Rape claim made for 'revenge'

[The Straight Story]

(NZ) Rape claim made for 'revenge'

A pregnant north Taranaki woman has told a jury she lied to police when she accused her partner of raping and assaulting her.

The man, in his 30s, cannot be named in order to protect his partner's identity.

In the New Plymouth District Court yesterday the unemployed man denied raping the woman, indecently assaulting her and assaulting her with intent to injure her on the night of June 15 last year. Crown prosecutor Justin Marinovich said the case involved the woman being dominated physically, mentally and sexually by the accused.

The woman told police her partner had raped her, strangled her, kicked and bitten her, and forced her to go with him to New Plymouth to buy cannabis.

But within a month she changed her statement, asking police to drop the charges, Marinovich said. Giving evidence for the Crown, the woman told the court her anger had been building all day after discovering her partner had sex with "a chick" in Auckland.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/8893464/Rape-claim-made-for-revenge

[niyad]

1. this:

**********Crown prosecutor Justin Marinovich said the case involved the woman being dominated physically, mentally and sexually by the accused. **********

***********

She had caused the injuries to her body herself when they argued and she "lost it".

"He grabbed me around the neck to shut me up because I'd been throwing things at him." ******

[The Straight Story]

2. Indeed - there is an interesting problem

He was a controlling jerk, she wanted out.

What are the options for women in such situations?

[niyad]

3. I can think of a couple

[The Straight Story]

4. And I am guessing I would agree with them :) (nt)

[Just Saying]

5. It's good she didn't get away with false accusations.

And I imagine she'll be charged with something related to lying to the police.

[The Straight Story]

6. Yes, that is good - but there is an underlying problem here

As to why she would do that.

[Just Saying]

7. It seems to me there are many options

Besides lying to the police.

What exactly is the underlying problem as you see it?

[NewThinkingChance40]

8. If she hadn't admitted to it

it may have never come out. It seems that as a man in a relationship, the deck is stacked against you. If your partner accuses you of something, the burden of proof is on you to prove you are innocent. It happens in custody battles quite a bit, and I have personally seen one of my friends go through this. His ex was controlling and drug addicted, but it was on him to prove it, and that proved very difficult.

[brer cat]

9. This is not limited to men.

Women are falsely accused as well.

[NewThinkingChance40]

10. Yes they are

and it is wrong either way. The system is supposed to be set up to determine guilt, but too often in these kind of cases, the burden of proof is on the accused. Whether it is a man or a woman being accused, it should be on the accusing party to prove guilt, not the other way around. If a man says his ex is a bad person, it is on him to prove it, and vise versa. I only mentioned men due to what my brother in law is going through, which I have first hand knowledge of.

[Just Saying]

14. Well you're talking about different things

Criminal charges are one thing and custody is another. Those accused of a crime are innocent until proven guilty.

I'm not sure what the burden of proof is in divorce or family court. Because your brother in law is having a bad time doesn't mean this is how divorce/custody courts always work or that the deck is stacked against men. I have first hand knowledge of a man who beat the shit out of his wife and still got custody of the kids. She couldn't prove he beat her.

Divorce and custody battles can be very nasty and people sometimes do things to hurt each other instead of what's best for the kids.

[NewThinkingChance40]

15. If a woman goes to the police

claiming rape, and she has bruised herself, and did have consensual sex. It is very hard for a man to prove that it was consensual and not rape. It is on him to prove that he did not rape her. If there is evidence that they had sex, and she said it was rape, the courts will go with the woman more times than not. Those are common sense facts in every case. If the physical evidence is there, it is hard to prove innocence.

[Just Saying]

18. Sorry, but you're just wrong.

Out of every 100 rapes:

46 will be reported

12 will lead to an arrest

9 get prosecuted

5 lead to a felony conviction

3 rapists will even spend a single day in prison

http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates

Blows away your claims that "courts will go with the woman more times than not."

Most rapes are people the victim knows and there's seldom evidence of physical violence. And again, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. I've sat on a jury for a rape case and I believe it's actually very difficult to prove rape.

Learn more about rape here: http://www.tnblue.org/mythsandfacts.cfm?sub=whatis

[NewThinkingChance40]

19. But i said

if there IS physical evidence. You are taking my words and adding what you want. It is difficult to prove without evidence, but I was not addressing these cases for the fact that so many cases go unreported. Fact is that when there is physical evidence, it is on the defense to prove innocence.

[Just Saying]

20. I'm showing you statistics

That only 5% of rapists are convicted and only 3% serve time. I don't see how anyone could think a subset of this small group is being railroaded.

Do you have anything to prove that when signs of physical abuse are present the conviction rate is higher? What percentage of rape victims show signs of physical abuse?

Physical evidence as far as evidence of sex is proof only of sex not rape. Fact is, the defense never has to prove innocence in a rape trial. The defendant is always innocent until proven guilty. Always.

Myth: Women frequently cry rape; false reporting of rape is common.

FACT The FBI reports that only 2% of rapes reports are given falsely. This is the same report rate for other felonies.

http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/myths.html

[NewThinkingChance40]

21. I never said women frequently call rape

I agreed that many cases go unreported. The point i am trying to make is that if a women does choose to cry rape, and there is physical evidence, it is hard to prove it wasn't due to bias in our society. There is a bias to believe a woman over a man because of the history of mens actions.

