Will Get Fooled Again

There was a big Rolling Stone article about a woman who was horrifically gang raped by a student fraternity as part of an initiation ritual. There appears to be one small problem with the article- it is complete horseshit.It wouldn't be so bad if it was the first time the press had fallen for obviously bogus claims about being gang raped by "privileged" white male college students but it isn't, as anyone who can remember the Duke Lacrosse case a few years ago can say.

If the boy who cried wolf lived today he would never run out of dupes willing to believe his lies.

Fake victimhood appears to be particularly common among left wing activists on college campuses though certainly not exclusively - there have been conservative activists who've faked attacks by violent mobs of Obama supporters as well as a Jewish activist who was the victim of a phony neo-nazi assault. This site documents almost 200 hate crime hoaxes in the USA alone.

Fake criminal attacks are only one aspect of bogus victimhood. As long time readers will know, misery memoirs are wildly popular, WH Smiths used to have a whole section devoted to "Tragic Life Stories". Quite a lot of these turned out to be fraudulent as well- there's a hilarious and brutal takedown of one of the most successful misery memoirs "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey, here. The reviewer, John Dolan, was calling "bullshit" years before it was actually exposed as a fake.

There have always been schemers and liars and that will never change, what feeds them is other people swallowing their claims wholesale. The college fakers do it because there is a large pool of people who want to believe that white, male college students are running amok and getting away with murder, the misery memoirs abound because the appetite for such melodramatic nonsense  exceeds what reality has left us with.

Footballers- A Bit Sleazy

One of the problems with rape cases is that it is usually one person's word against another's- which ought to be  insufficient for a conviction. In the case of someone who is too drunk to consent then there is the added problem that the alleged victim's evidence is inherently flawed.

Unless of course the perpetrators are thick and arrogant enough to film themselves- like recently jailed footballer Ched Evans whose friend and brother filmed him having sex with a girl too drunk to consent (if he loves group sex that much he's going to love prison).

The victim's (who was irresponsible for getting herself paralytically drunk and alone on a night out) version of events does seem similar to other cases involving footballers, extremely drunk women and group sex where no convictions have been made. I'm not saying they're all guilty but there does seem to be a certain culture involved in the game.

Unpersons

There is (yet another) trial of a group of men of Pakistani origin accused of being part of a "sexual exploitation ring" going on at the moment.

I don't know whether they are guilty or not, but this line of questioning by the defence barrister seems interesting:

Today the father told Liverpool Crown Court that he joined the BNP shortly after his teenage daughter, now 19, was abused.

The girl claims she was raped by various members of the group.

Simon Nichol, defending a 59-year-old who cannot be identified, asked the man about his daughter’s general behaviour in August 2008 and if it bothered him that she was mixing with Asian men.

Why is it relevant? A few months ago footage of self-professed "anti racists" viciously assaulting a middle aged woman made the round- with a worrying number of people dismissing or even condoning the crime because the victim was a member of the EDL. 


Are we getting to the point where members of "far right" groups are unpersons who have less protection under the law?


For what it's worth the father's assessment of the BNP seems about right to me:

He said that in his time at the BNP he met 'three types of people'.
'People like myself, who were not racist and were worried about immigration, worried about jobs, housing and the banking system in this country.'

He said there was a second set of people who he said were 'questionable people'.
'And I met some downright nauseous people who have nothing to do with my views on society as a whole and I consequently left the BNP.'

British Universities- More Dangerous Than The Congo

Julie Bindel is writing about her favourite subject- the mass rape than female British students are subjected to- "one in seven women students had experienced a serious physical or sexual assault while at university or college".

I've been denounced By Ms Bindel for questioning the source for the statistic- a scepticism derived from both the sisterhood's previous misuse of studies and the specific similarity of Bindel's statistic to the discredited campus rape myth in the USA- and am inevitably accused of denying rape exists for my troubles (as I said it's a Julie Bindel piece.)

Sure enough the actual source for the figure reveals that they got the figure by- an online survey.

Prostitution Propaganda

Remember how the campaign against sex trafficking in the UK was shown to be largely bunk? How in fact there weren't tens of thousands of sex slaves in the UK and that the whole thing was hyped up by various charities and opportunistic campaigners?

Well interestingly the same thing has happened in the United States where widely repeated "studies" into underage prostitution have turned out to be nonsense.

Running a fake charity "rescuing" prostitutes is a great scam- you get to pose as a hero and if anyone contradicts* your facts then you imply that they are supporting child rape or slavery.

