Harvard university police declare that 18% of reported rapes are false or baseless

[Shadowy Man]

Fair enough. An accusation isn't considered false and thrown out, even if we assume the accused is innocent. The first step is to determine the plausibility of the accusation. Then, if plausible, proceed to attempting to prove the accusation.

So what we are doing here is piddling about whether if four out of five accusations are legit we should assume it is correct to have 40% of rapes not being reported and of those what are reported only about 15% of submitted for trial are ever tried and only about 10 of those result in declarations of not guilty by juries.

Just trying to be clear here.

OK. Go ahead with your high tea.

I think the issue is that Derec is assuming that the university has to comply with legal standards of due process. They apparently do not. Whether they *should* or not, given the consequences of being expelled from a university due to false accusations, is a valid question.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

As long as there is mattress girl, all rape cases should be assumed to be lying bitches.

In a sense, yes.

Due process means the accused is assumed "innocent until proven guilty", which is another way of saying we assume they did not commit the crime until it can be proven that they did.

What follows from this is the presumption that the accusation is false.

And we call someone who makes a false accusation a liar.

So, yes, assuming the accuser to be a liar seems the only just position, not just in some cases but in all of them.

in no other crime is the crime itself held in high suspicion

in no other crime is the accuser assumed a liar. Mistaken? yes. But not a liar.

in no other crime is the accuser put on trial as a matter of course.

in no other crime is the accuser's character examined more closely and judged more harshly than the accused.

Is there no room inside the presumption of innocence for the person who was raped?

 

[Axulus]

In a sense, yes.

Due process means the accused is assumed "innocent until proven guilty", which is another way of saying we assume they did not commit the crime until it can be proven that they did.

What follows from this is the presumption that the accusation is false.

And we call someone who makes a false accusation a liar.

So, yes, assuming the accuser to be a liar seems the only just position, not just in some cases but in all of them.

in no other crime is the accuser assumed a liar. Mistaken? yes. But not a liar.

in no other crime is the accuser put on trial as a matter of course.

in no other crime is the accuser's character examined more closely and judged more harshly than the accused.

Is there no room inside the presumption of innocence for the person who was raped?

If the alleged perpetrator tells the police that the accuser is lying and wants to press charges and the police start an investigation as a result, then yes, absolutely she should be given the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

in no other crime is the accuser assumed a liar. Mistaken? yes. But not a liar.

in no other crime is the accuser put on trial as a matter of course.

in no other crime is the accuser's character examined more closely and judged more harshly than the accused.

Is there no room inside the presumption of innocence for the person who was raped?

If the alleged perpetrator tells the police that the accuser is lying and wants to press charges and the police start an investigation as a result, then yes, absolutely she should be given the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise.

And if the accused simply denies the charge and presses no case of his own, then the raped is fair game?

 

[Axulus]

If the alleged perpetrator tells the police that the accuser is lying and wants to press charges and the police start an investigation as a result, then yes, absolutely she should be given the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise.

And if the accused simply denies the charge and presses no case of his own, then the raped is fair game?

She is fair game in the defense of the accused as everyone has the right to confront their accuser and try to discredit their allegation. What is the alternative that you propose?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

And if the accused simply denies the charge and presses no case of his own, then the raped is fair game?

She is fair game in the defense of the accused as everyone has the right to confront their accuser and try to discredit their allegation. What is the alternative that you propose?

You have the right to confront your accuser. Do you have the right to malign your accuser? In a burglary case, you don't see a lot of crooks saying the victims asked for it. Defense attorneys do not say things like, "So Mr. Smith, did you or did you not give ipads to kids in a local after school program? Do you or do you not have a reputation around town for giving electronics away to strangers? You admit to leaving your door unlocked. How can you blame my client for taking your laptop when everybody knows, you just give this stuff away?"

In a theft, the accuser's story is fair game, not his entire life.

You can say you didn't do it, without saying it wasn't done;

 

[Axulus]

She is fair game in the defense of the accused as everyone has the right to confront their accuser and try to discredit their allegation. What is the alternative that you propose?

