Very good discussion going on here, I think Foxxy, Aphro and Retro are all making some interesting points.
The Cosby story now has another layer of complication. A former employee of the studio where Cosby worked has provided
documentary evidence of monthly payments to women. The guy said the payments were in his name, and he only recently realized that was to keep Cosby’s role in it hidden. Anyway, it seems that some women Cosby drugged, and others he may have had consensual affairs with, and supported and/or paid off. I think it was reported by some of the allegedly drugged women that they received some money, but it seems that not all who did were drugged.
FoxxyBrown1111 said:
"Sgt.
Sandra Tomeo of Plano PD told reporters for the Plano Star Courier that false rape accusations were “a common occurrence,” citing numbers indicating that
~47% of rape accusations made to Plano, TX police were demonstrably false"
Not 90%, but also not 7.3%...
Nuff said...
Took me like 10 seconds...
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/avfms-mega-post-10-reasons-false-rape-accusations-are-common/
There's no question that some women do lie about rape, but it's really difficult to get at numbers. This site provides some evidence, though little in the way of controlled studies are cited to back up his claims. On the contrary, he dismisses academic studies to a large extent, arguing that academics have less access to critical data than prosecutors and others working in the criminal justice system do. A lot of the evidence cited in this article comes from statements of prosecutors who estimate the proportion of false allegations. That's not to say they're not right, just that we don't have any way of validating their claims.
However, there is
one academic study cited approvingly which concluded that about 40% of rape allegations were false. The study was carried out in a relatively small Midwestern town, and most of the women had only a high school education, so I don’t know how representative the sample would be. The criterion for calling the allegations false was that the woman herself in these cases recanted. While she might have felt pressure/threats to do so, the author notes some factors that suggest that wasn’t the case. One of those factors is that almost all of the women recanted almost immediately, within a day or two. There were very few cases of a woman maintaining a false charge for a sustained period of time.
However, this also means that the false charge had no legal consequences, at least, for the accused. So the proportion of false accusations may be much larger than the proportion of men who are severely impacted. Also, a significant proportion of false allegations were made against unidentified men. This is obviously another factor that would reduce the number of men who are actually victimized by false allegations.
I myself know a woman who missed an appointment for a job interview because she overslept. She called the employer and said she had been raped the previous night, as an excuse for missing the appointment. I know for a fact that it was a lie, but it was a harmless lie, as no one was specifically accused, and she didn’t get the job, anyway.
Another interesting finding is that none of the false allegations involved oral or anal sex, though many of the true (at least, not recanted) allegations did. The author speculates that if the woman is lying, she at least wants to minimize the seriousness or the lurid details of the act.
But I never heard Steve Sax or Ryne Sandberg complaining of gay rape after hitting one out of the park.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist repeating the old joke. If Orel Hershiser and Steve Sax could make a baby together, the kid’s name would be…