Meanwhile their efforts to keep prostitution illegal have inevitable consequences.


* Not many people want to get into arguments defending legalised prostitution in case it is assumed that they have a personal interest in the business.

Magical Thinking

In the Grauniad, Hadley Freeman writes about rape- in relation to the Night Stalker case- and what causes it:

It seems extraordinary in a week when another woman, Eman al-Obeidi, told journalists in Libya that she had been raped and beaten by members of Gaddafi's militia that one needs to say that sexual attacks have nothing to do with desire, but are about the abuse of power, sadism and mental illness. They have nothing to do with the looks of the victim, contrary to what Hollywood movies suggest, in which rape victims are always attractive and usually blond

This is of course unthinking dogma. If rape were purely about power & sadism then the profile of Delroy Grant's victims would not be unusual when clearly it is. The absurdity of the belief that rape isn't about sexual desire can be shown by simply considering two almost indisputable facts, as laid out by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate:

Think about it. First obvious fact: Men often want to have sex with women who don’t want to have sex with them. They use every tactic that one human being uses to affect the behavior of another: wooing, seducing, flattering, deceiving, sulking, and paying. Second obvious fact: Some men use violence to get what they want, indifferent to the suffering they cause. Men have been known to kidnap children for ransom (sometimes sending their parents an ear or finger to show they mean business), blind the victim of a mugging so the victim can’t identify them in court, shoot out the kneecaps of an associate as punishment for ratting to the police or invading their territory, and kill a stranger for his brand-name athletic footwear. It would be an extraordinary fact, contradicting everything else we know about people, if some men didn’t use violence to get sex.

This seems inarguable. No doubt things like "power" have an effect in so far as presumably a rapist will be more likely to strike in situations where they know that the victim cannot retaliate (for example in war zones) but it is plainly not true that rape is nothing to do with sex.

Ignoring reality to promote dogma is potentially dangerous as refusing to see what motivates a criminal can only put potential victims at more risk

Bill Clinton & The R Word

I've recently been reading the  biography of Bill Clinton by Christopher Hitchens, No One Left To Lie To. Part of this polemic deals with the repeated allegations of sexual exploitation of women who came into contact with him. I had always assumed that the more lurid accusations against Bill Clinton were probably not true although my views on that had shifted a little even before reading this.

Reading of the accusations of rape and sexual assault made by women like Juanita Broadrick* and Kathleen Willey- women who were political allies of Clinton and mostly had not profited from their allegations. Does anyone who has looked into the accusations in detail  know of  any reasons to think that Bill Clinton is not a rapist?

Political Point Scoring- Mostly Own Goals

The Guardian really is the lazy blogger's friend. Today Amanda Marcotte condemns the politicisation of sexual assault:

Unfortunately, as anti-rape activists could have told you, there's no such thing as a sex crime too brutal that some folks won't try to use it for political score-keeping.

 Marcotte is a dimwitted femiloon who writes things like this:

In the meantime, I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good fucking god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and fucked her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out.

Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it?

Of course technically she isn't using a sex crime for political point scoring but using a transparent hoax so maybe that's okay.

Just So You Know

When men commit crimes all men are partly responsible, however if they are MONAs then there is no reason to draw any conclusions at all.

Typical

Essex girls eh!

Polanski Let Off

A court in Switzerland has decided that film director/ child rapist Roman Polanski will not be extradited to the United States. At least the whole affair has lifted the lid on how many in both politics and the entertainment industry will tolerate almost any behaviour provided that it is done by someone that is a member of their tribe.

Suspects & Anonymity

The decision to grant anonymity to people accused of rape seems like a sensible move. Given how damaging such an accusation is it is a form of punishment regardless of whether a conviction actually occurs. The argument that it prevents serial rapists like John Worboys being caught seems ill founded- if the media were reporting that an unnamed taxi driver in a certain part of London had been accused of rape then surely that would be sufficient information to prompt any other victims who had been raped by a taxi driver in London to come forward.

One thing that does occur to me though, should anonymity routinely apply to all suspects in serious crimes up until such a time as they are convicted? Someone who is wrongly accused of murder is going to have a pretty tough time reintegrating into society if any time someone googles his name reports of the murder will be there.

Fake Statistics Harm Victims.

Baroness Stern has released a report into how the justice system handles rape:

The figure for convictions of those charged with rape as the term is normally used is actually 58 per cent.

'There is concern that the six per cent figure can make victims feel it is not worth reporting.'