[Just Saying]

22. And I'm showing you that is simply untrue.

“It is rare for a rape victim to sustain any visible physical injuries in addition to the rape.”
Few victims sustain visible physical injuries as a result of a rape. From 1992 – 2000, approximately 67 percent of victims of completed rapes sustained no bruises, scratches, cuts, or other visible injuries.19 Genital injury may or may not be present after a rape/sexual assault.

http://www.havinpa.org/pdf/chapter1.pdf

Take 33% for those with physical injuries from the 5% of rapists tried and convicted and let me know much any bias is being shown towards women.

You can keep saying it but you haven't proven a thing.

And again, I sat on a jury for a rape trial and can tell you that nobody was biased towards the victim because of "the history of mens actions" and we assumed the defendant innocent until we heard the entire case. Then we deliberated the law and evidence as presented to us by the judge.

Part of the reason women don't report rape is the attitude that women are always making false accusations. That's simply not true. Please read some of the links I posted about rape myths.

[Just Saying]

11. Or it might have come out

And in this case it did. Rape is often not even reported and convictions are an even smaller percentage.

http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates

Any statistical proof that the deck is stacked against men?

[NewThinkingChance40]

12. It might have come out

many times rape is not reported because the victim is scared or afraid. And in the cases where a male is raped, it is even less reported because of shame.

As for the deck stacked against men:

According to some estimates, only about 10 percent to 15 percent of divorced or single fathers have sole custody of their children. The remaining fathers have either joint custody or no custody of their children. Why do women win custody in such high numbers? There are many reasons.

First, it's important to remember that statistics don't tell the whole story. They fail to take into account the fact that:

Couples often privately negotiate custody agreements, and these statistics include couples who have voluntarily agreed that the mother should have sole custody as well as couples that have agreed to joint custody.
When children are born to single mothers, the mother automatically has physical and legal custody unless the father steps forward to claim paternity and ask for some form of custody.
It's also important to realize that men are being awarded custody more frequently today than they were 10 or 20 years ago.

http://www.attorneys.com/child-custody/why-do-women-win-most-custody-battles/

[Just Saying]

16. The point is that false rape accusations

Are very rare compared to incidents of rape. And in reported cases, the accused is innocent until proven guilty.

Your quote does nothing to prove the deck is stacked against men. Your own quote explains that couples just agree to the mother getting the kids or joint. Meaning the fathers wanted it that way. And all the 40% of babies born to unwed mothers are in their sole custody unless the father steps up and asks for more.

[pnwmom]

13. The problem is we don't know they were false. All we know is

she either lied at first or she's lying now.

It isn't unusual for women who have been abused by spouses to change their minds and try to withdraw charges later.

[Just Saying]

17. Yes, it's hard to say.

Abuse victims fen change their minds when it comes to pressing charges.

[Anymouse]

23. Concerning unreported rapes. . . .

Whilst I would hardly justify a rape, the fact is that "X number of rapes go unreported" is a -guess-. If they are unreported, one cannot draw any conclusion about how many there were.

The best one could do would be to conduct a survey, from which data is always suspect.

This is similar to religious claims that "there is one chance in X" (X being an exceedingly large number) that life could have begun on Earth. The fact is there is no data, so one cannot make any claim to knowledge of statistics.

The same goes for numbers of rapes, or any other crime.

This is not to say that rapes are not reported. Like any crime, a certain unknown number are not. But the real statistic is in fact unknown, not some claimed percentage, which would require clairvoyance.

[knitter4democracy]

24. Actually, it's not all that difficult.

Get a statistically valid number of people, ask them how many have been sexually assaulted, eliminate any outliers or weird responses, and then compare that data to the known per capita data on actual crime numbers.

Saying that surveys and self-reporting would be true if we didn't have good ways to take care of sample sizes and anomalies. We believe surveys and self-reporting for many other issues, so why not in comparing actual number of crimes to number of documented crimes?

[Just Saying]

25. Also, many women who are raped do go to the hospital

They do rape kits to prevent pregnancy and STDs and even if they don't want to go to the police, I believe the hospital passes on statistical data.

[knitter4democracy]

27. That data is sad and disturbing, too.

In Detroit, they found a warehouse full of kits that had never been processed, thousands of cases just sitting there while the rapists went free.

[Just Saying]

28. I've read a bit about that.

And not just in Detroit either. Is it a financial issue? Is it the police or lab that's causing it?

Is it any wonder most victims don't get justice?

[knitter4democracy]

30. Yes to all of those, sadly.

The police in Detroit keep getting budgets cut, so they just stashed everything. It's awful.

[Ohio Joe]

26. The media never misses these stories...

A shame they don't put as much effort into the actual rapes instead of just promoting this bullshit as if it were the norm.

[NuclearDem]

29. Unbelievable.

This woman needs to really do some soul searching. Every time a report about a false rape accusation comes up, it becomes just that much harder for women who are truly assaulted and raped to be taken seriously.