In Interviews With 122 Rapists, Student Pursues Not-So-Simple Question: Why?

[Lestat]

I've actually known of a woman who says she wants to be raped. She has (or had, she's had several, moving from various host to various others after a host basically won't tolerate her posted content) several blogs. She HAS been raped, and says she wants to be. In fact she actually goes so far as to say as far as  sex goes, she wants to be used as a piece of meat, for the guy to STFU, fuck her and fuck off.

Lived in an underground self-made bunker, after she got fired from her job at a nuclear plant for disclosing the fact, dug the place out, in the woods, tapping power from the grid (illegally but who gives a shit). I have to confess, having seen her pics of the place, it was AMAZING. Totally teched-out. If you were to include an armory, a geiger-counter and an NBC suit or three, then you'd have one hell of a survivalist apocalypse-bunker. I seriously envy this lass her bunker, it OWNED. Made money from dumpster-diving for and rehabilitating technology and ebaying it (yeah, she had internet and everything)

She is autistic (autistic savant type) and seems pretty damn smart. Although about as comprehending of people as people are of the languages spoken if any, by, if any, silicon based life located in other fucking galaxies. They are/we are, to her, as well understood as a potato understands how to fly a fighter jet.

In many, many ways I feel a lot of compassion for the girl. In her kane-cave, she even kept beer in her mini fridge. AFAIK she doesn't drink. Why, you might wonder, would a non-drinker keep a case of beer cold at all times? to offer to people who'd rape her.

Messed up, certainly. Search for 'faye kane'

Not sure what (if she has managed to host one) her current blog address is, but it makes some interesting reading, both from a psychology viewpoint, and shes a serious astrophysics geekstress. As well as one helluva kinky fucker. Whilst yeah, I'd love to get in bed with her, I COULDN'T rape her, (or anyone else), and she gets off on some serious masochism/BDSM....pins poked through clit and nipples....sheesh..bloody christ on a barbeque..some fucking messed  up shit. That I'd have a big problem with, in that I don't think I could, even to get off a willing partner, strike a woman other than in either self defense against having violence done to me, to protect another person from violence, or to prevent an animal being abused.

But faye kane makes for some interesting reading....and I don't know anybody else who could explain the uncertainty principle in terms of a girl standing on a chair, bound at some point to tip over in a given direction, surrounded by men, any one of which would fuck the girl in the ass. She's got a novel way of putting things, thats for sure.


And with regards to the term 'rape culture' or 'rape subculture', quite frankly the very concept is nauseating, in that is suggests such a base, abhorrent act is or could be in any way cultured. A group/sub-group phenomenon perhaps, but not a  'culture'. A culture, outside of the context of a microorganism being bred, is something which has class, and is refined. Is something to be striven towards the attainment of. And rape, is not it.

Ignoring statutory 'rape' where there is  a relationship between two people who exert no power over one another that the person such a power is exerted over is not the totally aware, and not just consenting to, but desirous of that power being exerted (E.g the context of bondage etc. in their sexual practices), and where the one, and ONLY way it is 'rape' is in the lex legis of the country the people in that relationship are located, but otherwise, all partakers in the relationship are even in status, and truly desiring any and all interactions between them of a sexual nature.

I won't say what, for legal reasons, but the younger of the former fiancees I have had, as an example. One of the two of us could have been jailed for some of our activities on the grounds of the number of solar cycles the person in question had existed for, yet had ANYBODY posed a threat to the other, attempted to exploit them in any way whatsoever, or done them harm, the other partner would not have thought twice about reduced the one posing the threat to. The love  was mutual, and it was both total and equal. Neither would lift their little finger against the other, save in (quite lewd and most certainly illegal) manners of using it to pleasure the other...if you catch my drift. (lets just say, that, to my considerable regret, I even had to decline certain requests, given that the acts in question would have been performed in places such as a train station, and if seen, would certainly have been reported, and if so, one of the two partners would be arrested and charged both for statutory rape and for gross indecency [well, indecency, neither of us would consider it gross, a classically autie girl in a horny as hell mood with looks to die for and a personality to match...who could say no? , this girl...she could turn homophobic females into rampaging bulldykes ]
Search her out online. Although NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK! I cannot possibly express that strongly enough. Her astronomy and astrophysics, physics stuff is real interesting reading.

[Jack]

Maybe we should call it a "rape subculture" in small-town Australia rather than a "rape culture" ? 

There is a major problem at US colleges with what could be described as a rape culture, or rape sub-culture.

A significant number of girls experience rape, sexual assault, and attempted rape.

But I heard a very telling statistic recently (I don't know how accurate, but it "sounds" about right), that it is 3% of the males at colleges who are responsible for such behaviour. The fact that the number of girls who are assaulted in some way is significantly higher than that harks back to a point that Al made earlier: these type of males tend not to just do it once or twice.

Rape culture is not just about the ones doing the raping. Everyone who blames the victims, who questions their motives in reporting these crimes, who passes it off as "boys being boys", is also an active part of that rape culture.

Rape is no exception among violent crime to have a higher instance of victimization among the poor and uneducated. Once read somewhere that females without college degrees have stats about a third greater than their higher educated counterparts. That's not to say universities aren't experiencing a problem; it's just not a unique problem and society is focusing on the victimization of the privileged.

[Al Swearegen]

Maybe we should call it a "rape subculture" in small-town Australia rather than a "rape culture" ? 

There is a major problem at US colleges with what could be described as a rape culture, or rape sub-culture.

A significant number of girls experience rape, sexual assault, and attempted rape.

But I heard a very telling statistic recently (I don't know how accurate, but it "sounds" about right), that it is 3% of the males at colleges who are responsible for such behaviour. The fact that the number of girls who are assaulted in some way is significantly higher than that harks back to a point that Al made earlier: these type of males tend not to just do it once or twice.

Rape culture is not just about the ones doing the raping. Everyone who blames the victims, who questions their motives in reporting these crimes, who passes it off as "boys being boys", is also an active part of that rape culture.

Rape is no exception among violent crime to have a higher instance of victimization among the poor and uneducated. Once read somewhere that females without college degrees have stats about a third greater than their higher educated counterparts. That's not to say universities aren't experiencing a problem; it's just not a unique problem and society is focusing on the victimization of the privileged.

It also is not to say that universities are experiencing the problem they are purporting.

[Al Swearegen]

Well here's a thing about anecdotal evidence, Al: you can't just overturn a growing weight of anecdotal evidence by presenting a counter-anecdote. Not reasonably.  Presumably, that film was inspired by various anecdotal evidence (that kind of thing usually is) ;it drew more anecdotal evidence out of Silly Walks ; which in , turn, inspired me to present some anecdotal evidence of my own.

I also  pointed out that I know for a fact (purely by introspection)  that my own sexual attitudes were very much influenced by the prevailing social mores (confused and contractory though they were)   so why should n't the same be equally true of other people, especially men?

In answer to all that you cite your family , as not participating in the  supposed rape culture. And you expect us to just drop the theory  that a rape culture exists on that basis? That's just not gonna satisfy anyone but you Al, because nobody's actually trying to suggest that everybody is the same.

Sure we all can present anecdotal evidence and what does that show? Did I dismiss it out of hand? No. Did I say these were all a lie? No. What did I do?

Show me something substantial that a rape culture exists. Show me a law supporting it? Perhaps the educational book that supports it? Maybe the Recognised spokespeople for it? No? No...why not?
Might it be because rape is actually so hated and despised by society, that it is illegal and advocating for it is likely to have the person doing so come to harm? Does it have anything to do with rapist men often facing mob justice from the hands of victim's families? Is it true being branded a rapist is like a scarlet letter? Is ANY of that true OR is there rape culture?

