OT: Det News uncovers old, dropped sexual assault indictment against Matt Patricia
Right, but we're talking about accusations. Murder is a little easier to provide evidence for. So much of sexual assault is based on the word of the accuser and the defendant so for someone to be convicted, there will usually be a solid amount of evidence. I'm not saying the numbers given aren't accurate but they don't take into account dropped cases. I'd also say that a 10% fale accusation rate is incredibly high.
I have to believe its more a result of the inability to actually prosecute the majority of rape cases compared to homicide.
An even more amazing, and disgusting fact is that only 3 out of every 100 reported rapes results in a conviction. I blame most of that on prosecutors lack of will to prosecute many of these cases to begin with, coupled with the shear volume of these cases that are out there. Statistically a rape is reported in this country every 6.2 minutes.
You may want to read the 2014 Washington Post fact checker on the source of the 3 in 100 stat and how accurate it is (spoiler: it's not). They gave the Enliven Project's popular graphic and stats 3 Pinocchios.
So many gray areas with rape, allegations, convictions, and so forth. 9 times out of 10 its the victims word againts the accuser. No one else in the room at the time. What stats do you have on people not even being charged when originally accused?
i actually wasn't referring to you. however, now that you've read and commented on what oregon wolverine posted, do you still think i'm wrong? my experience is like his (or hers?), only longer. there are so many other details to take into account that you could frequently write a book about any single case.
when do you get to come home and have a beer?
so the underlying evidence and what you'd look for in terms of exoneration are quite different. apples v. oranges.
Your personal experiences are certainly valid for you but are purely anecdotal otherwise. Stats tell the truth here. Women rarely lie about sexual assualt. Sure it happens, but it's statistically rare. Women are more likely to not report sexual assaults then to falsely report. And many women drop cases because of fear of retaliation, or see cases dropped by prosecutors for reasons other than the actual innocence of the accused.
in that they are borne out over 3 decades and thousands of criminal cases. and maybe we're disagreeing about the word 'rarely'. bottom line: it happens, and it happens literally every day in every state, probably multiple times per day.. but i also agree that true victims don't come forward and don't report sometimes. that is a sad, also.
months that the allegations were false, charges dismissed or acquitted at trial. one more is pending right now and though i am hesitant to make too bold of a prediction, if forced i'd say that one is going to go the same way. so if a guy can have 6 cases in a year, and many more (dozens) over the course of many years, that seem like more than anecdotal.
I have a question for you. I know you saw "Oregon Wolverine"s post, because you mentioned it in another one of yours. S/he maintains that the majority of false accusations of sexual assault occur in connection with family law-type situations (divorce, custody battles, etc). Is this consistent with the cases where you have seen this happen?
in the family law arena. usually the allegations will involve kids who don't like either dad or step dad b/c the opposite parent lets them do whatever they want. thus, the house with the rules gets the male accused of misdeeds. some allegations are true, but some are not and that is the dynamic that is most likely to generate those complaints.
i deal with more criminal matters than family law these days, so i see them in the criminal context.
Okay, thanks for the response. I'm trying to understand whether your experience lines up with "Oregon Wolverine"'s experience. Of the criminal cases you've seen where there is falsely reported sexual assault, would you say that the majority are related to domestic issues?
but if you mean marrieds or live-in BF/GF, no, that's not the majority. dating and 'hook ups' seem to be where i think you'd see them most frequently arise . you get more generic DV (domestic violence) than sexual assault stuff with the live-ins.
and again, i don't want to minimize the suffering of real victims of such things, just trying to balance the automatic condemnation, cut off their heads, mentality that some folks seem to default to re: the accused.
There is an old principle referred to as Blackstone's formulation:
" . . . for the law holds it better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent party suffer"
This principle is pretty much foundational both to English and American common law.
Are a difficult thing to come up with. As I've mentioned in earlier postings, I'm a criminal defense lawyer (M '88, M Law '91) with an emphasis on defense of sex crimes. I regularly get invited to speak on defense issues including ethics and sex crimes defense, and am, right now -- as in procrastinating on editing -- finishing work on chapters on sex crimes defense for a manual.
