The Telegraph reports today that a woman was sentenced to 8 months in prison for falsely retracting a rape accusation. Not falsely accusing, falsely retracting a claim. The full story can be read here, and Rape Crisis’s statement here. Briefly, the woman went to the police, and reported that her husband had raped her 6 times on 3 occasions. Several months into the trial, she contacted the police to drop the charges. When the court proceeded, and she was arrested for perverting the course of justice, she admitted that the allegations had been true but she had been emotionally blackmailed by her husband’s family to drop the charges so he would receive a lesser penalty.
This story is chilling on a number of levels: it continues a trend of women being prosecuted when rape cases they have brought fail, and on a wider scale makes women far less likely to come forward. Unless you’re raped by a complete stranger in a dark alley, you can expect clouds of doubt, questions about your behaviour, and whether you brought it upon yourself. If you know, or even worse, you’ve dated or previously consented to sleep with your rapist, you can expect the sympathy to dwindle. If you had a drink beforehand, or were wearing, well practically anything, ditto. Stranger rape accounts for a small fraction of rapes reported, and yet it’s still viewed as a yardstick by which to judge how much someone has suffered. Never mind the emotional torment bound up in being raped by someone you’ve trusted, or even loved. Whoopi Goldberg was able to claim that Roman Polanski drugging and raping a minor wasn’t “rape rape” without much backlash.
And the way society views rape by someone who is known to you, and assumes that you could have prevented it, is massively damaging. I can count, from the top of my head, 11 women I know, myself included, who’ve been raped. They all knew their rapist, two-thirds were raped by an ex-boyfriend. None of them went to the police. It all came down to one reason: they knew they wouldn’t be believed, or if it did go to court would go nowhere due to lack of evidence. What evidence can you provide? Several of them had been drinking before being raped. Some had shared a room with the perpetrator. None of us felt able to go to the police. Perhaps most worrying is that two of them were law students.
I can’t see this getting any better under the current government with their grandstanding over anonymity for defendants in rape cases, and the fact that forces are now being pulled up for handling rape cases abysmally shows how rotten the system is. But I know that everytime the tabloids report and vilify a woman who’s been prosecuted, women read the story, and a large number decide there’s no point reporting rape.
As a friend asked recently: where are the headlines for women who don’t come forward, for fear of not being believed?
Why do you appear to disagree with the anonymity of defendants? I have always been under the impression of guilty until proven innocent and by allowing the defendant no anonymity until PROVEN otherwise, then how is this fair to the countless falsely accused?
There seems to be a growing base of feminists that shout from the rooftops no matter what the outcome, even when proved guilty of perverting the cause of justice by lying about rape, something that WILL significantly change a falsely accused person’s life.
When a person is found guilty of perverting the course of justice, especially when its proved beyond a doubt that the accusation is a complete lie, then a custodial sentence, in my honest opinion, is completely justified. The accused face’s on average, 12 month’s of pure hell, living with the prospect that they may go to prison for something as petty as someone’s revenge for splitting up with them or suchlike.
Until it become’s crystal clear that the people who lie about being raped WILL face a custodial sentence, then the real victim’s will alway’s be the innocent falsely accused.
Robert: Why do you appear to disagree that rape should be illegal? Why do you appear to believe that women are the property of men? And why do you use the term ‘countless’ without a shred of evidence? Is it perhaps that you can’t count? You clearly have problems with reading. Or did you simply not bother to read the Telegraph piece, or the post above?
Good post.
Robert – perhaps you might like to read this post by a serving police officer? It doesn’t fit with your version of events – http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com/2010/11/back-to-front-justice.html
Excerpt:
‘The implicit assumption within Judge John Rogers’ eight month jail sentence for the woman is that she WAS a genuine victim of rape and was therefore a dirty liar for retracting her allegations.’
First, let me make it clear. Rape is a despicable crime, of that there is no doubt at all. Add to that, women that are raped should report it as soon as possible so there is the chance of a succesful prosecution.
My knowledge is not just plucked out of my head, its from serving police friends. The majority of rape claims that are investigated today ARE proven false. Down to todays drink till you are incapable society for one (proven to be one of the leading factors into false rape claims from 2009 to the current date)
There seems to be two trains of thought amongst the legal side, one that wants to get as many succesful prosecutions for real rape claims (as they should be) and just as many that wish to prove them false on the same hand. However, it does point towards more and more false accusations being pushed through the courts costing taxpayers more and more money on things that should be thrown out at the police investigation stage, not when its gone through the legal system and cost the country thousands of pounds.
I did read the story and yes, funnily enough, i do understand that she was not jailed for lying about rape but lying about lying. This still wastes the police and courts time and money and puts a lot of people through serious mental stress.