Isn't it more true that due to the fact that it is NOT a rapist want to very often isolate the victim for fear of getting caught, incapacitate the victim or intimidate and scare them, then isn't it true threats and being told they will not be believed and that it was their fault and all of this play a part in trying to control a situation from being bought to ANY attention BECAUSE there is no rape culture and rapist must try to keep to the shadows of society?

Have you come to the party with anything substantial to show me that the above is not, in fact, true and that the opposite is true and a culture and society is pro-raping? No? That is because the premise is a load of unmitigated bullshit. Something that a few anecdotes and a want to base wild conclusions around these things will not extinguish.

Now if we step over and around the bullshit we come to other questions like, do rapists exist in small country towns and in Universities? I would presume the answer in any decent population is yes. Is rape a problem? Yes. Can fellow rapist somehow find other rapists? Yes. Are rapists just uneducated on what rape is and what consent is? No.

[El]

Maybe we should call it a "rape subculture" in small-town Australia rather than a "rape culture" ? 

There is a major problem at US colleges with what could be described as a rape culture, or rape sub-culture.

A significant number of girls experience rape, sexual assault, and attempted rape.

But I heard a very telling statistic recently (I don't know how accurate, but it "sounds" about right), that it is 3% of the males at colleges who are responsible for such behaviour. The fact that the number of girls who are assaulted in some way is significantly higher than that harks back to a point that Al made earlier: these type of males tend not to just do it once or twice.

Rape culture is not just about the ones doing the raping. Everyone who blames the victims, who questions their motives in reporting these crimes, who passes it off as "boys being boys", is also an active part of that rape culture.

Rape is no exception among violent crime to have a higher instance of victimization among the poor and uneducated. Once read somewhere that females without college degrees have stats about a third greater than their higher educated counterparts. That's not to say universities aren't experiencing a problem; it's just not a unique problem and society is focusing on the victimization of the privileged.

That's actually a really good point.

I wonder how much of the frequent citation of college rape stats is simply the availability of the statistics?  (Psychology's favorite subjects are pigeons, lab rats, and college students- animals they have easy access to study.)

[Al Swearegen]

Maybe we should call it a "rape subculture" in small-town Australia rather than a "rape culture" ? 

There is a major problem at US colleges with what could be described as a rape culture, or rape sub-culture.

A significant number of girls experience rape, sexual assault, and attempted rape.

But I heard a very telling statistic recently (I don't know how accurate, but it "sounds" about right), that it is 3% of the males at colleges who are responsible for such behaviour. The fact that the number of girls who are assaulted in some way is significantly higher than that harks back to a point that Al made earlier: these type of males tend not to just do it once or twice.

Rape culture is not just about the ones doing the raping. Everyone who blames the victims, who questions their motives in reporting these crimes, who passes it off as "boys being boys", is also an active part of that rape culture.

Rape is no exception among violent crime to have a higher instance of victimization among the poor and uneducated. Once read somewhere that females without college degrees have stats about a third greater than their higher educated counterparts. That's not to say universities aren't experiencing a problem; it's just not a unique problem and society is focusing on the victimization of the privileged.

That's actually a really good point.

I wonder how much of the frequent citation of college rape stats is simply the availability of the statistics?  (Psychology's favorite subjects are pigeons, lab rats, and college students- animals they have easy access to study.)

I wonder how much of the stats are driven by such things as Title 9 and the affirmative consent bullshit.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/03/living/affirmative-consent-school-policy/index.html
California might become the first state to make affirmative consent law. Senate Bill 967 would amend the education code to require schools whose students receive financial aid to uphold an affirmative consent standard in disciplinary hearings and to educate students about the standard. The legislature sent the bill to Gov. Jerry Brown last week.
The legislation has the support of victims' rights groups, violence prevention groups and the University of California System. But critics worry it could define a great deal of sexual activity as "sexual assault" and undermine due process rights of the accused.
Even if Brown vetoes the legislation, consent will still be defined on the University of California's 10 campuses as an "affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed-upon sexual activity."

When young girls are fed a diet that they have no accountability for their sexual choices, that they have no agency, and that bad sex is rape, a lot of bad things can happen. Furthermore, if on an accusation they can ruin a man and get no legal or social cost for doing so and likely as not to be able to do this in virtual anonymity, then but ends will happen and unreliable stats will be the result.

Just to underline this for those wishing to take my words out of context, I will reiterate, rapists absolutely exist on University campuses and not every rape is a false claim by a girl nor an ambiguous sexual encounter. Sometimes rape is just rape.

But self-reported sexual assaults = rape? Is this what the stats are reporting and how is this considered empirically true. If it is not considered empirically true how does this sell the rape culture myth and things like the Title 9 laws?

[Calandale]

Show me something substantial that a rape culture exists. Show me a law supporting it? Perhaps the educational book that supports it? Maybe the Recognised spokespeople for it? No? No...why not?Might it be because rape is actually so hated and despised by society, that it is illegal and advocating for it is likely to have the person doing so come to harm? Does it have anything to do with rapist men often facing mob justice from the hands of victim's families? Is it true being branded a rapist is like a scarlet letter? Is ANY of that true OR is there rape culture?Isn't it more true that due to the fact that it is NOT a rapist want to very often isolate the victim for fear of getting caught, incapacitate the victim or intimidate and scare them, then isn't it true threats and being told they will not be believed and that it was their fault and all of this play a part in trying to control a situation from being bought to ANY attention BECAUSE there is no rape culture and rapist must try to keep to the shadows of society?

I think you're taking the word 'culture' to mean 'community'. There may be some sub-cultures where rape itself
is viewed that way, but that's not what is generally meant. Rape culture is used to point more to the normalization
of certain behavior and attitudes (romance novels are a great example of this) which treads close enough (or even
crosses the line) to rape and sexual assault that there is a more general attitude that these things aren't rape, per se.


(edited to put correct quote in)

[Al Swearegen]

Well here's a thing about anecdotal evidence, Al: you can't just overturn a growing weight of anecdotal evidence by presenting a counter-anecdote.

[...]

nobody's actually trying to suggest that everybody is the same.

thaaaaaank you.  Both points are what I was trying to get at a page ago but I apparently didn't put it very well.

Oh, you put it clearly enough . But Al is ome  bloody hard nut to crack.   I  surely wouldn't presuppose that my own attempt will be sucessful. Water off the proverbial 's back, most likely.

That darn Al just refuses to accept that because you have AN opinion that:

A) It be right
B) The only opinion worth having
C) That he must accept this opinion and make it his own right?

Is that what you were trying to convey?

[El]

A bit of a tangent, but interesting, and relevant in that Al seems quite convinced (I am not sure why) that rape is *over* reported/the statistics are significantly inflated by false rape accusations, rather than it being underreported:

False rape accusations loom large in the cultural imagination. We don’t forget the big ones: The widely-read 2014 Rolling Stone article, later retracted, about a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia; the 2006 accusations against innocent members of the Duke University lacrosse team. These cases are readily cited by defense attorneys and Republican lawmakers and anyone else who wants a reason to discuss the dangers of false allegations. What if a woman has consensual sex, and then regrets it the next day? What if a woman gets dumped by her boyfriend and decides to accuse him of rape as revenge? What if she’s just doing it for attention? Are false accusations reaching epidemic levels in today’s hard-drinking hookup culture, where the lines of consent have been blurred? Critics argue that reports of rape should be treated with more caution, since men’s lives are so often ruined by women’s malicious lies.