Before my last speaking engagement about a year ago, I contacted M Law Prof Sam Gross who is the Senior Editor of the National Registry of Exonerations, http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx to discuss the registry generally and specifically false sex crimes convictions and the lack exonerations of sex crimes. My conclusions from that contact, review of data generally, personal experiences, and polling of practitioners who attended a sex crimes conference have led me to a few observations:
1. Exoneration work is focused on crimes where objective forensic science (blood, DNA, etc), can clear someone, which happens most often in homicide cases, and not surprisingly rarely in sex cases because seldom do these types of allegations arise between strangers -- sex offenses are almost always occur by a family member, friend, or acquantance;
2. False sex crimes allegations occur most often in connection with domestic transition, divorce, family transition, child custody battles;
3. The stigma of a sex crime conviction alone, lifetime registration threats, and the presumption that the system is biased against defendants in sex crimes cases leads frequently to shaky sex crime allegations to get pled down to lesser offenses, so subsequent exonerations are less common than other types of offenses; a recent case comes to mind where a client of mine, who had a really strong case, was facing a mandatory 8 years but was realistically looking at 15-20 years was offered probation, no jail, plea to non-sex charges which can come off his record in a few years, and the prospect of fees of an additional $50K for trial (on top of what he paid to get to that point) -- what does this say about the strength and what would you do? Even if the complainant latter recanted, he'd not be able to clear his record sooner and be counted among the exonerated;
4. Dismissals of allegations occur for tons of reasons -- each individual case has its own reasons; and
5. A compelling case can be made that once a sex crime allegation has been made and charged, the system is stacked in favor of the accuser and against the accused, so a dismissal is fairly compelling evidence that the original allegation was shakey and maybe quite weak.
The world of defense, especially sex crimes defense, is not black and white. It's exceedingly complicated.
(iI'm a very protective father of three daughters and an individual whose life has been impacted personally more than once by sexual offenses and sexual harassment)
This is very, very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
will say this - 0% chance you are a troll from the RCMB...
Why does the Duke Lacrosse case get help up as an example of men's lives being ruined by false accusation when it's not true? Of the three guys involved in the case, one is a lawyer and the other two work in finance. I'd hardly say that outcome has ruined their lives.
Who are these men that have had their lives ruined by false accusations of sexual assault?
Also, why does this narrative always pop up in one of these discussions?That men are so in danger of having their lives ruined over false accusations.
Duke Lacross fiasco is just a good example of a rush to judgment regarding sexual assault allegations. I don't think it is a "narrative," but it pops up because it highlights that allegations are not facts and the mere existence of allegations should not impact the perception of the accused.
I have no idea how what those guys do for a living is relevant to anything. It is good that they have been able to sustain careers, yes, but those guys were facing prison for a substantial portion of their life for something that they did not do and the media had already convicted them. That had to be incredibly traumatic. I would guess that their mental health will be impacted for most if not all of their life from having gone through that.
It's relevant what the Duke players do because their lives weren't ruined by being falsely accused-- that in spite of the media rushing to judgement, their lives have turned out more than fine. They have jobs that are highly sought after and also received millions of dollars each in settlements.
It's relevant because it supports a false narrative that men are being harmed due to false accusations by women. Some posts in this thead itself are an example of that narrative. Why was it brought up in the first place if it weren't a narrative? It's brought up the majority of the time a man of note is accused of having committed sexual misconduct toward a woman.
I agree that allegations are not facts-- yet there exists a huge double standard in our soceity. On one hand we say we can't rush to judgement on men who have been accused. On the other hand we see ourselves constantly rushing to allege that women are lying or exaggerating or have some ulterior motive to try and ruin the man's life when it simply doesn't happen very often. I'm still waiting to hear these examples of men who's lives have been ruined by being falsely accused.
