The girl with the mattress

The NISVS operationalizes this into this question:

The NCVS which reports a much lower rate of rape/sexual assault and is the usual bystander for the "everything is A-OK" crowd only asks two questions.

The NCVS suffers from many more problems from your point of view. Short of taking EVERY case to forensic research, national studies like this are the best we have for the moment but using your same framework, how can one define "unwanted sexual activity"? Or rape for that matter subjectively?

Why is there no mention of incapciated sexual assault, even though these clearly meet the legal definition of sexual assaults in most state and federal laws?

These cases all meet the legal definition of rape. But therein lies the rub--all of this ambiguity is leading to this--

and voila. Catch 22.

and LOL at your username.

 

I bolded the assertion you made because it demonstrated anecdote lol. "The face of any situation" is an anecdote. Anecdotes work to move people but one of the issues we had was the "court of public opinion" and the need to talk data instead of anecdote.

Your P.S is anecdotal too.

Your other point was fearmongering based on legal reforms embraced to combat this trend and which can easily be adjuncated in legal courts. The broad hypothetical embraced by the letter-writers and yourself shows more the fallacy of the current justice system than anything else. Over-prosecution and the disproportionate punishment of minorities were just thrown in there as canaries. Yes, the current justice system is very f**ked. And there are a number of reforms that need to be carried out. And when you know that sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes, you know the burden of those reforms must go to the root of why, while keeping to a recent tradition of not ruining lives over mass incarceration.

I agree with you that those reforms must be measured, and in some cases seem to have gone too far. If however, you think that the spirit of the law is unwarrented insofar as the curent criminal justice system is CURRENTLY FAIRLY dealing with sexual assaults, well that's where we have to disagree.

And that has less to do with incarceration than adaptation and new cultural norms.

 

He shouldn't have let the little head do the thinking for the big head and he wouldn't be in this situation in the 1st place... Maybe you understand that.

In this country the conviction rate of rapist far outweighs the falsified reports. You're taking the smaller percentage to cast suspicion on the bigger factual percentage decided by the justice system and call it logical. How is that logical...?

 

You don't have to believe that 37% of women will be sexually assaulted between the ages of 14-20 to believe there is a problem. National studies seem to indicate two things: there is a systematic underreporting of rape, and there is quite a bit of it.

The fact is 37% of those women questioned were sexually assaulted. Can we generalize that across states? no. But, there are other studies such as the NISVS, and multiple other college series that seem to indicate a range between 1/5 and 1/3 of rapes recorded. Combined, we're taking about sample sizes of 25,000+, with the NISVS being a national random dial study. That approaches something where the gist of the results can be generalized into the idea that there is a problem with the way sexual assault is reported in America.

As for the other side of things:

There is of course, a legal mechanism for false accusations:

You'd have to argue that false accusations are the problem vs underreporting of sexual assault, which I just don't see as being the case based on the numbers.

Remember, only 2% of rapists will see a day in prison.

Meanwhile, 8% of accusations are false or unfounded, and those carry significant legal penalties, and the high burden of legal proof protects many accused rapists from legal consequences.

Given all that, it seems the balence of the legal system is tilted towards protecting sexual assaulters, especially since it seems to be a cultural norm to regard legally defined rapes as something "lesser".

 

Posting studies from the CDC, Brown University, the Department of Labor, and RAINN apparantly makes me "incriminate the USA as a rape haven."

lord :/

 

No kidding, and no one disagrees that there is a problem. You are essentially arguing with yourself here.

 

This is where we disagreed:

1) Methodology of the latest Brown University study was flawed or not, really seizing up on the 1/3rd stat
2) Whether or not this was on-topic to this thread (that was the real useless s**tshow)

This is where I think we agree:

1) There is a problem of systematically underreporting rape/sexual assault
2) There are false rape accusations (a significant #)

This is where I think we would disagree further based on the above:

1) The problem of underreporting sexual assaults significantly outweighs the problem of false accusations illustrated through anecdote here and which I have illustrated systematically

Anyways, I'm done "incriminating the United States" with facts and figures published by the American government/universities/institutions lol.

 

I don't see how under reporting sexual assaults has anything to do with false reports of sexual assault though. How are those two things linked?

