Again, you seem to be using emotion to apply to a fact-based justice system. You see misogyny where there is just an unfortunate fact of life. I like how you use the phrase 'traditional evidence'. Our justice system is based on innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof is always on the accuser to prove what happened. The sad fact is that rape leaves little evidence and heresay is not enough to convict someone. I'm not taking a side, just saying there's really very few options in our legal system. All the frothing about mysoginy is just, in my opinion, gender bias.
Jazz, I appreciate you shedding some light on the numbers and the situation in the UK, and that's also what I was implying, I don't trust the data by the local police either, but people still do lie and it sickens me. Here the questioning of the victim varies from district to district, some do a more professional job at it. I can understand why reporting the crime feels so overwhelming, why some never bother and the assailant gets out scot-free. :/
Yeah, another issues is that it takes so long for the process to work. Sometimes the crime lab takes 6 months to a year just to process the physical evidence if there is any. Then the case gets sent to a grand jury, they decide if there's 'probable cause' then if it gets past the gran jury, it gets a trial but even if all of that falls into place it could take years and years just to reach any kind of verdict, and even then the perpetrator may be acquitted.
That sounds like a long, painful process. Again, I can only speak for my own country here, as I know our law and proceedings better (though, in all fairness, not well enough), but there are several worrying aspects when it comes to the rape cases discussed in the press, blogs, tv etc. Example 1: a woman was raped after passing out at a friend's party. Three years later after the fact, the assailant was finally sentenced for six months, not all of which he has to serve in prison. Those three years were extremely stressful to the victim, and similar cases have emerged left and right. A professor of criminal law pointed out at the time that our system aims to protect the criminal, not the victim. In addition to this, the amount of violence used affects the sentencing, as if it hadn't been traumatic enough to be used as a blow-up doll when drunk. as if this didn't warrant equally harsh punishment as e.g. getting battered. However, the length of sentencing has been on the rise ever since 2000 and there have been continuing improvements to the legislation, so at least we aren't just talking about this, actions have been taken too. So we have that can of worms to deal with. But then there's the painful issue of false accusations. In 2010, Sergeant Marja Vuento from Helsinki police department (that is, the capital city's dep) stated that approximately every fitfh report turns out to be false. She claimed that the amount of false accusations has grown with the rise of alcohol consumption among women, that there's a connection between the two. According to her, one typical scenario is a woman ending up cheating her husband/boyfriend. Later on she claims she was actually sexually assaulted and the boyfriend/husband reports the crime in her stead. Sergeant Vuento also points out that this type of behavior harms the real victims and their believability in Helsinki districts. Having worked in the force for years, she admits that rapists have gotten away scot-free, but also that innocent men have been sentenced. Just imagine how long it takes for these cases to come to light... And how many lives they may have ruined in the meanwhile. Unfortunately all my sources are in Finnish, so no use in linking them really, but just in case: Experiences of the Victims Sergeant Marja Vuento's Comments on False Accusations
And all of this makes it that much more difficult for people like I was. If you were looking at American stats from 98 mine would fall under the category of 'false report' because his friend insisted that he was with him that night, and that I was lying. I even ended up having my rapists kid 9 months later, but was unwilling to go through the dna stuff just to prove it. Instead, I gave my son up for adoption, where he could be safe. I don't know if that was the right decision for everyone, especially since the same guy is currently serving life for killing his girlfriend and 2 year old son, but it was the right decision for my son, which was the most important thing for me. In my case, because he was a friend of my then-boyfriend, I was discounted from the door. And they never let that go. So, as you can imagine, while I KNOW a lot of people do make false reports, I also know that some who don't receive no justice. As far as dna from a rape kit, there was none, because he forced me to shower 4 times before he left. So I don't know anything about that. Worse though, they wouldn't even prosecute him for assault, despite the fact that I looked like I'd been run over by a truck because...... he was with his friend. Of course.
@Trish - That's horrible, I'm so sorry. Yeah, sometimes the bad guys get away and it really sucks. It really is a large mountain to scale getting justice for rape victims. In the US, most laws define rape as male penetration of a female forcibly and against her will. If any one of those three pillars are in doubt, the 'solvability' of the case goes right out the window. Alcohol plays a large part as well. If the victim doesn't remember what happened or who was involved, the case is going nowhere. Unfortunately, there are just no foreseeable solutions to these issues.
@Trish : I'm really, really sorry you had to go through something like that. I'm glad he's behind bars; at least he won't be harming anyone else in a long, long while. It's just terrible that he was able to take two lives before getting locked up for good. Unfortunately, if your case had happened here in the late '90s or earlier, perhaps even now, the chance of acquittal would've been high. What I find particularly intriguing was the part where the sergeant made the connection between womens' alcohol consumption and potentially false accusations. When alcohol is involved, some men seem to have been more or less genuinely under the impression that the sex was consensual, as one article from last spring reflected (it was the victim's account; she never reported the incident, and in all likelihood, it would've been dismissed). I won't even go into men reporting rape (be it hetero-or homosexual), allegedly the rate is even lower.