But my research—including academic studies, journalistic accounts, and cases recorded in the US National Registry of Exonerations—suggests that every part of this narrative is wrong. What’s more, it’s wrong in ways that help real rapists escape justice, while perversely making it more likely that we will miss the signs of false reports.

Innocent men rarely face rape charges
Let’s start with the idea that false rape accusations ruin lives, and are therefore a universal risk to men. Generally, feminists dismiss this idea by arguing that false accusations are rare—only between 2% and 10% of all reports are estimated to be false. What’s equally important to know, however, is that false rape accusations almost never have serious consequences.

 
It’s exceedingly rare for a false rape allegation to end in prison time.
 
This may be hard to believe, especially considering that rape is a felony, punishable with years of prison. However—to start with this worst-case scenario—it’s exceedingly rare for a false rape allegation to end in prison time. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, since records began in 1989, in the US there are only 52 cases where men convicted of sexual assault were exonerated because it turned out they were falsely accused. By way of comparison, in the same period, there are 790 cases in which people were exonerated for murder.

Furthermore, in the most detailed study ever conducted of sexual assault reports to police, undertaken for the British Home Office in the early 2000s, out of 216 complaints that were classified as false, only 126 had even gotten to the stage where the accuser lodged a formal complaint. Only 39 complainants named a suspect. Only six cases led to an arrest, and only two led to charges being brought before they were ultimately deemed false. (Here, as elsewhere, it has to be assumed that some unknown percentage of the cases classified as false actually involved real rapes; what they don’t involve is countless innocent men’s lives being ruined.)

So the evidence suggests that even in the rare case where a man is the subject of a false rape complaint, chances are that the charges will be dropped without him ever learning about the allegations. This raises an obvious question: Why would false accusers go through the trouble of making a report to police, only to instantly withdraw it?

The reasons for false reports
In every academic study, one of the most common kinds of false accuser is a teenage girl who tells her parents she was raped to avoid getting in trouble. Unwanted pregnancy is sometimes cited by such girls, but the reason can also be trivial; the phrase “missed curfew” shows up with disturbing frequency in these cases. As a rule, it’s the parents who insist on getting police involved. Two different studies have found that almost half of all false rape complaints are lodged by someone other than the alleged victim, usually a parent.

Another kind of case which evaporates rapidly is that of a person who falsely reports a rape in the hope of getting needed medical care or psychiatric medication; in one study, six of the 55 reports classified as false by a police department in one year fit this description. Like the teens who missed their curfew, these false accusers have no interest in pursuing charges after the lie has served its purpose.

Portrait of a false accuser
Some false accusers do press charges, however, and this brings us to an unpalatable point. Because real rape victims are often mistaken for false accusers, it can be uncomfortable to insinuate anything negative about either group. But these two groups are not at all alike. In fact, rape victims aren’t even a group; they have no unifying traits. They can be young or old, black or white, men or women, gay or straight, rich or poor—anyone at all. Even a 65-year-old man can be a victim of rape.

 
Almost invariably, adult false accusers who persist in pursuing charges have a previous history of bizarre fabrications or criminal fraud.
 
When one looks at a series of fabricated sexual assaults, on the other hand, patterns immediately begin to emerge. The most striking of these is that, almost invariably, adult false accusers who persist in pursuing charges have a previous history of bizarre fabrications or criminal fraud. Indeed, they’re often criminals whose family and friends are also criminals; broken people trapped in chaotic lives.

Crystal Mangum, the accuser in the Duke lacrosse case, was the archetypal false accuser. She had previously reported another brutal rape/kidnapping in which no one was ever charged. She had a previous felony conviction, and she ultimately went to prison for an unrelated crime (in her case, murdering her boyfriend). She had trouble keeping her stripping job because the combination of drugs she was on—including both anti-depressants and methadone—made her keep falling asleep at work. Tragically, she seems to have genuinely suffered sexual abuse as a child—another feature that often appears in adult false accusers.

Four motivations
But while false accusers often have similar histories, they have various motives. These can be divided into roughly four categories: personal gain, mental illness, revenge, and the need for an alibi.

Accusers motivated by personal gain are generally the same people who slip on the courthouse steps and sue the city. Sometimes their modus operandi is to claim to be raped on government property; sometimes it’s to claim to have been raped by a government employee. In either case, the resulting suit against the government will typically only be one in a series of fraudulent claims. One such false accuser turned out to have previously filed seven bodily injury insurance claims, including three identical claims against restaurants in which she claimed to have broken a tooth on a rock in her food. Occasionally, however, the gain is not financial, as in the case of a woman who lied about rape because she thought it might help her stay out of prison on a drug charge; or the man, already in prison, who was hoping to be moved into a cell with his boyfriend.

Mentally ill false accusers can be people with severe psychosis who genuinely believe they’ve been raped; one woman claimed to have been sexually assaulted every day for three years by “every gang member in the city.” More commonly, however, they have what is called a factitious disorder: a personality disorder related to (and often accompanied by) Munchausen’s syndrome, which compels them to claim they’ve been assaulted. One such accuser was Sara Ylen, who ultimately accused at least seven different men of rape; in the incident for which she was finally arrested, she appeared at a police station with her face painted in fake bruises that wiped off easily with gauze. Like many such accusers, Ylen also falsely claimed to have a terminal illness, and spent two years in hospice care for cancer, although no doctor had ever diagnosed her with the disease.

These accusers often compulsively change their stories, adding dramatic details without regard either for the account they originally gave or the physical evidence. (Note that more common mental health problems like anxiety, depression, or non-psychotic bipolar disorder are not associated with false rape accusations.)

Revenge is another common catalyst—either as a single motive, or as the reason a particular victim was chosen. Contrary to popular belief, however, relatively few such accusers are seeking revenge for getting dumped or rejected by former lovers. For instance, none of the 52 cases of documented wrongful conviction in the US feature women scorned—although there is one “man scorned”, a remarkably persuasive character who managed to convince his girlfriend to accuse a male roommate who’d rejected his sexual advances.

Other revenge cases include a woman trading sex for drugs who was disappointed in the quantity of drugs; a man who beat his wheelchair-bound girlfriend until she agreed to accuse a man of whom he was jealous; an 18-year-old boy living with an older man who threw the boy out after an argument about the man’s reneging on a promise to buy the boy a car in return for sex; and a woman who accused a man she thought had stolen her husband’s truck while the husband was in prison. There’s also the remarkable case of a woman who accused her gastroenterologist of performing oral sex on her after a colonoscopy, because she was angry at his refusal to act as an expert witness for her in a lawsuit. She then, of course, sued the gastroenterologist too.

Accusers who fabricate rapes as an alibi are mostly the already mentioned teens in trouble with parents, although some are adults, who are typically trying to cover up an infidelity. These are the only accusers who can sometimes seem ordinary, even sympathetic—like the 14-year-old girl with cognitive deficits whose mother found her in a compromising position with a boy, and who took four months to work up the courage to admit the sex was consensual. When charges are brought in these cases, the driving force is often a third party who believes the lie and naturally wants to see the perpetrator punished—and sometimes also to cash in with a lawsuit.

What we know
A final note about who makes false accusations: While popular conceptions of this issue center on female mendacity, clearly many of these stories involve male accusers. Given the fact that men, too, can crave revenge and have personality disorders, this should be obvious. If it’s counter-intuitive, it’s because the issue has consistently been framed as one of gender warfare. But the truth is that false rape accusations aren’t salvos in any political struggle. They’re crimes, mostly perpetrated by the same men and women who commit other categories of crime, and for similar reasons.