Lady Stern added: 'The conviction rate has taken over the debate to the detriment of other important outcomes for victims.

Her point about how the use of misleading statistics like the supposed 6% conviction rate can harm victims is a good one and is probably not emphasised enough. All too often the overwhelming impression is that a lot noisiest commentators (who will no doubt be denouncing Baroness Stern in the Guardian later today) view it as an ideological tool to beat the patriarchy.

This matters because this ideology creates a barrier to actually dealing with the problem. See here for other examples of how ideologues don't have the interests of victims at heart.

Ban The Web

The government, the BBC and Daily Mail have decided that they critical fact about the murderer Peter Chapman is that he met his victim on Facebook. Indeed according to Home Secretary Alan Johnson the British and American governments are thinking of "ways to flag up when a convicted sex offender goes online", because computers can be made to detect Paedo-fingers when they start tapping at a keyboard.

The focus on the least important aspect of the story, Facebook, is particularly absurd given that Chapman's crimes, including abductions and rapes of women, began well before the internet era. If he was prevented from meeting potential victims on the internet he could just as easily have gone back to the manner in which he found them before the internet. The danger wasn't that he was allowed online but that he was allowed out of prison.

On the plus side perhaps the hysteria about the internet will at least result in parents forcing their children out of the house, thus doing wonders for the child obesity rate.

Not Taking Crime Seriously.

It sounds like the judge really cracked down hard on this rapist who was convicted of abducting and raping a 5 year old boy 8 days after he had been convicted and released for raping a 7 year old:

"You are a devious and manipulative young man with an unhealthy and completely unacceptable sexual interest in young boys.

"It is likely you will not be released for some very considerable period of time."

He added that it was "highly unusual" for a court to categorise a 16-year-old as a danger to the public but in this case it was merited.

"I have to say I have absolutely no hesitation whatsoever in reaching the conclusion that you are indeed a dangerous offender," the judge said.

So he's dangerous and devious and the judge says he won't be released for a very long time. So what is his sentence:

He must serve a minimum of three years minus five days before being considered for parole.

Thank God that this monster will be in his late teens before he can roam the streets again!

The Thieving Welshman Myth In Action

A Welshman picked £50 from my pocket today, well I didn't actually see him taking it because I wasn't paying attention but I am fairly sure he did. When I went to the police they patiently explained that seeing as I had no evidence that he took anything I couldn't really expect them to arrest him and that no jury would convict him without any proof. In fact they even suggested that I might have lost the cash!

What I find so depressing here is that they believe I would go through all the hassle and stress of bringing this guy to court if I believed that it was anything other than theft. It seems that the idea that people frequently lie about being pick pocketed is so prevalent that it is now seen as the norm. Not only that, but their view of people who accuse the Welsh of theft is so low that they believe us incapable of judging for ourselves what happened to us.

Why should his story be believed over mine? Again, this idea that innocent Welshies are getting banged up left, right and centre has skewed the public’s perception of justice.




What's that you say? My idea of justice is perverse, grossly prejudiced and would invariably result in thousands of Welsh people being locked up for no good reason because they had lost their right to be presumed innocent in a court of law?

Yes it is, and in fact the incident is completely made up, but I'm only following the line of argument being expressed by a contributer to the weblog of the feminist site "The F Word" when it comes to rape convictions.

Rape Conviction Rates.

The conviction of serial rapist John Worboys has produced a lot of complaints over the extremely low conviction rates for rape. This is understandable, when one considers that most reasonable estimates also suggest that at least 90% of rapes are never even reported it is clear that the vast majority of rapes go unpunished.

Despite what certain fanatics say the low conviction rate isn't due to a tacit tolerance of rape or police indifference but mostly due to it being a uniquely difficult crime to prove beyond reasonable doubt because their are usually no witnesses and the physical evidence is usually indistinguishable from consensual sex (although not in the Worboys case where sedatives were administered).

There isn't much that can be used to dramatically increase the conviction rate without also sending a lot of innocent men to prison as well (the rate of false reporting to the police is probably quite high with the best estimates suggesting that between a quarter and a half of all complaints to the police are false).

So if nothing can be done to increase the conviction rate then what else be done to make the law a more effective deterrent? The only solution seems to me to drastically increase the sentences for those convicted of the crime, because if the probability of being caught is low then the consequences of of being convicted have to be made higher in order to compensate for that.

The Downside Of Juries: Jurors.

