In making his argument, he hits upon a very important, reluctantly discussed aspect of rape, and trial by media: what do we do with false allegations?
To say this [anonymity] doesn’t matter is not only patronising, but irresponsible and sinister. It also smacks of some darker gender agenda.Anonymity may protect the accused from the consequences of false allegations, but it does nothing to prevent those who make the accusations in the first place from making even more.
Ironically, women like Bindel are enraged at the concept of pre-conviction anonymity for men, yet so few of them are equally outraged by the false accusers who betray the sisterhood (and the real victims of rape) with their lies.
Yet these women are damaging rape justice more than pre-conviction anonymity ever could.
And repeat false allegations are hardly unheard of: virtually all crimes have serial offenders, and the crime of falsely alleging rape is no different, except for the fact that the perpetrators in most cases are protected by laws that shield their identities.
There are two important corollary conversations that arise when the topic of anonymity for accusers and false allegations arises: what happens to the presumption of innocence, and what happens to the wrongly convicted?
Let’s take them one at a time. It’s a common truism that being found “not guilty” is not the same as being “innocent”, and we need to make the distinction so juries understand they cannot return a verdict of guilty until they have been presented with evidence beyond all reasonable doubt.
OJ Simpson, Casey Anthony, George Zimmerman …. there are a number of examples of accused individuals walking free because the reasonable doubt standard was not met.
Does that make them innocent?
Well, yes. Actually, it does. The law is based on the presumption of innocence, not the presumption of insufficient evidence to back your shit up. Arguing that guilty people walk free because the evidence against them isn’t strong enough is sophistry. If an accused is found not guilty, the accused is innocent, and the allegation is false.
Let’s take a look at the famous “rape infographic” from “The Enliven Project” with that definition in mind:
All the unreported allegations we can ignore. We are interested only in allegations that have been formally investigated by the justice system, beginning with police officers and leading to a trial by jury.
70 reports do not have enough evidence for police to even open an investigation:
No evidence = allegations are false
2 reports are determined to be outright lies
Outright lie = allegations are false
30 reports have sufficient evidence to proceed to trial. Of those, 20 have insufficient evidence to convict.
Insufficient evidence = allegations are false
Out of 102 reported rapes, 92 allegations are false.
Well then. It’s not that difficult to grasp why the dominant cultural narrative insists on making the distinction between not guilty and innocent. A more fastidious definition paints #rapeculture in a somewhat different light, doesn’t it?
Is this a semantic argument to claim that allegations that do not stand up in court are in effect, false?
You’re goddamn right it is, and it’s one we take seriously for all other crimes. When state prosecutor Angela Corey called George Zimmerman a “murderer” after he had been acquitted, she opened herself up to a defamation lawsuit, because Zimmerman is innocent under law.
Insisting on semantic equality is a vital step in refocusing the narrative about rape on just how many accusations are unsupportable with evidence: almost all of them.
Ignoring the presumption-of-innocence doctrine allows the media in particular to convict accused rapists before our courts of law have convicted them, by openly calling the accused “rapists”. Let’s look at the Jamie Leigh Jones case as an example. Jones lost her case, but not before hundreds of journalists wrote that her colleagues gang-raped her. Not were accused of gang-raping her, but that they did.
Jamie Leigh Jones worked for KBR when she was brutally gang raped and imprisoned by co-workers and later rescued by her Texas-based Congressman.http://jezebel.com/5505484/kbr-says-jamie-leigh-jones-was-asking-for-it
Franken offered the amendment because a KBR employee, Jamie Leigh Jones, age 19, was raped by a bunch of KBR workers in Iraq and then locked up in a crate when she tried reporting them.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howie-klein/senate-passes-amendment-t_b_311866.html
In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad.http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/09/16/60879/jones-sue-kbr/
I’m sure you all remember the sickening, revolting case of Jamie Leigh Jones, the KBR contractor who was kidnapped, drugged, gang-raped, beaten and imprisoned by her co-workers overseas.http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/21/1122593/-RepublicansForRape-org-is-no-longer-a-parody
Jones was drugged and raped by multiple coworkers while working in Iraq in 2005.http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/08/25/kbr-to-jamie-leigh-jones-your-rape-lawsuit-was-frivolous-give-us-money/
Well guess what? Jamie is a liar. None of that happened. You can read the whole, sordid tale right here in Washington Monthly.
Even the Queen Madame of #rapeculture, Amanda Marcotte concedes that Mencimer’s piece is devastating, and that Jamie probably lied about the whole thing.
Amanda then goes on to wonder why she can call Jamie a liar when Jamie has never been put on trial, claiming a double standard.
AmandaMarcotte6 days agoIt appears that Amanda believes we should NOT doubt every rape accusation, which means what? Accept the veracity of every claim of rape? So the presumption of innocence is entirely discarded then?