 
False accusers almost never tell stories that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as an innocent misunderstanding.
 
Neither are false accusations the result of miscommunications taking place in a murky world of casual hook-ups and heavy drinking. False accusers almost never tell stories that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as an innocent misunderstanding. In a study of false rape claims made to the Los Angeles Police Department, 78% involved claims of aggravated rape—assaults involving a gun or knife, gang rapes, and/or attacks resulting in injuries.

Most of all, it should be remembered that a false accuser is a person making up a story to serve some goal. Whether the impetus is personal gain, factitious disorder, the need for an alibi, or revenge, it’s crucial to the accuser that their story be taken seriously. For this reason, it’s radically unlikely—and in practice does not happen—that a false accuser would invent a story where the issue of consent could seem ambiguous.

It’s necessary to add an important caveat: The same kinds of people who are most likely to become false accusers are also frequently targeted by predators. Teenagers, people with severe mental illness, people with criminal records—all are vulnerable to rapists, who often have a very keen sense of which victims are most likely to be mistrusted by authorities. Although the accounts of these complainants need careful scrutiny, police should take them more seriously, not less seriously, than they currently do. The lesson to be drawn here is not that any individual’s story of sexual assault should be discounted; it’s that the vast majority of rape reports can be believed.

When a woman says she’s been brutally raped by seven men at a public party on a bed of broken glass, as the UVA accuser did, and when that woman has a history of strange lies, as the UVA accuser also did, there’s nothing wrong with being skeptical. But if a woman without any history of dramatic falsehoods says she went home with a man and, after they’d kissed a while consensually, he held her down and forced her into sex—in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, you can just assume it’s true. This is not because of any political dictum like “Believe women.” It’s because this story looks exactly like tens of thousands of date rapes that happen every year, and nothing at all like a false rape accusation.

[Al Swearegen]

A bit of a tangent, but interesting, and relevant in that Al seems quite convinced (I am not sure why) that rape is *over* reported/the statistics are significantly inflated by false rape accusations, rather than it being underreported:

False rape accusations loom large in the cultural imagination. We don’t forget the big ones: The widely-read 2014 Rolling Stone article, later retracted, about a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia; the 2006 accusations against innocent members of the Duke University lacrosse team. These cases are readily cited by defense attorneys and Republican lawmakers and anyone else who wants a reason to discuss the dangers of false allegations. What if a woman has consensual sex, and then regrets it the next day? What if a woman gets dumped by her boyfriend and decides to accuse him of rape as revenge? What if she’s just doing it for attention? Are false accusations reaching epidemic levels in today’s hard-drinking hookup culture, where the lines of consent have been blurred? Critics argue that reports of rape should be treated with more caution, since men’s lives are so often ruined by women’s malicious lies.

But my research—including academic studies, journalistic accounts, and cases recorded in the US National Registry of Exonerations—suggests that every part of this narrative is wrong. What’s more, it’s wrong in ways that help real rapists escape justice, while perversely making it more likely that we will miss the signs of false reports.

Innocent men rarely face rape charges
Let’s start with the idea that false rape accusations ruin lives, and are therefore a universal risk to men. Generally, feminists dismiss this idea by arguing that false accusations are rare—only between 2% and 10% of all reports are estimated to be false. What’s equally important to know, however, is that false rape accusations almost never have serious consequences.

 
It’s exceedingly rare for a false rape allegation to end in prison time.
 
This may be hard to believe, especially considering that rape is a felony, punishable with years of prison. However—to start with this worst-case scenario—it’s exceedingly rare for a false rape allegation to end in prison time. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, since records began in 1989, in the US there are only 52 cases where men convicted of sexual assault were exonerated because it turned out they were falsely accused. By way of comparison, in the same period, there are 790 cases in which people were exonerated for murder.

Furthermore, in the most detailed study ever conducted of sexual assault reports to police, undertaken for the British Home Office in the early 2000s, out of 216 complaints that were classified as false, only 126 had even gotten to the stage where the accuser lodged a formal complaint. Only 39 complainants named a suspect. Only six cases led to an arrest, and only two led to charges being brought before they were ultimately deemed false. (Here, as elsewhere, it has to be assumed that some unknown percentage of the cases classified as false actually involved real rapes; what they don’t involve is countless innocent men’s lives being ruined.)

So the evidence suggests that even in the rare case where a man is the subject of a false rape complaint, chances are that the charges will be dropped without him ever learning about the allegations. This raises an obvious question: Why would false accusers go through the trouble of making a report to police, only to instantly withdraw it?

The reasons for false reports
In every academic study, one of the most common kinds of false accuser is a teenage girl who tells her parents she was raped to avoid getting in trouble. Unwanted pregnancy is sometimes cited by such girls, but the reason can also be trivial; the phrase “missed curfew” shows up with disturbing frequency in these cases. As a rule, it’s the parents who insist on getting police involved. Two different studies have found that almost half of all false rape complaints are lodged by someone other than the alleged victim, usually a parent.

Another kind of case which evaporates rapidly is that of a person who falsely reports a rape in the hope of getting needed medical care or psychiatric medication; in one study, six of the 55 reports classified as false by a police department in one year fit this description. Like the teens who missed their curfew, these false accusers have no interest in pursuing charges after the lie has served its purpose.

Portrait of a false accuser
Some false accusers do press charges, however, and this brings us to an unpalatable point. Because real rape victims are often mistaken for false accusers, it can be uncomfortable to insinuate anything negative about either group. But these two groups are not at all alike. In fact, rape victims aren’t even a group; they have no unifying traits. They can be young or old, black or white, men or women, gay or straight, rich or poor—anyone at all. Even a 65-year-old man can be a victim of rape.

 
Almost invariably, adult false accusers who persist in pursuing charges have a previous history of bizarre fabrications or criminal fraud.
 
When one looks at a series of fabricated sexual assaults, on the other hand, patterns immediately begin to emerge. The most striking of these is that, almost invariably, adult false accusers who persist in pursuing charges have a previous history of bizarre fabrications or criminal fraud. Indeed, they’re often criminals whose family and friends are also criminals; broken people trapped in chaotic lives.

Crystal Mangum, the accuser in the Duke lacrosse case, was the archetypal false accuser. She had previously reported another brutal rape/kidnapping in which no one was ever charged. She had a previous felony conviction, and she ultimately went to prison for an unrelated crime (in her case, murdering her boyfriend). She had trouble keeping her stripping job because the combination of drugs she was on—including both anti-depressants and methadone—made her keep falling asleep at work. Tragically, she seems to have genuinely suffered sexual abuse as a child—another feature that often appears in adult false accusers.

Four motivations
But while false accusers often have similar histories, they have various motives. These can be divided into roughly four categories: personal gain, mental illness, revenge, and the need for an alibi.

Accusers motivated by personal gain are generally the same people who slip on the courthouse steps and sue the city. Sometimes their modus operandi is to claim to be raped on government property; sometimes it’s to claim to have been raped by a government employee. In either case, the resulting suit against the government will typically only be one in a series of fraudulent claims. One such false accuser turned out to have previously filed seven bodily injury insurance claims, including three identical claims against restaurants in which she claimed to have broken a tooth on a rock in her food. Occasionally, however, the gain is not financial, as in the case of a woman who lied about rape because she thought it might help her stay out of prison on a drug charge; or the man, already in prison, who was hoping to be moved into a cell with his boyfriend.

