That will bring us back to the original problem – what is to be done about victims of false allegations who have their lives ruined?

@1 – They would have done it for real eventually, menz tend to start with fake–rape and then move onto the heavier stuff.

Matt I’m surprised you don’t see that the emphasis should be on the vast majority of rape victims whose abusers are never brought to justice. False allegations are over-reported, and if you want to fight about tarnished reputations then it’s the attitudes of people who don’t believe in “innocent until proven guilty” where your battle lies, not in the anonymity of accused’s identities which the police have argued damages their investigations (and doesn’t occur in any other crimes).

“Justice secretary Ken Clarke said there would be no early legislation on whether anonymity would indeed be allowed.”

I’m not sure this really counts as backing away. We already knew it wasn’t in the Queen’s Speech, so all he’s basically said is “…and we’re not going to bring it forward now we know it’s controversial”.

Matt: Well, since the coalition’s proposals would have had basically no effect on that anyway, it doesn’t really matter.

@dave

Ha Bloody Ha.

@sarah

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, it’s a difficult one.

>Matt I’m surprised you don’t see that the emphasis should be on the vast majority of rape victims whose abusers are never brought to justice.

I think the emphasis needs to be on both groups. I’m focused on the victims of false allegations because I’ve been very disturbed by the tone of the argument put forward – notably by Caroline Flint (from reading the adjournment debate and her commentary from the Daily Politics sofa) – which seems to aim to close this debate down, claiming that the rights of falsely accused defendants is not the real issue – as she put it in Parliament “not the real injustice”.

>False allegations are over-reported

I’m not convinced of that. The Stern Review cited 8-10% false allegations (and I haven’t read all 3 sources cited). Taking the Feist source (*), that suggested 8% of a dataset which included figures from an early stage in the process. Take the national figures of 13000 or so allegations, ~2000+ (estd) going to trial, and a little under a 1000 (estd) convictions, and it is a hell of a big injustice to be written off as a price worth paying for the greater good.

(*) http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/rdsolr1807.pdf page 36, 40.

The numbers are somewhere between dozens and hundreds, but it will take a long article to get to an exact number. Has anyone done the detailed analysis?

I don’t think that anyone can somehow justify ignoring one set of victims by arguing that their suffering is necessary for another legal process to work properly. That strikes me as just not being good enough; it undermines basic legal principle.

There are more than two sets of victims of false allegations – the “defendants” locked up, their relations, friends, and families, and the real victims of rape.

In a case near here (David Wilson), a false allegation cost him:

* More than 6 months in prison on remand, part of the time in the sex-crimes unit, with all that that implies.
* A ban from seeing his family as he was banned from entering Derbyshire. Of course it also had the impact on the children
* Homelessness.
* His business.
* Continuing to be regarded as “scum”.

The link is here:
http://www.ripleyandheanornews.co.uk/news/My-nightmare-after-false-rape.3683777.jp

A provocative, but serious question: just how much injustice will be acceptable in pursuit of this goal, numbered in suicides, homeless people, children without parents, broken families etc? I’d like an answer from Caroline Flint.

How do we address this? Perhaps we need to be looking at the consequences for malicious false allegations.

>it’s the attitudes of people who don’t believe in “innocent until proven guilty” where your battle lies,

Um. Yes and no. We’ve had a campaign for more than a decade to create an impression of anyone accused of rape as guilty from the moment the allegation is made – which is the root of Stern’s comments on “conviction rate”, including from the mouths of government ministers. Check Vera Baird’s statements in the House. That is the same locus as this battle, which is in politics.

>not in the anonymity of accused’s identities which the police have argued damages their investigations (and doesn’t occur in any other crimes).

If you’ll pardon me not addressing that point, this comment is long enough already.

@cim

Actually, it would have an impact, as reporting of an accusation of rape has a massive impact. Try asking someone who has gone through it.

The issue is wider, but this is one aspect of it.

Matt: In context, Stern’s quote of “8-10%” is as an upper bound and she goes on immediately to note that several studies (Kelly, Lovett and Regan, for instance) suggest a significantly lower number. Their study notes that police forces are very inconsistent about classifying reports as false, and only around 3% of the reports can be classified as “probably or possibly false” when using a consistent classification. Of a sample of 2,643 rapes, they found 39 named suspects of false allegations (remember that many false allegations do not name or even identify a perpetrator) when using the higher 8% rate.Only 6 of those suspects were arrested, and only 2 charged.Scaling this up to the 13,000ish annual reported rapes, that suggests around 200 named suspects of false allegations a year (for comparison, BCS data suggests around 72,000 rapes a year). Of those 200, only about 30 will be arrested, and only about 10 charged.

Meanwhile, the number of rape cases that are reported on in the press prior to a conviction each year is really quite small (and most of those reports don’t come until the trial starts). The chances of any of those people being reported on in the press is tiny – perhaps 1 or 2 a year, if you’re generous with the assumptions.

I don’t doubt that it’s very unpleasant to be falsely accused of rape (though not as unpleasant as actually being raped, which is considerably more likely to happen to a man), but the coalition’s proposals for media anonymity for suspects would do virtually nothing to change that because in almost all cases it’s not press reporting that causes it to be unpleasant.

David Wilson, for instance, was not as far as I can tell from a Lexis Nexis search, reported on anywhere in the press except in articles after his release where he talks about having the charges dropped and the effect they had. The coalition’s anonymity proposals would not have helped him in the slightest.

“n a case near here (David Wilson), a false allegation cost him: (snip)”

Annonymity would have still meant he faced 6 months on remand, the loss of his job, a ban on seeing his family etc. All it would have meant was his name couldn’t be reported in the news.

Instead of advocating something symbolic that will cause actual rapists to get away with it for far longer, I think you need to argue for something that actually will help people falsely accused.

Interesting blog. You may like to take a look at my piece on the same subject: http://dasteepsspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/10/rape-and-anonymity.html