I don't care how you spin it, she needs to pay in some way or another. Hell, the city that convicted him should pay.
It's not enough that he was put in prison, he was put in prison with the tag of Child Molestor. That immediately relegates him to the lowest rung of the totem pole in prison and fair game for beatings by other inmates. Unless he writes a book, we'll likely never know just how much he really suffered, especially for those first years.
This guy deserves some form of justice.
STRESS
The confusion caused when one's mind
overrides the body's basic
desire to choke the living shit out of
some jerk who desperately needs it
For what it's worth, I read (in another shorter article) that the trauma was consistent with rape. Sure, it's not PROOF, but of course it is EVIDENCE. If you are an investigator and you are seeing evidence of assault plus have the (perfectly consistent) statement of a tearful child, you are going to take it seriously. The DA absolutely had enough to go forward in court, and in any other case we would be trashing her if she ignored the evidence and declined to press charges.
The problem is that the jury did not see that there was reasonable doubt. This is a problem with society, the evil child molester is very much a part of the public consciousness, and we don't really see stories of men who are falsely accused and how their lives are turned upside down. Even I have only relatively recently come to take that problem seriously. I would say this perception, this automatic presumption of guilt, is just as important to correct, as the assumption that rape victims must have been "asking for it." Too many jurors don't take their role as an unbiased arbiter of justice seriously.
Now regarding the above.
http://www.theforensicexaminer.com/archive/spring09/15/ Recomend to read.
Now based on these FBI studies around 41% of all reported rapes are proven to be false even before they reach the court. Now if you would add to this those disproven in court and a number that the police simply drops off their statistics due to a variety of reasons you would end up to a NEAR HALF OF ALL REPORTED RAPES TO BE FALSE.
I agree probably there is a problem of under reporting but most likely false accusations are much much more rampant.
If you consider costs of all these unneeded investigations, wasted time, plus the fact that every time the police will run into a false accusations they are a tiny bit less likely to consider the real ones real, False reports do more damage then under reporting to the women themselves.
And now I dont even want to go into the part where we consider the possible damage done to the accused. To his reputation, his life etc. The possibility of imprisonment, sometimes time spent in detention, loss of social standing etc. etc. Plus this is one of those things, even if you clear you name in many cases suspicion lingers in the minds of people.
The damage caused can be massive. Like the exemple in the OP. 9 that is NINE year's in jail. Being considerd an incestuos pedophile. Being locked up with the scum of society and even them probably considering you the scum of the earth as often those people have children themselves. The damage done to that man, his life is beyond repair.
I'm sorry but on this one I must say that false accusations should be as strictly prosecuted as Rape itself, with equal sentences and strong social campaining against such things occuring. Jail time should be proportional to the damage done to the falsly accused person's life and reputation.
Why are you posting something from April? Seems like you'd have a more objective understanding of the situation after six months.
I'm sorry, but i just have to tell you that you are an ignorant, closed minded fool, and you need to chill out, think more, and quit being such a douche. Your responses are shrill, closed minded, and ignorant. You need to think outside the box sometimes, and realize its blizzards game and you are not ghostcrawler.
The "myth" of false rape accusations? Here is evidence that it exists so how can it be a myth? It needs to be talked about and something figured out. Rape ruins peoples lives and it is under reported. False accusations ruin people's lives and is swept under the rug. People need to embrace reality so we can stop rape and the mishandling of it. People don't understand how ass backwards we are right now and its doing nothing to stop actual rapists.
I didn't say the myth of false accusations. I said the myth of rampant false accusations.
Something like what? 3%?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_s...rly_school_age
It is not uncommon for children to both masturbate and "play doctor" with each other from an early age.
That figure was based on a polygraph test. A polygraph is basically a stress test, and you are asking rape victims about their rape. It's kind of hard to take a study like that seriously. I'd really like to see them ask the "proven true" victims to take the polygraph as a control, then this study might be more credible. I have to say, if you require polygraphs for someone reporting a rape, you can about guarantee that real rape victims reporting would plummet.
An interesting point brought up by this study (that I've seen before) is that _80%_ of the false allegations involved a victim claiming she was raped but didn't really know the suspect. Compare to 75% of "proven" victims who knew their attacker. I think it's important to keep this in perspective, as the number of falsely accused are much lower than that figure would suggest.
Regardless, this is a very important topic and we need more research here.