I'm also glad you brought up the mental health aspect. I'm sure the Duke lacrosse players experienced mental trauma. I'm sure it took plenty of time for them to work through that mental trauma, if they did at all. My gripe is again here is the same double standard. Women not only have to suffer trauma disproportionally from being the victims of sex crimes, but also have to suffer being shamed and accused of lying way too often in the public discourse.
The point is that by playing into this narrative, it minimizes the acutal victims of sexual assault and uses false equivalence to act like men are victims too, when in the majority of cases they are not.
I don't really think there's a dearth of men being shamed and accused of lying in the public discourse. Somehow we got to the point where we had to talk about "teaching men not to rape," so around that time, stereotyping basically all men as potential rapists became A-OK.
"It's relevant what the Duke players do because their lives weren't ruined by being falsely accused-- that in spite of the media rushing to judgement, their lives have turned out more than fine. They have jobs that are highly sought after and also received millions of dollars each in settlements."
So, because it appears that someone that was mistreated apparently turned out fine, you feel that bad things that happened to them are just A-OK and not a giant, giant fucking problem?
Thats about as asinine as it would be to say "Rachel Denhollander became a lawyer, so what Nassar did to her was no big deal".
Perhaps it is not a huge percentage of cases, but men are wrongly accused, and it does have a negative impact on their lives. To pretend otherwise is obtuse.
EDIT: This is in response to Space Bat above. I must have replied to the wrong post.
By the way, a great example of a guy whose life was ruined by a false allegation is Brian Banks.
Uh Briank Banks? Rollingstone UVA Frat?
Use those two then.
I don't believe false allegations are particularly rare, but I'm not sure it matters. If Patricia is fired because of a single accusation that never made it to trial, I stand by the statement that it would be a sorry indicator of where society is. I sure as heck don't know how discouraging victims from coming forward plays into what I said.
word
Faux Mo is the only person that thinks he will be fired. In 2 weeks time this will be a non-story.
but it may depend on how he and the Lions address the questions in their first public press conference and whether the media lets it slide.
I still think the Lions will let him go at some point soon. I could 100% be wrong on that, fully admitted. But I very, very seriously doubt this will be a "non-story in two weeks." Again, right or wrong, fair or not, these stories have a way of hanging around. That is precisely why false accusations are so bad and despicable when they do happen. You watch. If I'm wrong and Patricia is here as coach of the Lions, and he starts doing poorly, say, in a year or two, disgusting fans will use this as a crude hammer against him. I'd bet my life on this...
it's now hit the front page of Yahoo News. Early commenters don't appear to have pitchforks in hand and appear to be more concerned about damaging his name over something he was never found guilty of 22 years ago.
Your quote: "Should we try and discourage victims to come forward to prevent false claims? No."
Who ever suggested that "we [should] try and [sic] discourage victims to come forward to prevent false claims"?
I encourage victims to come forward. And supply information and evidence to law enforcement. And to fully cooperate with law enforcement. And we should offer all needed protections, to any alleged victim who cooperates with law enforcement.
What I don't support, are media trials. I don't support quasi-trials of 20-year-old complaints. And I don't support university-based Title IX kangaroo courts.
apparently, the accuser recanted
From what I have read, the accuser did not recant, but chose not to cooperate with police in order to avoid the stress and difficulty of pursuing charges.
who make accusations do so for good reason. I have been as angry about the MSU story as anyone. But there's no way that Patricia should be fired for this--there's no evidence he did anything WRONG.
What should the steps be in a case like this? I'd suggest something like this:
1. Assess the gravity of the charges. What's he really accused of?
2. Interview him. If for some reason he confesses to something awful, let him go. Who thinks this is going to happen?
3. Be honest and admit that necessary diligence was lacking with the hire--not that Patricia shouldn't have been hired, but certainly that the accusation and proceeding should have been uncovered.
4. Get on with business. Obviously with an eye out to any future trouble. The guy would understand that he was on a pretty short string.
Lots of people do regrettable things and work to get better. The legal process has already taken its course.
But how do you know THAT is true? She's pretty old, after all...
how dare you make such an accusation against this energetic, vibrant lady...