Mentally ill false accusers can be people with severe psychosis who genuinely believe they’ve been raped; one woman claimed to have been sexually assaulted every day for three years by “every gang member in the city.” More commonly, however, they have what is called a factitious disorder: a personality disorder related to (and often accompanied by) Munchausen’s syndrome, which compels them to claim they’ve been assaulted. One such accuser was Sara Ylen, who ultimately accused at least seven different men of rape; in the incident for which she was finally arrested, she appeared at a police station with her face painted in fake bruises that wiped off easily with gauze. Like many such accusers, Ylen also falsely claimed to have a terminal illness, and spent two years in hospice care for cancer, although no doctor had ever diagnosed her with the disease.

These accusers often compulsively change their stories, adding dramatic details without regard either for the account they originally gave or the physical evidence. (Note that more common mental health problems like anxiety, depression, or non-psychotic bipolar disorder are not associated with false rape accusations.)

Revenge is another common catalyst—either as a single motive, or as the reason a particular victim was chosen. Contrary to popular belief, however, relatively few such accusers are seeking revenge for getting dumped or rejected by former lovers. For instance, none of the 52 cases of documented wrongful conviction in the US feature women scorned—although there is one “man scorned”, a remarkably persuasive character who managed to convince his girlfriend to accuse a male roommate who’d rejected his sexual advances.

Other revenge cases include a woman trading sex for drugs who was disappointed in the quantity of drugs; a man who beat his wheelchair-bound girlfriend until she agreed to accuse a man of whom he was jealous; an 18-year-old boy living with an older man who threw the boy out after an argument about the man’s reneging on a promise to buy the boy a car in return for sex; and a woman who accused a man she thought had stolen her husband’s truck while the husband was in prison. There’s also the remarkable case of a woman who accused her gastroenterologist of performing oral sex on her after a colonoscopy, because she was angry at his refusal to act as an expert witness for her in a lawsuit. She then, of course, sued the gastroenterologist too.

Accusers who fabricate rapes as an alibi are mostly the already mentioned teens in trouble with parents, although some are adults, who are typically trying to cover up an infidelity. These are the only accusers who can sometimes seem ordinary, even sympathetic—like the 14-year-old girl with cognitive deficits whose mother found her in a compromising position with a boy, and who took four months to work up the courage to admit the sex was consensual. When charges are brought in these cases, the driving force is often a third party who believes the lie and naturally wants to see the perpetrator punished—and sometimes also to cash in with a lawsuit.

What we know
A final note about who makes false accusations: While popular conceptions of this issue center on female mendacity, clearly many of these stories involve male accusers. Given the fact that men, too, can crave revenge and have personality disorders, this should be obvious. If it’s counter-intuitive, it’s because the issue has consistently been framed as one of gender warfare. But the truth is that false rape accusations aren’t salvos in any political struggle. They’re crimes, mostly perpetrated by the same men and women who commit other categories of crime, and for similar reasons.

 
False accusers almost never tell stories that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as an innocent misunderstanding.
 
Neither are false accusations the result of miscommunications taking place in a murky world of casual hook-ups and heavy drinking. False accusers almost never tell stories that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as an innocent misunderstanding. In a study of false rape claims made to the Los Angeles Police Department, 78% involved claims of aggravated rape—assaults involving a gun or knife, gang rapes, and/or attacks resulting in injuries.

Most of all, it should be remembered that a false accuser is a person making up a story to serve some goal. Whether the impetus is personal gain, factitious disorder, the need for an alibi, or revenge, it’s crucial to the accuser that their story be taken seriously. For this reason, it’s radically unlikely—and in practice does not happen—that a false accuser would invent a story where the issue of consent could seem ambiguous.

It’s necessary to add an important caveat: The same kinds of people who are most likely to become false accusers are also frequently targeted by predators. Teenagers, people with severe mental illness, people with criminal records—all are vulnerable to rapists, who often have a very keen sense of which victims are most likely to be mistrusted by authorities. Although the accounts of these complainants need careful scrutiny, police should take them more seriously, not less seriously, than they currently do. The lesson to be drawn here is not that any individual’s story of sexual assault should be discounted; it’s that the vast majority of rape reports can be believed.

When a woman says she’s been brutally raped by seven men at a public party on a bed of broken glass, as the UVA accuser did, and when that woman has a history of strange lies, as the UVA accuser also did, there’s nothing wrong with being skeptical. But if a woman without any history of dramatic falsehoods says she went home with a man and, after they’d kissed a while consensually, he held her down and forced her into sex—in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, you can just assume it’s true. This is not because of any political dictum like “Believe women.” It’s because this story looks exactly like tens of thousands of date rapes that happen every year, and nothing at all like a false rape accusation.

Al does not think that at all. Are you trying to tell me what I think or others? If you are actually wondering what I think you know what I would do? I would ask. Have you asked or have you presumed?

[Lestat]

There is one (well more than one, but in particular, one comes to mind). At least here, names of POTENTIAL criminals, those who have been arrested, but neither convicted, nor even had charges formally brought against them. Merely held in detention in a police station for questioning, are often released.

And the filth really don't give a fuck. To whit, when two porkers came to the door today, asking about my taken property that  I want back (I.e chemicals perfectly legal to own, and which had NOT been used for any criminal purpose, nor did evidence exist that I had done so, or was going to do so, the only law, related to one of two types of chemical reagent seized, which is on the chemical weapons precursor list, something rather hard to obtain for people not 'affiliated', it ISN'T itself a chemical weapon, but can be used to make mustard type blister chemical warfare agents, although truth told, hydrochloric acid, generable either as dry HCl gas with 98% bog-unblocker grade sulfuric acid and common table salt, or for that matter, obtained simply by walking into a hardware store, handing over money and walking out with a bottle of HCl, can be used for exactly the same, a Meyer-Clarke type synthesis of sulfur mustard(s). I hadn't and had no intention in the slightest to do that, but there is one law relating to the chemical, SOCl2, which is a reagent with MANY many uses that are completely  unrelated to any chemical warfare purpose, its on the 'precursor list', and the law is that those who either manufacture themselves, or trade in over, I forget if its 30 tons or 300 tons annually must declare that they do so. They don't need afaik, a license, only to say 'we are trading in this quantity/manufacturing this quantity'. My supply was 100ml at the time, minus  that which had been put to use, and yet I was arrested for its mere possession, along with another chemical which is sufficiently unusual that I won't name it specifically, no laws relate to its possession, but it theoretically COULD be used to make a pretty non-volatile, area-denial contact-exposure type mustard 'gas' (IF its a liquid, for all I know the theoretical compound in question might even be of sufficient molecular weight to be a waxy solid you would have either to swallow, or to physically touch to be affected), and yet, illegally they were seized. I'm currently bringing legal action against the filth not only to recover my stuff but to seek compensation for all the things they did (including quite literally pocketing valuables, precious stones, of no relation to chemistry whatsoever. Not seizing, they just disappeared, they were in containers they could not fall out of, you have to open them to remove the stones, deliberately, and I can only assume they were spotted by some greedy swine who pocketed them, since the containers were closed before they came to trash the place, and contained the stones, neither of them cheap, but one of them quite valuable indeed. Taken for personal gain)

And the coppers that came, when they tried to write down the names of the chemicals in their notebook, I said here, let me do it, I'm the one fluent in chemistry, and you are the ones fluent in police arrest procedure. And literally, I quote, they said 'not really, we usually just make it up as we go along' (which, IMO is NOT good enough with regards to standards. Those who's profession it is to enforce the law as written by others and authority given to the pork to enforce those laws, they must, must they not, do so according to that which is formally codified in established law, not just 'make it up as we go along and do what suits us when we feel like it')

