We should make the punishment for falsely accusing someone of rape equivalent to the punishment for rape. That's take care of the problem.
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.
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.
The negative ramifications of this mindset for the accused are hard to overstate.
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.
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 have a very different understanding of the word "believe" than I do.
When I believe someone I am making a judgement that they are not deceiving me, not that they are infallible.
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?
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 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.