@KaTrian: (Edit: I just read your comment, missed it somehow ) I know what you mean, and it is awful, but believe me, it's no harder to determine if someone is lying about rape, than if they were lying that they are psychotic. The real problem is that 'inability or difficulty to prosecute' gets equated with 'lying'. It's nothing new, but nonetheless is wrong and evident of blatant disregard for the victims. Even sadder when such things are stated by a woman. @Trish: It's all very sad. I can't even begin to imagine how I would cope in your situation. But your story is one I've heard countless times. People don't understand that false rape reporting is vanishingly rare in reality. Luckily, police and prosecution are slowly managing to change attitudes and it's translating to a lot more survivors getting help, if not justice. With justice, it won't happen until rape is classified as attempted murder or grievous bodily harm, analogous with knife stabbing. Wounds and scars are just as permanent and they can kill. Unfortunately, a lot of men (and men tend to be in power) believe rape is a 'woman's problem' and don't care about it because it doesn't affect them.
Another thing she pointed out was the tendency of the police not to require such detailed descriptions of colored suspects. I also wager a woman who claims she was raped by a foreign-looking person is taken more seriously than a woman who says the perpetrator is white. I read a bit more into this, and it’s also been noted that the lies are exposed quickly, but what they do is exhaust already thin resources. Most often the suspect is found not guilty due to lack of evidence, which doesn’t make it a false accusation per se. I can only imagine how horrible and frustrating that is to the victim if the crime indeed occurred -- to go through a long process that takes years, reliving the nightmare again and again, only to have the perpetrator walk free. But I also find it harrowing that the sergeant alludes to cases where a man has been convicted, then found innocent later. As for the misogyny thing, by the way: in Finland women hold many top positions in the police force, court, the field of criminal law, and the parliament (not in the armed forces though, the highest officer ranks held by women are captain and captain-lieutenant). Of our 19 ministers, 10 are women right now. We’ve had a female president and prime minister, even at the same time, which may have contributed to the recent improvements in the law, proceedings, investigation, and attitudes. While it's possible, it's too easy and at times ludicrous to call these women out on being misogynistic (not saying you did, by the way, just a general observation). We're far from the ideal, but I hope things are moving towards the better rather than worse.
@KaTrian: Of course it's awful, there have been many men incarcerated for life for murder and they've been set up or wrongly convicted. Incidentally, as you mentioned, most of them are non-white, which just follows the trend of police discrimination and low threshold to arrest and convict non-whites. But those are, in the grand scheme of things, very rare in the past 10 or so years. This kind of discrimination was much more prevalent prior to 1990s. I think it's simply a fact of life that nothing is perfect, and that includes the legal system. US and quite a few other jurisdictions work on the 'innocent until proven guilty' while France and others work in reverse - 'guilty until proven innocent'. It basically refers to burden of proof being on the prosecution versus the defendant. And still, extremely rarely these days, but still, on both sides, innocents are wrongly convicted at times. But it doesn't result in minuscule charges and punishments for any other crime, only for rape. That is the problem. The double standard that is deeply entrenched in misogyny. When I say 'misogyny' I am not saying that the female (or male) ministers are misogynists, obviously, but that the legal system and it's understanding of rape, is deeply entrenched in patriarchal attitudes from many years ago, when rape wasn't even viewed as a crime but a woman's problem and responsibility. Unless the woman was so physically destroyed that the society couldn't ignore her injuries anymore. But most rapists don't leave obvious injuries, becuase they know that's pretty much the only way to actually be caught. Only a few years ago, an Australian judge ruled that digital penetration isn't rape (in a case of a female volleyball player), and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it. That's the kind of law we all rely on to protect us and our loved ones. Everyone, including females, have no choice but to work within the given framework. And since these days, a survivor of rape can't get justice or a conviction, but if she speaks out about her rapist she can get sued for slander (this is a sad fact of how the legal system keeps the survivors silent) no woman in a position of power is immune from this either. And time and again, you see that only people who had personal experience with rape, decide to speak out, at which point they are faced with thrashing by the media and the society. This is the crux of the problem. Also, it is easy to obtain stats of how many women occupy positions of power in corporations and the legal system, and the number is usually less than 10% in the Western world. So 90% of all positions of power in the West are held by men. That in itself is telling, don't you think? If there is a body - the murder has been committed. If there's a raped woman, with all the easily identifiable wounds (psychological and or physical) that must mean that the rape was committed. It's up to the legal system to not make mistakes and prosecute competently. Unfortunately, whilst this is the case with every other crime, in case of rape this translates to "are you sure she isn't making it up?" as a default reaction, time and again, that has absolutely nothing to do with the way legal system works, or the degree of false reporting, only with misogyny which is deeply entrenched not just in the law but in the society as well. Misogynistic attitudes aren't necessarily a matter of choice. They are learned form our parents and the society, and many women who are appalled by rape, still believe it. In the absence of any personal experiences, and in the absence of the alternative view, who can blame them though? Believing that you, as a woman, can do something to avoid being raped is a lot more comfortable than understanding it can happen to you, despite all the precautions you try to take. Rapists are no different from muggers of killers in that respect. They pick their victims based on vulnerability and personal preference. Not to mention that less than 3% of all rapes are ever prosecuted and less than 10-15% of the prosecutions result in a conviction. What kind of message do you think this sends to the society and survivors? The message is clear - most reports are false and it isn't really a problem, because there are so few prosecutions, reports and convictions. This is the most vile thing about this issue, and an utter failure of our legal system. But not many people care abut it, because rape is a taboo, etcetera, etcetera. The argument becomes circular from here because there's no logic in misogyny, therefore it must rely on circular arguments in order to perpetuate itself.