Is it that you think that the presumption of guilt makes women more likely to come forward and you're worried about false reports of rape leading to that policy changing to a more rational policy in an effort to not forever brand potentially innocent individuals as rapists?

 

No, I think that anecdotes like this are being highlighted to imply that the current college campus is skewed towards false reports/overreporting of rape.

You said nobody suggested that this was generalizable--that's false. On the first page itself, several people suggested this was emblematic of the current college climate: I posted the specific quotes that highlighted this.

I wanted to bring the numbers forward. This is why my first quote was "I hate when instances like this undermine the real aggregate trends". Because I think that she has a high chance of lying, though I don't want to call her names or judge: the whole point of condemning a court of public opinion shouldn't be to participate in another! But I digress.

If you were to take out of this anecdote that the current college climate was filled with liars like her, that does a great disservice to the aggregated truth: most women are afraid or don't want to come forward even when they have been raped. That's the truth: it's not a litany of false accusations that is overwhelmingly ruining lives. It's a lot of rapes, many of them unreported.

I think there are more than enough protections for those falsely accused of rape, legally. If you think the court of public opinion needs to be reformed, I'm 100% with you on MANY MANY topics, but I do find it ironic that this thread is constructed to be a court of public opinion.

 

This country has a "rape culture" so there's nothing really for you to incriminate.

 

One thing at a time

Well the presumption of guilt does skew towards false reports, but I don't think it has any effect on over/under reporting of actual rapes....which is why I think it's a bad policy.

You are taking that out of context, when they said that they were talking about how in this instance a woman took advantage of the "presumption of guilt" policy at that college in order to seek revenge on someone by falsely accusing him of rape.....it was like the 4th or 5th post on the thread, well before you wanted to change the subject to the reporting or under reporting of rape.

I believe those who falsely accuse others of the most serious of crimes SHOULD be called out for it and publicly shamed. The problem with "the court of public opinion" is that they too often make judgments without the proper amount of evidence and rarely change their minds once they are made up, not that they are inherently wrong.

Yet that's not at all what anyone did, that's nothing more than a strawman argument. What you ought to take from this is that policies where people are presumed guilty make it far too easy for those who would falsely report crimes and false reports don't do anyone any good.

There is no connection between false reports of rape and the over/under reporting of rape.

Why is it important to you that there be a presumption of guilt when rape allegations come forward? It doesn't help anyone and just sets the stage to create more victims.

 

Lots of crimes are under reported not just rape. Even then rape is a lot more difficult to define than armed robbery.

Falsely accusing someone else of a crime they didn't commit is a very serious offense. No one deserves to be put in a cage based on a lie.

But even if you're right and campus rape is as widespread as those studies claim, then the media should have no trouble finding real rapes to highlight. If that's so it isn't so much to ask that they take the time to diligently investigate the facts before publicly accusing someone of a heinous crime. Your side is its own worst enemy.

 

When people refer to the "presumption of guilt" they are referring to the court of public opinion and not legal courts or the disciplinary hearing (unless one of them states otherwise). Legal courts and disciplinary hearings do not hold the presumption of guilt.

If you were to believe that the current college climate encourages more false accusations and spurs on more vindicative people, well you wouldn't be borne by the facts, you'd be borne by anecdote.

And you wouldn't think there was a need for reform, certainly, if you thought false accusations were more damaging than unreported rapes. The very real truth is that the "current college climate" is one of systematically unreported and underreported rapes, not one where many people create false accusations of such. The system of incentives you could posit from this anecdote and extrapolate to "many universites", "college groups", and "the current college climate" shouldn't be one where women are encouraged to lie about rape, it should be one where women often hide it when it has happened.

"Presumption of guilt" on college campuses isn't being used by women to lie about rapes for revenge on a systematic basis. The current college campus still very much diminishes and hides sexual assaults.

Any policy desicions should be informed by data on the latter and not anecdote on the former.

So, you've made your mind up that this is the proper amount of evidence even though nobody with their right mind has said this would hold up in a court of law for a false accusation standard. This court of public opinion and shaming is right because shaming is wrong except for when you deem it so, and you are part of a similar-minded group?

