Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about the US, but in the UK the situation regarding (1) is the reverse. In the recent scandal, the (student) president of Oxford Union was publicly accused and arrested because of rape allegations. He was subsequently found innocent and one of the victims apparently made up the whole story, but in the meantime a lot of influential people have cancelled their talks at the Union and his name is smeared for life, while there have been no negative consequences (yet) for the lying accuser - she can't even be named publicly!

Apparently, this has spurned a conversation in the UK media whether the names of people accused of sex crimes should be kept confidential until they are found guilty, in order to avoid ruining innocent people's lives.

View on HN

I agree on the point that allegations aren't true 100% of the time. And it is tragic when someone's reputation is irreparably tarnished as a result of a false accusation.

But it's important to keep in mind that the vast majority of rape accusations are true[1], and this likely carries over to accusations of sexual and gender-based harassment as well.

Statistically, it makes sense to give the accuser the benefit of the doubt. I'd rather unfairly tarnish the reputation of a small minority of the accused, than attack the reputation of the accusers (the vast majority of whom truly are victims of a terrible, heinous crime).

This doesn't mean that the accused shouldn't get a fair legal trial. But I think it does affect how they should be treated by the court of public opinion (until they are exonerated, in the rare cases where that actually happens).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape#Estima...

Hm... how about treating both the accuser and the accused fairly and respectfully? E.g. by not revealing identities of either one of them until the case proceeds to trial.

It sickens me that you think people "should" be treated by the court of public opinion in any way.

I upvoted you, but, do we have to choose? Do we have to decide that one side or the other is lying? Can we treat accusations seriously without destroying the accused, and treat the accused's rights seriously without destroying the accuser?

EDIT It's said how comments here are flipping back and forth between black and grey like I was watching some sick checkerboard of humanity.

(I've actually been upvoting most of this conversation!)

I think we're actually on the same page -- I don't think personal attacks help at all. The whole point of Hacker News is to have interesting discussions, but personal attacks are not really very interesting.

And, I think (and I think you'd agree) that we have to take the victim's claims seriously so that we can learn more about how this happened and how we can avoid empowering someone like Mr. Mateen to carry out such reprehensible behavior in our own workplaces. That's the discussion that's worth having.

EDIT: Just wanted to add...this case is somewhat unique in that IAC has literally confirmed that Mr. Mateen sent harassing messages to Ms. Wolfe. I posted my first comment not because I wanted to attack Mr. Mateen, but because I'm getting tired of the typical flood of "oh this is just yet another unfounded accusation against some poor founder" FUD comments on these stories.

False allegations of rape are fantastically rare and the people who make those false allegations are almost always prosecuted, and convicted, for it. Everyone recognises that false allegations are immensely harmful - to the man who has been libled; to other women making allegations; to other women who do not make allegations because they fear not being believed.

> the people who make those false allegations are almost always prosecuted, and convicted, for it

Not really, at least not here in the UK. The Crown Prosecution Service generally doesn't consider it in the public interest unless it's a particularly serious case. For example the most recent case involved a barrister making the accusations and the guy she'd accused being jailed amongst prisoners who'd somehow gotten the idea he was a pedophile[1]. (Those kind of rumours tend to get people brutally mutilated or murdered by other prisoners - kind of a big deal.) Even then, women's rights campaigners protested against the conviction and accused the police of harming rape victims by bringing the case to court.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/26/trainee-barri...

My assumption (perhaps wrong) was not so much that false allegations are fantastically rare, but rather that unreported and/or dismissed cases of rape are shockingly common, and that therefore giving the benefit of the doubt to the 'claimant'(?), at least when the facts are unclear, is a good approach.

That said, I'm generally hesitant to express myself based on those assumptions, but I still question them (and those of others).

Do you have any links/research that shows that false allegations are 'fantastically uncommon'? Because I've heard too many accounts of people claiming false allegation to just assume you're right.

Fantastically rare? Do a google search, it's a huge percentage.

False allegations are far from being fantastically rare.

You also have to acknowledge that when you have a rape accusation, there isn't a boolean result(either the allegation is false, or it's true and this results in some penalty). It's a broad spectrum, with only around a third of the cases resulting in conviction.[1]

Of the 136 cases of sexual assault 8 (5.9%) were coded as false reports, 61 (44.9%) did not proceed to any prosecution or disciplinary action, 48 (35.3%) were referred for prosecution or disciplinary action, and 19 (13.9%) contained insufficient information to be coded (see Table 2).

[1]http://www.icdv.idaho.gov/conference/handouts/False-Allegati...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com