This is probably the case in more multicultural societies. Finland is quite homogenous, the biggest group of immigrants being white Russians, so it seems like the discrimination is still going strong here. The Baltics and Slavic Eastern Europe may reflect similar trends when it comes to colored citizens. This probably varies from country to country as well. I have no example cases in mind how slander is handled here in Scandinavia and Nordic countries, but it seems the threshold to sue is far higher here than e.g. across the pond. OT, but indeed, this is unfortunate, and the only way to rectify it is for us women to work our way to higher positions. But just like in the interview of the female captain; she could become a general in 20 years, but she said she isn't aiming for that because she puts her family and motherhood first. Men are often freer to put their career before family, be the breadwinner, the one with the power. On a sidenote, in our parliament, the MPs who hold considerable power are divided as follows in 2013: 85 women and 115 men. The difference isn't huge. But I'd also like to add that women are often ousted from the position of power more readily than men. We have several examples of this in our system. An ex-female prime minister's political career was practically destroyed due to a rather trivial confidentiality violation. Male ministers hold their credibility even after tax evasions and sex scandals ("boys will be boys"), and bribery accusations are never taken anywhere even though it's forbidden for politicians to accept bribes. Reminds me of one anecdote by our English professor: An American and a Frenchman are talking. American: "I don't understand your legal system at all. I just can't believe you consider all your suspects guilty." French: "Yeah, well, I can't believe that you people drag innocents to the courtroom."
Well said Ka, I completely agree with all your points. I think Scandinavia in general has the most progressive mindset, which is not to say that it can't deteriorate, but it's all going in the right direction. Funny joke, too
@JJ_Maxx Maxx: I respect your opinion on feminism and misogyny, but I am certain you are wrong. I don't think I can do much more than state my opinions and hope that people like yourself will eventually understand the issues more adequately. It's not about winning or loosing opinions, it's about correcting a terrible wrong and creating a safer society for all. There is a LOT of room for improvement, as I stated several times in my previous comments. But I won't be convincing or debating this with you because clearly, you have very little respect for my opinions and any facts that I might bring to the table are dismissed, if it suits you. This is why, when I talk to you, I feel like I'm trying to convince you that Earth isn't flat. All the best
@jazzabel I have to disagree that false reporting is 'vanishingly rare' since I don't believe that at all. I think far too many people are actually false reporting, because of cheating, remorse, etc. I've seen it myself countless times. It's the main reason there's such a stigma surrounding it and that legitimate counts are thrown out. ETA: (I'll correct myself) it's not THE main reason, but one of them. Too damned early, lol I appreciate all of the sympathy (JJ, Jazz, Ka), I do, but I'm good. Seriously. LOL. Telling y'all for perspective, been over it for a long time. @KaTrian I think it's a fair statement that many men 'believe' there was consent, but since humans can rationalize pretty much anything in the right circumstances how do you think that should that be dealt with?
@Trish: Having worked closely with survivors and the legal side of it, for over a decade, I have to disagree with you. Although yours is a commonly held belief, because a lot of those false reports get reported on in the media, whilst overwhelming majority of truthfully reported rapes aren't, due to confidentiality reasons. And also, most survivors never dare to even report it, let alone speak about it openly, so when you look at public discussions of rape cases, it seems false ones are percentage-wise, much higher, but that's purely because over 90% of rapes aren't even factored into this equation. Be as it may, I forgot to say earlier, I admire you for speaking about it so openly. In my experience, most rape survivors don't dare to speak, even anonymously, and that perpetuates myths and misconceptions.