@Anakha82 Interesting that you don’t hold accusations that someone is lying to the same standard. Shouldn’t you be frothing at the mouth that I’m convinced that Jones lied, even though she was never put on trial? Seems like a massive double standard, where we have to proclaim our doubt about every single rape accusation, but the accusation that someone lied under oath we are free to believe even without a criminal trial. I wonder why the double standard? Shouldn’t you be furious that I seem convinced of her guilt even though she was never tried?
Absolutely not. We must doubt every accusation against every citizen in all situations. Our justice system cannot function unless we do. Every accused is innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. If that proof does not materialize, the accused remains as they began: INNOCENT.
Jamie Leigh Jones does not have to be tried as a liar: she has already had the courts determine that she is. She was presumed innocent (as in NOT lying), and the evidence demonstrated otherwise. The accused in Jamie’s case remains innocent. By lying in front of the courts, her presumption has been foreclosed. The courts are free to pursue formal charges of perjury against her, but she has already proven herself to be a liar.
Ha! Now who’s engaging a semantic argument? It’s true. I am arguing semantics here, but these words matter. You cannot call a man acquitted of murder a “murderer” and expect no repercussions. He is innocent, under the law. The same goes for all individuals who are exonerated by the courts. The correct word to use is innocent.
The allegations against them are false. For every 102 reported rapes, 92 of them are false.
It matters how we frame the argument.
Now let’s get to the second point: what happens to the wrongly convicted? They have been found guilty. The allegations against them have been determined to be true. They are guilty as charged.
Except when they’re not.
I’m not going to provide an exhaustive lists of convicted individuals who have later been proven innocent, because the Innocence Project has already done that far more effectively. Key word: Innocence
The crucial issue is that in order for any convicted individual to overturn their conviction, they must know who their accusers are.
Which brings us back to the issue of anonymity. When rape accusers are shielded by the courts, and their identities are protected, the ability of the convicted to engage the resources needed to challenge that conviction are severely, fatally compromised.
And that is unacceptable. The long-term solution is to overturn the law that shields accusers, but in the short term, there is another solution: reveal the identity of the accuser.
Doxx them.
Doxxing rape accusers may potentially be an act of civil disobedience, but one that is sorely needed. Every citizen is guaranteed the right to challenge their convictions under the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The right to face your accuser is enshrined in the Sixth Amendment, but the teeth come out of that protection when the accuser is allowed to remain anonymous.
How interesting is it that our friend Nicholas Alahverdian is currently being excoriated by feminists for revealing the identity of his accuser, using information publicly available to anyone, and yet Jezebel had no problem publishing the address of Charles Boartz, the man accused and then exonerated of raping Jamie Leigh Jones.
AVfM does not publish the addresses of private citizens, which is why Boartz’ address has been redacted. Jezebel however, had no qualms in doing so.
Moe: Okay, so the last known address of Charles Boartz was [redacted address].In retrospect, Lloyd is wrong to call for anonymity for both the accused and the accuser. Secret courts have never ended very well in the past, and the central tenets of the law, the presumption of innocence and judicial transparency are severely compromised when we start shielding the public from the wheels of justice.
Wanna do a Myspace search?
Megan: ooh, yes, yes. i’m still going through google. there aren’t that many Boartzes in the world
The mainstream media has proven over and over again that they are completely uninterested in even attempting to achieve any reasonable standards of impartiality and objectivity, especially when it comes to reporting rape and sexual assaults.
And that is where citizen journalists can step in. At the same time that we refuse to believe any allegation of rape without evidence beyond all reasonable doubt, we can refuse to believe the allegations are false without the same evidence.
We can be impartial. And let the courts decide. That is what they are for. Individuals facing false allegations will no doubt respond vehemently to accusations they know to be false, but the rest of us cannot afford such laxity.
I therefore propose the following Standards for Citizen Journalists Reporting on Crime:
No allegation is false until proven to be so.Main stream media is more interested in extending the myth of #rapeculture than actually reporting on it. That’s fine. It’s a brave new world, and the new media, of which we are all a part, can refuse to follow their lead. The more we pursue the truth, the more influential we become.
No allegation is true until proven to be so.
Every person accused or accusing is assumed to be innocent.
When a court returns a verdict of “not guilty”, the allegations are, by definition, false, and we reserve the right to call them exactly that: false allegations.
Every individual has the right to appeal their conviction.
Every citizen has the right to observe justice and both the accuser and the accused shall be named.
And that’s the whole point of this country, isn’t it?
Government for the people, by the people. That begins with truth, transparency and the assumption of innocence.
The mainstream media can peddle their myths. Let them.The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.John F. Kennedy
We will hold ourselves to higher standards.
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