Anna responds this morning to last night's post:
I suppose part of the problem here is an issue of semantics. I am confused why Ken equates a report of a crime to the police with someone in jail. ("But exactly the same kind of injuries are inflicted on a man falsely accused of rape, along with the years of prison. It's important for both of us to think about both things.") I mean, it's not like I could call the police this morning before work, accuse Ken of stealing the plastic pink flamingos from my front lawn, and assume he would be serving two years for larceny by the end of the day. One would hope that we have police officers, defense attorneys, and prosecutors in order to investigate crime reports and weed out as many of the false ones as we imperfect humans possibly can.
Anna is quite correct: one false accusation in four doesn't translate into one innocent in four going to prison. But the article began by describing a study of cases where it did translate.
The study documents 28 cases which, "with the exception of one young man of limited mental capacity who pleaded guilty," consist of individuals who were convicted by juries and, then, later exonerated by DNA tests. At the time of release, they had each served an average of 7 years in prison.
The information in the article gives us a reasonable estimate of how many rape reports include false accusations, but not how many result in convictions. One thing that weighs in the favor of the falsely accused is DNA tests, which have given us a pretty good idea of how unreliable other kinds of evidence can be. What happens in the roughly 20% of cases where DNA evidence is inconclusive? I still think this adds up to a lot of innocent guys in jail.
One final note: there is a bit of jaundice in Anna's post title: "A final point on all these lying women." False accusations in case of rape or any crime have many causes: trauma, confusion, simple mistakes. I don't know but I would guess that outright lying is not the most prevalent one. This was something the original article (by that terrible Fox Network) was at pains to point out.
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