Anyhow, here, thats about the standards the filth operate at. And name of suspects, not convicts, not even those charged, but merely detained under suspicion, their names are released. And should such a person be held on suspicion of rape, paedophilia, sexual assault not including actual penetrative rape, etc. anything sexual, that is allowed to get out, including into newspapers. Even if that man is either released without charge, or are charged, tried and found unanimously not guilty of having committed the act or acts then people will STILL view them as dirt who should be killed at the first opportunity. The mere accusation in and of itself is sufficient to utterly destroy somebody's life, to cause them to lose their job, to lose all their friends, bar perhaps a few truly faithful friends, or those present at the time the act was falsely claimed to have taken place and who KNOW it cannot have happened, since they were there to see that it did not happen...that is enough, especially if accusations involving children are involved, people won't think twice about beating them, even killing them, never mind the fact they did not do it (the filth are more than happy to release such information before conviction, which IMO is super-fucked-up. If their names are to be released, and if convicted in a valid court of law then a rapist or nonce damn well ought to be outed, but before that, IMO the names of suspects, even those charged, but as yet, who have not had their day in court to present their defense, the truly innocent, they almost certainly will find their lives crashing down in ruins around them, IMO all people arrested MUST, whatever the charge, be protected absolutely until the moment of successful conviction. And when they find people innocent or they are released without charge, also their names must, imperatively, be withheld from public knowledge, because those not charged, or found not guilty, the pigs don't go and publicly correct the record and make sure everybody KNOWS the person arrested on suspicion is not guilty, they just leave them to rot.

And I've known of a...I won't call It either a girl nor a woman, because either implies humanity, this bearer of at least two X chromosomes and no Y, is not even human..I met her on AFF, she claimed her parents and siblings regularly battered her, that her father raped her and so did grandfather and brother. I HAD heard violence, screaming, vicious-sounding violence over a hidden bluetooth we were talking over the phone at. I'd invited her to come here, and live at my place, under my protection whilst we attempted to get her citizenship in the UK, away from these fucks. At the time, all evidence pointed towards that being the truth. She was in fact a compulsive liar, bipolar, borderline PD fucking bitch from hell and klepto slag from the abyss. She then got a BF over in the states, proposed, drained him of all resources he had then made a rape claim, after he'd bought her a ring and a plane ticket. True or false I don't know. I have word from good sources (Kassiane S/RettDevil, genius chick and autie beauty extraordinaire that not only is HE a creep, but I've heard from several sources that his best friend is a paedophile, and did some particularly sick fucking shit, so HE might have done, I'll never know for sure, and I'm sure not going to ask, as I want nothing to do whatsoever with any of them, not including kassi, who I deeply respect, admire, and if I am honest, I've got quite the 'thing' for, and always have. Stunning intellect, stunning looks/body and SUCH a snuggly personality... seeing kassiane snark off against a deserving victim is a sight to behold...she is AWESOME at snark:autism: and a damn fine lady to boot, someone I'd quite willingly marry and have kids with if the choice were given me)

But my former housemate, after making these rape claims, she did it again over here. Got a BF, someone I'm not particularly a fan of, but I don't dislike him enough to wish him harm until or unless he does something to deserve harm being done unto him...but he is, quite honestly, incapable of raping his way out of a paper bag with an napalm strike if his life depended on it. So wet behind the ears he practically pisses out of his nose, and whilst I'm nothing of the sort, he is no more capable of rape than I am. Less so, if that is possible to actually be the case. She bled him dry, for a laptop, a trenchcoat, for a set of sai, a set of crescent-moon bladed daggers (a pair of daggers each with a blade about 10-11 inches to 1 foot long, shaped like a crescent moon or less-curved sickle blade, each dagger having a slit beside the blade, at the guard, that goes deep into the handle, so one can sheath each one in the handle of the other, forming a crescent moon-shaped one-piece handle. Then she got high with him (deliberately, SHE baked the hash cakes, and he knew what he was eating too), then claimed to the filth he drugged and raped her.

Little bitch was one sick little fuckup. Tried to kill me, after I told her to stay the fuck out of my bedroom while I was getting dressed, and she had to wait a few minutes while I woke up and put clothes on before she could feed her pet tropical fish (I let her have a fish tank, keep some as pets; although she stole a kitten from place or places unknown, twice). Total fucking psychotic mental case, and TOTALLY unworthy of being autistic. Had the gall, when I took her magic mushroom picking with a friend of mine, to have a go at me for eating some straight from the field as I picked, despite the fact we each had our own bags to fill, which, naturally, I assumed we each would fill and what we put in them would be ours, since nothing was ever agreed otherwise first before starting the hunt. And my friend, not the bitch, a guy I've known since I was a kid, he did, he filled a bag, picking for himself, so did I, but her...she did too but had the nerve to start screaming and kicking off at me for eating some I found for myself, rather than putting them in my bag. total control freak, and a disgrace to every single last person on the spectrum)

Even borrowed a cat-crate from neighbors who are friends of mine, and hid it in the loft, made me believe I had returned it and forgot.

Some people, if people they can be called at all, those like this bitch (The Bitch, or 'The Bitch From Hell' is what she has forever after been known as.), are damn dangerous, and will use the filth as a weapon. She did against me, got me raided, after the incident with the fish tank, when she tried to kick my door down, then barged in with a katana (curved, very sharp samurai sword, a bit over a meter long in the blade) and actually tried to use it on me. In the end, I drew a ninja-to blade of my own (a ninja-sword, similar to a katana, but rather than a curved blade edge, it has a steep, straight angle at the tip), parried her strikes before landing a real cruncher of a blow to her ugly fat head, knocked her senseless and disarmed her. She was pretty lucky, in that I was closer to the sword than to any of my guns, or she could easily have ended up with a bullet in the head or being hit with a toxic dart, little bitch is lucky to be alive at all, and that I showed the restraint in just parrying and disarming then going in hand to hand rather than running her through)

That day, immediately after I'd taken her weapon, I told her then and there first to turn out her pockets, so I could check for stolen property, then to get the fuck off my property and if she ever came back, save the agreed time in which I would leave her property in bin bags outside the house, that nobody would ever find the pieces of her.)

Bitch called the filth, made up (COMPLETELY false allegations against me, that I was growing weed amongst other things, when I didn't have so much as a speck of weed-twig in an empty bag in the house). And shockingly, the filth acted on the 'tipoff' despite already knowing she'd made false rape claims and was an illegal immigrant in the country.

(and when I went through her stuff, after kicking her out, helping myself to all her valium, temazepam and pain meds, anything else useful too, with the sincere hope she'd suffer a grand mal seizure and die screaming of pure, unmitigated chemical-withdrawal-induced terror) I found she'd been leaching off my meds, just so she could hide them under her bed, and get a hold on me, try to force me into withdrawal to be able to manipulate me. Along with having stolen (saw her do it once) money right out of my father's wallet, waiting until he went to the bog after waking up and then running on tiptoe into his room and lifting notes out of his wallet, the little fucking whore)

There ARE people like that out there elle, I've known one of the worst, most dangerous of them around. Because whilst a pretty inefficient physical threat, as shown by her speedily being disarmed during the sword incident, and beaten (even more, if that is possible) stupid, she was probably the most dangerous person I've ever known. A fucking sneak, a backstabber and willing to do anything and everything it took to get her what she wanted, when she wanted it, from who she wanted it from. Including tarring innocents with the 'rape brush'.

Thing is, as we say in these parts 'mud sticks', meaning that once the allegation is made, people will assume guilt, and since nobody either likes a rapist, or would lift a finger to help one, all that is necessary is the reputation damage, never mind jail time not happening, never mind no conviction. Once the lie is spoken, the mud thrown, it sticks. And it doesn't go away. You smear someone falsely with that kind of lie, and their life is very probably going to end up in ruins and crash down around their feet. The person smeared doesn't have to have done it, all it takes is a malicious little shit to SAY they did.

