why is this a common story?

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I do wonder, going by physical evidence alone, how is it possible to distinguish between violent rape and coerced/done while unconscious rape?

This is a hard discussion, as it isn't strictly about morals but about pragmatic, real-life application of rape law, taking into account incompetent police, judges or juries, wrongful accusations, varying law in different places of the world, local culture, individual influence, uncertainty, among others.

Academically, I know a rapist should be punished for their acts without question. But pragmatically, how do I know whether someone is really a rapist or not? How do I decide what "preponderance of evidence" is, what "beyond reasonable doubt" is, and which one do I pick to convict someone? Where is the balance between rapists going free and non-rapists spending 10+ years in jail, being branded as sex offenders and having their lives ruined forever, that balance between false positives and false negatives?

What you say is true though, a culture that is less shaming towards people who are raped would do a lot of good, and is a good place to start from.

From what I hear, rates of 'false report' of rape are actually pretty similar to false reports of other crimes. Part of why people are tarnished so permanently after being convicted of a sex crime is that there is a perception that it's basically a kink- something that someone can't help, and therefore something that they are likely to repeat. I don't know if it's true or not that a rapist is more likely to reoffend than, say, a mugger.

I also think that one place to start would be to inform kids that rape = sex witout consent, whether the person is conscious or not. I heard teens around the Steubenville case saying things like, 'It wasn't rape - she didn't say no,' as if that somehow made it ok. There are also studies done with college students where women will admit to having been 'coerced to have sex through the threat of force,' (for example) but will not say that they have been 'raped,' and likewise men will say that they have obtained sex 'through the implication of violence, whether spoken or unspoken,' but will not admit to being rapists. People think that the word 'rape' is only what occurrs when a huge guy with a knife jumps out of the bushes and snatches a jogger.

http://www.vice.com/read/the-ghost-rape ... 0300-v20n8
quote:
"In the beginning, the family had no idea that they weren’t the only ones being attacked, and so they kept it to themselves. Then Sara started telling her sisters. When rumors spread, “no one believed her,” said Peter Fehr, Sara’s neighbor at the time of the incidents. “We thought she was making it up to hide an affair.” The family’s pleas for help to the council of church ministers, the group of men who govern the 2,500-member colony, were fruitless—even as the tales multiplied. Throughout the community, people were waking to the same telltale morning signs: ripped pajamas, blood and semen on the bed, head-thumping stupor. Some women remembered brief moments of terror: for an instant they would wake to a man or men on top of them but couldn’t summon the strength to yell or fight back. Then, fade to black.

Some called it “wild female imagination.” Others said it was a plague from God. “We only knew that something strange was happening in the night,” Abraham Wall Enns, Manitoba Colony’s civic leader at the time, said. “But we didn’t know who was doing it, so how could we stop it?” "

ummm... maybe... investigate?

And how exactly do you determine which accusations were false?

Because taking into account that the problem with a huge percentage of rape accusations is the lack of evidence, and lack of evidence operates in both ways (what means that there's no way to prove that the accusation is either true or false), I'm quite amazed of those statistics showing the exact percentage of false accusation with such a level of 'accuracy'.

A lot of rapes are never investigated; a lot of women say that, for example, the police try to convince them not to press charges. A lot of rape kits are never even analyzed.
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/28/o ... t-backlog/

Actually investigating when a woman comes forward with charges of rape would be a good start, as would not blaming women for their own rapes.

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/10/12/45 ... exual.html
victims were 13 & 14; one of the rapes was videotaped. Rapists were popular jocks & related to local politicians. Victims families were harassed & prosecution was dropped due to community pressure.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/20 ... ville.html

The ball has started rolling, and Anonymous is on the case:

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/14/steuben ... er_family/

Bad things sometimes happen to un-bad people. They always have and they always will. The best we can do is manage the occurrence of Bad Things so most of us can do our un-bad every day tasks.

ruveyn

But we have a legal system that theoretically punishes bad people when they do bad things to un-bad people. When that breaks down, said bad people feel free to continue doing bad things.

deleted: duplicate.

Last edited by LKL on 16 Oct 2013, 6:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Good ol' corruption seems to play the bigger part on how this went, legally. The part where they harassed the family, fired the mother and burned her house is purely cultural, and quite appalling. I wonder though, what goes on in the mind of the people who do those things? (he harassing). How is the belief system they live under?

I think we have a winner for most corrupted rape case ever. Considering that statutory rape of second degree in MO applies to kids under 17 and first degree under 14. The fact that an entire town would ignored their own laws to protect two popular boys is just sickening.

Maryville, MO, is going to get what's coming to them, if Anonymous doesn't do them in. Someone else will.

Officially, though, these two cases are currently classed amongst the "false rape allegation" statistics, since the two boys were accused but never prosecuted.

http://jezebel.com/fox-news-guest-says- ... 1447526931
'What did she expect, sneaking out at 1 am?'

Includes the video interview.

Didn't watch the video, but here are my thoughts on the quote:

If I purposefully stroll through a violent neighborhood on my way somewhere at the worst possible part of the night when there are better alternatives, exactly what does that say for my level of intelligence? If I knowingly put myself at risk for getting mugged, beaten, and/or shot, it is directly related to a poor decision that I made.

This applies to all those who similarly put themselves at risk for violent crimes.

This is not blaming the victim for getting raped or robbed or murdered. The fault for committing the crime lies squarely with the criminal perpetrating those crimes. I wouldn't dream of blaming rape victims for getting raped, supposedly "asking for it" unless, of course, the victim literally was asking for it--in which it's no longer a matter of rape but false testimony, and that's a punishable crime as well.

HOWEVER...it IS the girl's fault for sneaking out and being where she should not be, just as it would be my fault for being in a neighborhood in which it is the expectation that my intentions are not entirely pure, just as much as it would be for anyone in that neighborhood at that exact same time. It's not the girl's fault for getting rape any more than it would be my fault I got attacked. The sad part of situations like these is that stupidity is not against the law.

I don't think that she was stupid; I think that she was fourteen.