The big problem with trial by one's peers is that frequently those peers are gibbering imbeciles. Example one:

A rape victim has hit out at the law after the man accused of attacking her was cleared because he was sleepwalking.

Jane McKenna, 33, was asleep at home when a friend's husband, who had been a guest at a barbecue, walked into the bedroom and started having sex with her.

Jason Jeal, a 37-year-old roofer with no medical history of sleepwalking, admitted sex had taken place. But he was cleared of rape after he insisted he had been asleep and had no idea what he was doing.

Uh huh. This defence could clear anyone of anything. The only evidence that he was sleepwalking is that he claims not to remember what he was doing, this is also a symptom of being drunk.

Speaking outside his home in Portsmouth, the former member of Portchester Cricket Club said: 'I did not use sleepwalking in my defence as I did not have any doctor's evidence or anything to back that up,' he said. 'With me, sleepwalking normally comes on through drink. People have told me I've done it before.'

So he exhibits symptoms similar to being drunk after drinking and concludes he must have been sleepwalking, and a jury buys that?

{via}

Bindelpalooza Part Two: Lunatics Running The Asylum

In her latest missive about rape (again) she urges the government to implement a publicity campaign to inform potential jurors about what rape is. However there is another snippet in the article that might explain why the conviction rate for reported rapes is so low:

I coordinated a scheme in West Yorkshire in conjunction with the CPS, to deliver specialist training to prosecutors in all aspects of sexual assault

I'm not being flippant, but I suspect that a lot of jurors harbour concerns that prosecutors are pursuing cases that should not go to court in order to advance political ideologies. When the CPS are send staff on training courses that are conducted by a cliched man hating feminist whose published work reveals that she more or less believes that any accusation should equal a conviction then that exemplifies those concerns. In fact Bindel has enthusiastically defended obviously malicious false accusers and appears to believe that no amount of evidence can prove that an accusation was false. In fact almost any description by her of a case that has featured in the news will invariably leave out any information that puts it into some kind of context. This isn't so bad for a newspaper columnist but for someone who has advised the CPS it is unacceptable. In a jury system, when the prosecution is suspected of not being interested in justice, the juries will be more reluctant to convict.

Bindelpalooza Part One- Men Off The Streets.

Julie Bindal, author of such classic Comment is Free pieces such as "Why I Hate Men" and "An End To Gender" has been on a role this week treating us to no fewer than two articles on Wednesday plus one at the weekend.

First up is "Fighting Fear", Bindel writes:

One of my friends, who has been involved in the women's liberation movement for as long as I have, sneered at me when I asked her if she was coming on this Saturday's Reclaim the Night march through London. The inference was that she had something better to do. Well there is nothing better I can think of to do on Saturday. If you are planning to watch X Factor instead of marching alongside your sisters, chanting fabulous slogans such as "men off the streets," and "yes means yes, and no means no," consider this....

Well I can think of a few things better to do on a Saturday, gardening, shopping, reading, raping, going out for dinner or watching a film for example.

Despite four decades of campaigning against domestic violence, over 100 women are still killed every year by current and former partners.

In fairness she is the only writer at the Guardian who writes about the murder rate, but 100 murders out of around 22 million adult women ( that's a guesstimate) isn't exactly an epidemic. Obviously any number of murders is too high but this is just scaremongering.

Male violence towards women and children - yes, male - is pandemic. We must force them to change - to stop raping, killing and abusing us.

Oh do I have to?

. When I march on Saturday, I will be doing so for women everywhere...

That's awfully good of her, there hardly seems any point anyone else turning up.

...because sexual violence is the only thing in the world that affects all women

A big claim which she then expands on:

let me ask you (women) something. Can you honestly say, hand on heart, that you have never feared rape? Have you never modified your behaviour, even just a little, for fear of being attacked? Remember that time you took a minicab home, alone and drunk? Did you feel relieved the next day that nothing bad happened to you? Or when you walked through a park late at night alone?

I'm pretty sure that everyone modifies their behaviour slightly to avoid being a victim of crime. I'm not entirely convinced however that the small number of men who do carry out sexual assaults on women are going to be dissuaded by a coven of femiloons denouncing the entire male sex as guilty. Maybe I'm wrong and if only more people had attended last year then the Ipswich murderer would have paused for thought and been shamed into not murdering women by the guilt felt for making women feel unsafe.

It is of course true that men commit the majority of crimes and the vast majority of violent or sexual crimes. However Bindal appears to be have made the logical fallacy (or phallusy) that because most crimes are committed men that this means that most men commit these crimes.