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Comment by DisruptiveDave | Hacker News Reader

In my junior year of college (very early 2000s), a senior friend was accused of rape by a classmate. Within two days he had to hide out at my girlfriend's house because a large group of large athletes was on the hunt for him to beat him up. Within weeks he was expelled from school. I don't recall the police ever being contacted.

Turns out the girl was ashamed she voluntarily slept with him. She admitted it to friends a couple months later. That was too late, of course. She received zero punishment. He was "lucky" that the police weren't notified on Day 1.

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I was once told (very emphatically) that no woman would lie about being raped because it's such a horrible thing. I just stood agape.

People like about horrible things all the time to hide things that they think are more horrible.

Worse, some people don't care about anyone but themselves, and will lie for any advantage or benefit.

#BelieveAllWomen was in fact a real thing, a year ago....

As a reaction to a system where literally thousands of women's rape kits are not tested for years due to a combination of mismanagement, underfunding and understaffing, as well to structural issues such as male police officers not taking sexual assault accusations seriously or subjecting victims of assault to traumatizing questioning with no care about their mental well-being.

Back then, the status quo was "if you're a woman and you got raped, good luck getting justice".

Yep, exactly my point! The believe all women hashtag was literally a real thing... Literally referring to rape claims!

It's still that way, no matter how you present. If you're a woman, good luck getting justice after going through the horror of an exam and a police report in which you have to relive that same experience and a trial in which you often have to face your assailant directly, reliving it yet again. If you're a man, good luck even having your initial report recorded in the official record and then receiving no support in dealing with the trauma and violation and then risk being outed and treated like you're a weak subhuman if you dare try to reach out for help. It's one hell of a sick joke all around.

Believe everyone when they say that they were assaulted, full stop. Everyone is entitled to compassion and care. In terms of making sure no one else is assaulted by the same person who assaulted them again? Collect all evidence, with all care, every single time, process it in a speedy manor and let the usual standards of criminal justice apply, as they always must. Anything less is a direct menace to society.

How to deal with uncertainty:

If you are not in a position of judgement or power, give all parties the benefit of the doubt -- accuser and accused -- and show compassion. Especially if they are personally right in front of you.

If you are in a position of judgement or power, like a reporter, a judge, a prosecutor, or a juror; then use a fair and impartial process.

#testallkits seems more appropriate than #believeallwomen.

We should make the punishment for falsely accusing someone of rape equivalent to the punishment for rape. That's take care of the problem.

This assumes the court system is infallible though when we know it is not. Plus, I can see something like this deterring actual victims from coming forward.

something like this deterring actual victims from coming forward

This is also a possibility, but it's pretty much universally accepted that it's better to let a criminal go than to punish an innocent person.

I don't agree. I would argue that the rise of the victims' rights movement suggests that culturally, the United States is beginning to see the few false reports/convictions as an acceptable casualty to the vast majority of truthful reports.

I mean, we have Marsy's Law being added to state constitutions left and right. One of its provisions is that the victim[1] can refuse a deposition before trial. This obviously conflicts with the accused's right to access all the evidence, does it not?

Another provision limits the amount of time a convicted person can seek post-conviction relief. The goal here is to remove stress from the victim, but again, we have seen many convicted people be exonerated due to DNA evidence, or other evidence that arises after the fact. Again, this is a statement of values - that the deprivation of liberty is less important than the desire of the victim to not feel anxious about the perpetrator's possible release.

[1] I would argue that calling a complainant a victim undermines the presumption of innocence. If you're a victim, it follows that the accused is a perpetrator.

Innocent until proved guilty is a fundamental principle of American values. I don't at all see why we should throw that out the window and say that "a few people falsly convicted is an acceptable casualty" just so we can catch more perpetrators.

I mean, I agree. I'm not in favor of "acceptable casualties", I'm just saying that the mainstream opinion is changing.

This is precisely what another commenter on this thread meant when they said the presumption of innocence that underlies our system of justice is currently eroding in modern society. Assuming guilt gives too much leeway for authoritarian abuse

It doesn't. Not saying that we should throw in jail any accuser who fails to prove their case. But if it's proven they made it up, then we should. There are three outcomes, not two: proven guilty, inconclusive, proven not guilty. Either end comes with an equivalent penalty, middle comes with acquittal.

....provided "rape" is defined as something other than "whatever the accuser says it is".

If they become equivalent, it just increases the odds that the accuser will take it to their graves and the name of the accuse will be tarnished forever.

You should watch the Netflix series "Unbelievable" or read the true story it's based on:

https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an...

It's eye opening about how hard it is to be believed about even a "classic" masked stranger, home invasion rape.

Having read that (and watched a couple of episodes of the Netflix adaption) I'm more likely to believe the original commenter's friend commited a rape and the victim was just compelled to deny it, possibly suffering twice.

The woman admitted she lied, in private, to friends. Where is the coercion? Are you saying we should only believe women when they are accusing men of rape? And disbelieve them later?

I think we should take statistics into account.

I think there's a likelihood that someone will lie about being raped, and a likelihood of them identifying a named individual (two numbers that should be considered seperately, since young girls who fall pregnant may lie to avoid blame, while not trying to blame anyone in particular).

I think that similarly, there's a percentage of retractions that will also be false, for various reasons.

This is similar to the statistics question about whether someone has cancer when a test comes back positive. It depends on the accuracy of the test and the base rate.

I could easily believe that there's more false retractions than false accusations (both as a percentage and an absolute number) so I'm not sure a retraction actually increases my belief in their not being a rape, particularly if a specific person is named, without taking into account other specific evidence.

This is exactly the problem. You want to determine guilt based on what you believe is generally true about the world. Not about the facts of the case at hand.