I have no be all end all solution, but here in Finland, there's still a relatively common way to deal with situations where the family/friends of the victim know what truly happened, e.g. if a rape actually occurred, but either the victim is reluctant to take it to court (even if there would be enough evidence to get a conviction) or there's not enough evidence to convict the rapist in court, but there is some evidence to indicate what truly happened. More than once I've seen a few (pretty much always male) friends of the victim gather up, find the rapist, and beat him to a pulp. It's illegal and ugly, but pretty effective as far as seeking retaliation goes. Of course this isn't an accurate way to accomplish justice because I'm sure some innocent guys have gotten beaten up as a consequence and quite a few (bar) fights are started on the premise of accusations of rape/violence towards a woman/women, but when the legal system ties its own hands, sometimes it's up to ordinary civilians to take it from there, especially when there is evidence, but for one reason or another, the victim doesn't want to face the years of hardship, the uncertainty, and the (often negative) publicity that come with seeking justice through the legal system. I'm just wondering how common this sort of culture of vigilantism is in the States/elsewhere in the world?
This is just more and more gender bias. You throw the word misogyny around as a catch-all for a perceived injustice when there isn't one. I have explained, in detail, why it is so difficult to prosecute a rape and it has nothing to do with women-hating. I assure you that more woman are working from positions of law enforcement today than there ever has been. Sexual harassment of women is more spotlighted today than it has ever been. Right now, our society is hyper-sensitive to abuse of women and no one is tolerating it. I don't really understand a legal system where a person is deemed guilty on heresay alone and has to prove a negative. I think that's a travesty of justice and I'm glad I live in the US. Like I said, rape is naturally difficult to prosecute and our best defense right now is to be more vigilant toward men with such tendencies earlier and teach women how to avoid putting themselves in dangerous positions. The justice system works and unless you want to imprison every man accused of rape with no evidence, there's not much we can do. Jazabel seems to believe that you can prove rape by how emotional a woman is. This does not bear out in the area of law enforcement, unfortunately and is not a reliable source of evidence. But because of her extreme male hatred, she only sees conspiracy. Maybe one day she will focus on the real issues and be able to help her fellow women in this area.
@JJ_Max: Thank you, really, for demonstrating misogyny better than any article or thesis ever could. Please continue, and make sure you don't hold back on the passive-aggressive tantrums, because they are most informative
@T.Trian: Vigilantism is an interesting one. In my experience with working with survivors, it is very common for male loved ones, family, husbands, friends, to want to take revenge but survivors are often afraid of the perpetrator (threats they receive are not uncommonly quite plausible because the perp is in position of power of some kind in relation to them). Also, raped women (and men) feel tremendous guilt, and last thing they want to see is their loved ones get in trouble because of them. And then, not uncommonly, rape survivors are vulnerable individuals without much support, so they have nobody who could do something like that anyway. I'd say vigilantism is a very common fantasy for rape survivors and their families, but seldom carried out in real life.
I think everyone in this thread except you would see that my issue is with your broad terminology, not women. Once again, you feel the desire to convict a man of misogyny without a shred of proof. Just because I have a penis you classify me a second-class citizen. I don't have to prove myself to you or anybody. I have nothing but respect and sympathy for someone like Trish, who went through a horrible experience and came out of it determined to be the strong, independent woman she is today. Rape is awful and I agree that it should be punished more harshly when it is proven to have happened and I hope in the future we will have more advanced technology that will enable us to better determine guilt. But disagreeing with a militant feminist like you does not make me a misogynist. As much as you would like it to.
@JJ_Max: Yeah, just like that Max. I'm really glad you haven't omitted your favourite tactic of putting words into my mouth and claiming I said something I never said. And splitting, a tried and tested method of shaming and isolating your opponent, by pretending that 'everyone' disagrees with things they never said. Self-referential and paranoid thoughts are also very interesting. Prey, continue
First of all, my name has two x's, as in Maxx. Secondly, I've said all I need to say to you and I will let my previous statements stand for the record. Feel free to continue to wallow in your blatant misandry, but I will continue this discussion with everyone else involved.
I, too, am glad Castro killed himself. Those guys never last in prison -- they all either kill themselves or someone else kills them. I feel no need to spend the state's money keeping someone like him alive, so everyone's better off. As far as rapists in general go, there was a fascinating thread on reddit a while back, and some of the comments from men who commented on the original thread were fascinating to read. Unfortunately, it looks like they may have all been deleted from reddit, so I can't review them again. But, the comment that spawned a lot of additional comments was blogged about, and you can see it here: http://lemuffinmistress.tumblr.com/post/28078080458/reddit-post-from-a-serial-rapist-who-admits-to-having I think this guy so accurately illustrates why rape is such an underreported crime and why even the victims will blame themselves.
Thank you for sharing @chicagoliz. This guy sounds like a classic power-reassurance rapist, and from his language and his almost romantic nostalgia for the sense of power he felt while raping make it certain he isn't finished with his 'activities'. I pity any woman in his way, and especially his wife.
