherwise be.

As other writers have pointed out rape has been with us for a very long time.

I 've often wondered if body taboo's contribute to rape rather than discourage it. Do western countries with more open attitudes to sexuality have higher or lower incidence of rape than western countries with strong body taboo's? I've seen some material on teenage pregnancy and social attitudes to sexuality which suggests that suppression does real harm.

R0bert

Robert,
‘rape’ seems to have become a subtopic on this thread and ‘false accusations of rape’ became a subtopic on the thread of ‘rape’. Perhaps it’s hard to discuss one without discussing the other? I haven’t actually been on the original thread.

“How do we protect those falsely accused from the mud that seems to stick?
How can we better protect against both rape and the abuse of the legitimate stigma which that crime has? “
These are the questions that we need to focus on. I don’t know the answer.
I have tried to search for books on this topic but only found one in Dutch which has wonderful reviews (titled, translated, “False Sins”) written by a lawyer who specialises in false accusation of rape cases. He describes a few cases that probably wouldn’t be much different to the case of Onlyone’s son, and about the traumatic effects it has on the falsely accused victims.
From the abstract I can make out that vendetta, spite, reputation and regret (changing one’s mind afterwards of having sex) are the strongest reasons for false accusations.
The book points out the double morals held by police and society and the justice system, the long, traumatic and needless procedures, inept skills and training of lawyers and social workers to deal with this and he ends the book with a chapter of advice on how he proposes changes for improvement.

Shame that there is no English translation and I wonder if there would be a similar book on the topic in English. Perhaps I’ll order it one day.

Here's statistics on Rape by Country although they are from 2000 and we must keep in mind it shows only REPORTED rapes.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap-crime-rapes

to be continued