The negative ramifications of this mindset for the accused are hard to overstate.

How is that not equally true of anyone who makes the opposite determination?

We have no information besides a third party report of an accusation and a retraction.

My understanding of the world is that false accusations are rarer than many people think and false retractions are more common.

There's negative ramifications that are hard to overstate to that as well.

Have you considered that it is not your job to make a determination?

If someone shares a story like this you politely believe them and move on, comfortable in the knowledge that it may or may not be true.

"Your understanding" is purely anecdotal.

> you politely believe them and move on, comfortable in the knowledge that it may or may not be true.

You have a very different understanding of the word "believe" than I do.

Someone may be speaking honestly but still be incorrect.

When I believe someone I am making a judgement that they are not deceiving me, not that they are infallible.

It isn't different from the opposite determination in that sense. But the burden if proof is on the accuser (or at least it was, until recently), as expecting people proving a negative is often not feasible.

I think you must be crazy to mix in statistics.

That's why each individual case is being judged individually according to evidence, facts gathered and etc.

With the same mindset you could say that if a member of some group is accused of murder, he must probably be guilty because this group of people statistically are convicted more that exonerated?

It's not just the school system. I don't dare so much as flirt with anyone in a friendly way, because that becomes fuel for a possible case. It really is to the point where outside of group settings, nothing should ever be done with the opposite sex outside of marriage itself. Whatever women's lib was trying to achieve, it begins to look more and more like Islamization daily. Not to say I hate either, but it seems they used to be opposite goal sets, but slowly they are evolving back to be one and the same. I want women to have rights, but anything where an accusation becomes instantly proof seems to throw us back towards older times of isolation.

Good point! My understanding is that the horrific situation depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale started by well-educated women pushing on women’s rights! Also suggest reading Houellebecq’s Submission for a related view about pushing legitimate viewpoints to extreme.

> Turns out the girl was ashamed she voluntarily slept with him.

This happened to a classmate of mine in high school but it was reported to the police. He shot himself in the head.

I bet a few dollars that everything that is wrong about how we handle sex related issues (be it improper flirt, harassment, or more) is based on a long history of stories like this.

Too often witness are unreliable. There's a gray area where only a patient and wise (ideally) judiciary system can make sense of all this. Otherwise.. it backfires in mobthink.

Well this kind of anecdata if shared really has to come with details. Even if I knew and trusted you well I would need to hear about where the information comes from. There are huge gaps of detail to be filled in.

I am not saying that false accusations do not happen. I'm saying these kind of hearsay stories are not even evidence for the people that tell them.

I think it's horrible that this happened, but to be perfectly honest, this is why society is having a massive argument around what consent means. Did she really consent to having sex with him if she felt so ashamed of it afterward that she accused him of raping her? How voluntary was it really?

If you're a kid in this position, wondering whether it's dangerous to have sex, the answer is yes, it's one of the most dangerous things you can possibly do. Wasn't that long ago that having sex could put you in an early grave with an uncurable disease.

So just add "false accusation of rape" to the ever growing list of things that can happen to you if you're not careful with your jubbly bits.

Get everything in order before you start having sex. If you're in school, make sure your grades are decent, you know how to wrap it, line up someone who you know is interested and already have a friendly rapport with.

To go about it in any other way at all is to invite grave danger. It's always been this way, there has been no point in at least the last 1000 years, probably even longer that sex couldn't royally ruin your life.

Bollox. I don't think I could disagree more with practically everything you have written.

Which part, do you think we shouldn't be worrying about consent issues when having sex? Or maybe that teenagers absolutely should be banging everything that moves?

Using your logic: Drugs are dangerous. Your rights being violated, your stuff being taken, and getting thrown in jail are just a few more dangers. If you don't want those things to happen, don't do drugs.

The flaw is that you can't equate natural and artificial dangers. Natural dangers are equal-opportunity dangers. Artificial dangers can be used to oppress people.

Also, avoiding behavior X is not enough to avoid the danger. There's not much evidence that Brett Kavanaugh was ever alone with Christine Blasey-Ford, but he still faced serious danger from her.

Drugs are dangerous even without the threat of being thrown into jail. They're not victimless either. If you become a junkie, you're a drain on everyone around you. Your family suffers, your ability to participate in society is wrecked. To say nothing of drinking and driving.

I don't do drugs recklessly. I don't have reckless sex. I do not think these things should be okay to do until and unless you take the proper care to do them without causing harm to others. If you don't take the proper care, then it doesn't matter whether the danger you run afoul of is "natural" or "artificial". Taking the proper care obviates both types of dangers.

Don't be reckless, or the life you ruin might not be your own.

"Don't be reckless" is simply not good enough when there's no due process, no standards for evidence, and no standards for guilt.

You can be very careful, and still end up on the wrong side of a baseless claim. Could be anything from a lie, to a dream, to mistaken identity, to a drug dog sneezing. Without due process, anything goes, and being careful isn't enough, because suspicion becomes guilt and by the time you sort anything out the damage is done.

And artificial versus natural does matter. It's the difference between misfortune and injustice.

You brought up Brett Kavanaugh. That's a silly example. Anybody in politics knows it's a hostile environment. It's like walking into a gunfight and expecting to not get hit. You might not get hit. But just being there makes you a target.

In the OP's situation, basic sexual hygiene would have prevented the whole thing. It will for everyone that doesn't put themselves first and foremost in a shooting gallery.

You can use the concept of herd defense to contemplate how to remain safe in these sorts of situations.

Isn't politics the place we need to use the most restraint? Otherwise, it's just too easy to remove an inconvenient politician from play.

If you're in politics, you need restraint more than anyone.

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