As for those who are mentally challenged, thats worrying. Of course there are those who are too much so to be capable of a relationship, especially if physically crippled also. But there are a great many such people who do want love, although of course anyone in a relationship with someone spesh in that way must be both extra careful to go out of their way to make damn sure that the relationship cannot be even slightly inequitable. But there are those who are mentally challenged, and both can and do want love. And one thing I hate, whether the lover is me, or anyone else, is to see someone with MR told and treated as basically a person with less rights than those who are NT or autistic, who haven't the right to take a lover if that is what they truly desire, and the person to be the lover is of the kind who will ensure equitability, equality and absolute, unswerving devotion. I've BEEN in such relationships before, and yeah, you have to be careful. One girl dumped me merely because she did not like the way I kissed (she wished me to do so, she just didn't like my technique, so none of her rights were violated, she just didn't like how I did what she wanted me to do) so MR people can be....pretty volatile

Not all of them, but the risk of something like mutually consensual sex being witnessed by a third party, and the MR person coerced into reporting a rape, even when they have themselves asked their BF if they want to fuck, but the third party inadvertently witnessing the lovemaking exerting pressure on the MR person, being overprotective, that is sickening really.)

Saw a TV program once where something like that happened. MR guy, and his loved one, quite obviously they both adored each other. Girl (who by all accounts was absolutely gorgeous, but obviously naive, inexperienced, doing things like putting a condom on a banana, obviously from sex-ed classes and replicating it literally rather than using it on a guy's dick, putting it on an actual banana when about to fuck her bf), girl got pregnant, and her mother pushed for accusing of rape, afaik she wouldn't do it (the girl), but her mother literally forced her to have a late-term abortion, when the partners both wanted to keep the child, IIRC others were willing to help, and the documentary ended with the girl unconsolable, in tears, after her mother forced her to kill her own baby; weeping in agony for her and her BF's loss.

The program was on years ago, and I still remember it, I remember how she looked, her voice, the way her tears rolled down her face, how distraught she was. It is still very painful indeed to bring to memory, the way she wept as she was forced to murder a cherished part of her soul...jesus, it makes me ache inside for her sorrow, even now. I don't think I will ever be able to forget that program. Or how much I wanted to grab her mother and shake her until she shit her own kidneys out in slurry form. Christ..it was one of the most heartrending things I've ever, ever seen in my life, and the way the girl wept, and wept, and wept, desperately, begging to keep her new flesh and blood, only for her to be dragged away and forced to undergo the procedure....no..not the medical procedure. That girl was brutally raped alright. But not by her boyfriend and lover, but by her own mother and the bastard 'doctors' who murdered her poor baby.

Even now, so many years since I watched that true documentary, the thought of her distress brings tears to my eyes, and tears at my heart-strings. Quite honestly, I just wish I had known her, as a person, to be there and provide support and backup, with force if necessary. Because nobody, MR or not, should have to endure something so fucking barbaric.

[Pyraxis]

As for those who are mentally challenged, thats worrying. Of course there are those who are too much so to be capable of a relationship, especially if physically crippled also. But there are a great many such people who do want love, although of course anyone in a relationship with someone spesh in that way must be both extra careful to go out of their way to make damn sure that the relationship cannot be even slightly inequitable. But there are those who are mentally challenged, and both can and do want love. And one thing I hate, whether the lover is me, or anyone else, is to see someone with MR told and treated as basically a person with less rights than those who are NT or autistic, who haven't the right to take a lover if that is what they truly desire, and the person to be the lover is of the kind who will ensure equitability, equality and absolute, unswerving devotion. I've BEEN in such relationships before, and yeah, you have to be careful. One girl dumped me merely because she did not like the way I kissed (she wished me to do so, she just didn't like my technique, so none of her rights were violated, she just didn't like how I did what she wanted me to do) so MR people can be....pretty volatile

Not all of them, but the risk of something like mutually consensual sex being witnessed by a third party, and the MR person coerced into reporting a rape, even when they have themselves asked their BF if they want to fuck, but the third party inadvertently witnessing the lovemaking exerting pressure on the MR person, being overprotective, that is sickening really.)

Saw a TV program once where something like that happened. MR guy, and his loved one, quite obviously they both adored each other. Girl (who by all accounts was absolutely gorgeous, but obviously naive, inexperienced, doing things like putting a condom on a banana, obviously from sex-ed classes and replicating it literally rather than using it on a guy's dick, putting it on an actual banana when about to fuck her bf), girl got pregnant, and her mother pushed for accusing of rape, afaik she wouldn't do it (the girl), but her mother literally forced her to have a late-term abortion, when the partners both wanted to keep the child, IIRC others were willing to help, and the documentary ended with the girl unconsolable, in tears, after her mother forced her to kill her own baby; weeping in agony for her and her BF's loss.

The program was on years ago, and I still remember it, I remember how she looked, her voice, the way her tears rolled down her face, how distraught she was. It is still very painful indeed to bring to memory, the way she wept as she was forced to murder a cherished part of her soul...jesus, it makes me ache inside for her sorrow, even now. I don't think I will ever be able to forget that program. Or how much I wanted to grab her mother and shake her until she shit her own kidneys out in slurry form. Christ..it was one of the most heartrending things I've ever, ever seen in my life, and the way the girl wept, and wept, and wept, desperately, begging to keep her new flesh and blood, only for her to be dragged away and forced to undergo the procedure....no..not the medical procedure. That girl was brutally raped alright. But not by her boyfriend and lover, but by her own mother and the bastard 'doctors' who murdered her poor baby.

Even now, so many years since I watched that true documentary, the thought of her distress brings tears to my eyes, and tears at my heart-strings. Quite honestly, I just wish I had known her, as a person, to be there and provide support and backup, with force if necessary. Because nobody, MR or not, should have to endure something so fucking barbaric.

Yeah... this is a rough one. I remember seeing an episode of Law and Order SVU, years and years ago, that presented a similar dilemma, and it stuck with me. MR girl had a loving MR boyfriend but didn't understand how babies were physically made. This allowed her to be raped by her boss at work, under the pretext that he was doing her "exercises" with her, without her realizing what had happened. She and her boyfriend had been affectionate but never had PIV sex. When it all came out, she and boyfriend wanted to bring the child to term and raise it. She was allowed to give birth but the child was taken away by the court because they were determined not to be fit parents. They were devastated.

[Lestat]

Worst thing was, this was not fiction. If it had, I would have remained my usual, detached self, knowing it to be nothing more than acting. What I saw, wasn't.

As far as getting taken away by the courts...if I ever had an MR kid and they had an MR partner, or otherwise got pregnant, and wanted to raise the baby, the courts? fuck THEM. I would literally have to be killed before I would cease standing at their side. Yeah, I'd go that far. Same if ever I end up in another relationship with a girl who is MR. I'd DIE before I let the filth take the kids, and I would kill until my blade broke and weapons ran dry of ammunition or power cells, and too many bones were broken to stamp on a face and swing a punch. Put it this way, there would be a body count-pile high enough you need fucking ropes, crampons and pitons to get to the top of the heap of pig-helmet-wearing skulls.

I don't know about other people, but I've been in relationships with MR girls, and known them, and those who want love are as entitled to have it bestowed by one who would give it as I am, you are, or anyone else.