Isn't that the problem with courts of public opinion? They're right unless they're wrong, and they're wrong unless they're right based on your opinion. You have no testimony, neither have you been a part of a legal process on either side. Yet you're exercising your right to shame because that's a proper balance to the excessive right to shame alleged rapists you decry?

I literally bolded and underlined exactly what you've been saying. That is a connection between this false report of rape (anecdote) and an alleged over-reporting of rape, and one that is being made, and one where women are seen to be more easily lying about rape. And exactly what I'm fighting.

I'll add because that is what the STUDIES say and not this ANECDOTE.

My time to call "strawman". I've assidiously maintainted that anecdotes and the court of public opinion is bulls**t, which is why I detect bias in this case and require more facts, and why I refuse to participate in either side of this court of public opinion.

My last point on this is that for all this talk about "derailing", a large part of that was caused by 1) you and several others jumping to attack the methodology of the Brown University study without any regards to "off-topicness" and 2) OP asking me if I'd forgotten the UAE unsolicited and saying I was "criminalizing the United States"

So I find it especially ironic that both of these groups would later on call on "staying on topic" as a way to ignore/dismiss arguments they themselves sparked.

 

My "side"? I have always maintained that false accusations are bad but that there are legal mechanisms in place to prevent exactly what you said. I agree, no one deserves to be put in a cage based on a lie--that's why lying on a police report is a crime, and lying in court is perjury--ten years in prison. Likewise, that is why the legal system has a high burden of evidence for incarceration. The court of public opinion might be bad, but you're not going to be caged based on it.

The rest of my statements have always maintained that anecdotes are bulls**t and so is the court of public opinion. Given that, I refuse to participate in this one. Your media stories based on anecdotes? Maybe that's why arguing on anecdotes and coming up with any sort of conclusion is a bad idea.

 

So it actually seems everyone is kind of in agreement here?

Rape is underreported, it's a problem and we need solutions to address it, and the few falsified reports should give us pause before demonizing someone completely and let the wheels of justice do their thing.

 

In this case when people refer to the "presumption of guilt" they are talking about the school's policy that presumes guilt when there is an allegation of sexual assault. Have you not been paying attention?

No, it would be based on common sense, any system with a presumption of guilt encourages false accusations and spurs on vindictive people....it also does nothing at all by way of encouraging or discouraging actual victims....which is why it is wrong.

The reason for reform would be that the current system does nothing to increase the number of actual incidents of rape that are reported while incentivising false claims.

In this instance it was absolutely used by someone that lied about a rape in order to punish an innocent....don't you think that's wrong? Since the system that uses a presumption of guilt does nothing to encourage women to come forward and report actual rapes, why are you against changing it to one that wouldn't be so easy to abuse?

I think pretty much anyone that looks at the facebook and text messages leading up to and after the alleged assault would come up with the logical conclusion that this woman falsely accused this man of rape. Certainly any rational person would come to that conclusion.

I'm not saying there is a connection between this report and the over or under reporting of rape, I'm saying that a situation where there is a presumption of guilt leads to false reports and does nothing to increase accurate reports.....you know, why it's a faulty system. You can "fight" that all you want but ANY system that uses a presumption of guilt makes it far too easy for innocents to be punished, you know, that's why we don't use that system in our courts.

 

That sounds like a pretty spot on analysis of the situation.

 

I think some of his side-tracks were encouraged. It became a bit sloppy in the first few pages because I think more conservatives care about this case and have heard of it than anyone else. It seemed like you and Bobby (probably just Bobby) were trying to make a point about rape [on campus] generally and then the feminist rape argument happened.

Personally, I voted "more facts" because the article in the original post didn't give any context. I didn't realize there was already so much journalism dedicated to the incident. I imagine most people who voted "more facts" had not been exposed to the other reporting on it and frankly I still don't see this as a matter of national concern. I'm convinced he is innocent of abusing her and even more convinced that she couldn't meet a legal standard of proof.

There are still questions left open about the case. I don't understand what motivation the other accusers, particularly the black gay guy, have to come forward. His situation is the weirdest in that it seems like Nungesser at worst tried to kiss him. Four sexual assault accusations by different individuals? Even if the mattress-lugger is a liar can we be certain that they're all lying?