I wouldn't and don't see it as 'allowed to' keep a baby. They say they are keeping it, and they are either keeping it, or I will be killed before I cease to stand for their rights to do so. But not before I had got the message through. And both killed plenty pigs, and inflicted things that are worse than being allowed to simply die on many others. There is no way in HELL I would allow, legally demanded or otherwise, such a thing to happen and remain to draw breath whilst I could still lift a blade.

The way MR people are treated in this way especially, it makes me SO fucking angry, not to mention utterly sickened. MR people always seem to be handed the shittiest end of the stick and worse still, expected to like it and be happy they were handed so much as a turd. I'm as open to a mutually-consenting, loving relationship with MR people as everybody else ought to be. In fact one of the girls I've been with over the years was both somewhat severely MR and classically autistic, and she was one of the loves of my life, the few people I have cared the most for.  I still remember the way when we meet up, we'd go around with one arm around the small of each other's backs, one hand keeping the side of the other person facing towards the cold warm,squeezed tight together. She was..well naive, perhaps, but still at the same time, quite a dirty lil bugger, and if some ofthe things we've done together while we were together were ever made known to anybody I'd likely do jail time for public indecency (consensual, asked for, but lets just say there are things that most people do at restaurants and things that we did too, and then there are things we did that had anybody actually known what was going on under those dining tables, at the very least, neither of us would ever be allowed in not just the restaurant but within a 20-mile radius of the entire shopping center. And then there were a few of the things we did whilst dining out together. Would I have taken advantage of her? fuck no!, did I love her? put it this way, if she needed a double kidney/lung as well as a heart and liver transplant, and no surgeon would perform it, I'd have told them to use a local plus strong but sub-knockout doses of painkillers to make sure I could keep a gun trained on them at all times, until everything bar one lung and the heart was out, then blow my own brains out so they'd have no ethical excuse to not continue performing the transplant surgery. There is only one, maybe two other people I would do that for I have ever, ever known. So yes, I did. I still think of her often too, I miss her sweet smile, her TOTALLY spazz voice, the way she'd wrap her arm round me and squeeze super-tightly (autie pressure-thing, in that, she really knew how to please me, in a non-sexual manner, but just walking around together, she'd squeeze super-tight so I could barely breathe, really squish me hard)

Fuck..I miss her. mentally retarded and autistic or not (the latter of course I actively search for when looking for a partner, ideally Kanner's/classic autism, but aspie, either way, if I'm on the lookout for a potential relationship then autistic is right at the top of the list of desirable characteristics ), but MR people, I think they have the right to be treated as equals, not handed the bags of shit the trash men in life won't take and throw away, and if any girl I end up being with is MR, the ONLY two things that matter to me are 1-consent and mutual desire for each other to be with each other and mutual wishing to partake of any sexual activities partaken in, with the details being explained beforehand, making sure they know EXACTLY what they would be doing until I am certain the given consent is knowing in full. And 2-to give everything I have to give of me to them, and make sure they are treated as equals, not just by me, but by every other to walk to earth. Those are non-negotiable. People either show the girl the proper respect, or they are going to piss me off big-time, in the kind of way of pissing someone off that you want to remove yourself at least 15 miles distant to the blast radius if you happen to be an innocent bystander.

None of my MR other-halves have ever been raped by anybody, but even for someone who left me, if anyone of them were, again, that would push my nuclear-button. Its the kind of thing I would commit murder for. Well, not murder. It'd be committing pesticide. But it would be short, messy and extremely violent. One other thing is for sure, I would never give up, stand down or give in. They would have my....exterminator services as much as they needed, with nothing required in return. Even those I'm no longer with in a relationship, they'd have only to get hold of me and tell me what happened and who the target is. And I would be their instrument to direct.

When I have been in relationships with MR girls, I've loved them no less than I do those who are just autistic. And when I give my love to somebody who wants to receive it, I give myself wholly, totally and without reserve. Yeah, I admit, I am intense in that respect. But in matters of the heart I give to the loved one every last single scrap of my being; without the tiniest bit of me held back. Only bad parts of me, the parts that everybody has deep down in the reptillian bits of their brain do I not show them, since of course I would never want a loved one hurt. But all I am, everything of me, as far as I am concerned, it is given to them, and both it, and I, belong to them as much as say, my lab glassware is mine. They OWN me, all of me, in perpetuity until they should decide otherwise.

And since I both grew up in my first secondary school with a lot of people MR, as well as all autistic (usually kanner's, a few aspies) I know the kind of person, and to see such a person suffer for who they are, and what is no fault of anybody, nor something they can change, but for them to be tormented or forced to do or not do something just because of their mental status, it makes me so heartily sick, the pain of it is difficult to bear on my shoulders and still stand.

[Jack]

Maybe we should call it a "rape subculture" in small-town Australia rather than a "rape culture" ? 

There is a major problem at US colleges with what could be described as a rape culture, or rape sub-culture.

A significant number of girls experience rape, sexual assault, and attempted rape.

But I heard a very telling statistic recently (I don't know how accurate, but it "sounds" about right), that it is 3% of the males at colleges who are responsible for such behaviour. The fact that the number of girls who are assaulted in some way is significantly higher than that harks back to a point that Al made earlier: these type of males tend not to just do it once or twice.

Rape culture is not just about the ones doing the raping. Everyone who blames the victims, who questions their motives in reporting these crimes, who passes it off as "boys being boys", is also an active part of that rape culture.

Rape is no exception among violent crime to have a higher instance of victimization among the poor and uneducated. Once read somewhere that females without college degrees have stats about a third greater than their higher educated counterparts. That's not to say universities aren't experiencing a problem; it's just not a unique problem and society is focusing on the victimization of the privileged.

That's actually a really good point.

I wonder how much of the frequent citation of college rape stats is simply the availability of the statistics?  (Psychology's favorite subjects are pigeons, lab rats, and college students- animals they have easy access to study.)

It's been a hot topic ever since the white house got involved. Maybe it's all a university conspiracy to save money by frightening people into online classes.

[Al Swearegen]

Maybe we should call it a "rape subculture" in small-town Australia rather than a "rape culture" ? 

There is a major problem at US colleges with what could be described as a rape culture, or rape sub-culture.

A significant number of girls experience rape, sexual assault, and attempted rape.

But I heard a very telling statistic recently (I don't know how accurate, but it "sounds" about right), that it is 3% of the males at colleges who are responsible for such behaviour. The fact that the number of girls who are assaulted in some way is significantly higher than that harks back to a point that Al made earlier: these type of males tend not to just do it once or twice.

Rape culture is not just about the ones doing the raping. Everyone who blames the victims, who questions their motives in reporting these crimes, who passes it off as "boys being boys", is also an active part of that rape culture.

Rape is no exception among violent crime to have a higher instance of victimization among the poor and uneducated. Once read somewhere that females without college degrees have stats about a third greater than their higher educated counterparts. That's not to say universities aren't experiencing a problem; it's just not a unique problem and society is focusing on the victimization of the privileged.

That's actually a really good point.

I wonder how much of the frequent citation of college rape stats is simply the availability of the statistics?  (Psychology's favorite subjects are pigeons, lab rats, and college students- animals they have easy access to study.)

It's been a hot topic ever since the white house got involved. Maybe it's all a university conspiracy to save money by frightening people into online classes.

What are the rape statistics for the COngo comparable to the rape statistics for US college. If they are close then likely there is something really bad in creation of these statistics and some party of the process, or many parts has fallen down. 1 in 4 ( or sometimes 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 is used) statistic is comparable to the numbers of rapes and sexual assault s in the Congo where rape is used as a weapon of war. Are US universities THAT infested with rapists? Or is there a narrative and political element being pushed here?