You have the right to confront your accuser. Do you have the right to malign your accuser? In a burglary case, you don't see a lot of crooks saying the victims asked for it. Defense attorneys do not say things like, "So Mr. Smith, did you or did you not give ipads to kids in a local after school program? Do you or do you not have a reputation around town for giving electronics away to strangers? You admit to leaving your door unlocked. How can you blame my client for taking your laptop when everybody knows, you just give this stuff away?"

In a theft, the accuser's story is fair game, not his entire life.

You can say you didn't do it, without saying it wasn't done;

Because the nature of the cases are fundamentally different. A lot of these cases boil down to he said/she said. One side must either be lying or mistaken. What other defense is possible for such cases other than to try to demonstrate that the person making the accusation is either lying or mistaken when it was the case that sex occurred between the two parties on the night in question?

And you can be absolutely certain that the accused is also fair game. His character will be maligned. His reputation will be questioned. Any previous act of dishonesty will be brought up to try to demonstrate what type of person he is as well.

I don't think it is reasonable that the only defense an accused person should be allowed to make is "I didn't do it". They should be able to challenge the veracity of the statements and claims being made against them as vigorously as they can. It's the basic standard of our justice system that one is allowed to pursue all avenues they wish to cast doubt on their guilt.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

You have the right to confront your accuser. Do you have the right to malign your accuser? In a burglary case, you don't see a lot of crooks saying the victims asked for it. Defense attorneys do not say things like, "So Mr. Smith, did you or did you not give ipads to kids in a local after school program? Do you or do you not have a reputation around town for giving electronics away to strangers? You admit to leaving your door unlocked. How can you blame my client for taking your laptop when everybody knows, you just give this stuff away?"

In a theft, the accuser's story is fair game, not his entire life.

You can say you didn't do it, without saying it wasn't done;

Because the nature of the cases are fundamentally different. A lot of these cases boil down to he said/she said. One side must either be lying or mistaken. What other defense is possible for such cases other than to try to demonstrate that the person making the accusation is either lying or mistaken when it was the case that sex occurred between the two parties on the night in question?

with an emphasis on calling the accuser a liar and not mistakened.

And you can be absolutely certain that the accused is also fair game. His character will be maligned. His reputation will be questioned. Any previous act of dishonesty will be brought up to try to demonstrate what type of person he is as well.

Because he is the accused, not the accuser. And even then there are protections against the admissibility of prior bad acts as they are prejudicial to his defense. OTOH The Accuser may find herself repeatedly having to defend things she did, or were rumored that she did years if not decades in her past.

I don't think it is reasonable that the only defense an accused person should be allowed to make is "I didn't do it". They should be able to challenge the veracity of the statements and claims being made against them as vigorously as they can. It's the basic standard of our justice system that one is allowed to pursue all avenues they wish to cast doubt on their guilt.

I am all for a vigorous defense. And i have no desire to return to a time when innocent men found themselves strange fruit due to an accusation of rape (funny how white men when looking for a way bring light to the injustice of false allegations never bring that up, oh well). And I appreciate mitigating circumstances. But what often happens on those rare occasions a rape allegation makes it to trial, is an accuser that is forced to go through a beat down that accusers in crimes will never endure.

 

[Axulus]

Because the nature of the cases are fundamentally different. A lot of these cases boil down to he said/she said. One side must either be lying or mistaken. What other defense is possible for such cases other than to try to demonstrate that the person making the accusation is either lying or mistaken when it was the case that sex occurred between the two parties on the night in question?

with an emphasis on calling the accuser a liar and not mistakened.

And you can be absolutely certain that the accused is also fair game. His character will be maligned. His reputation will be questioned. Any previous act of dishonesty will be brought up to try to demonstrate what type of person he is as well.

Because he is the accused, not the accuser. And even then there are protections against the admissibility of prior bad acts as they are prejudicial to his defense. OTOH The Accuser may find herself repeatedly having to defend things she did, or were rumored that she did years if not decades in her past.

I don't think it is reasonable that the only defense an accused person should be allowed to make is "I didn't do it". They should be able to challenge the veracity of the statements and claims being made against them as vigorously as they can. It's the basic standard of our justice system that one is allowed to pursue all avenues they wish to cast doubt on their guilt.

I am all for a vigorous defense. And i have no desire to return to a time when innocent men found themselves strange fruit due to an accusation of rape (funny how white men when looking for a way bring light to the injustice of false allegations never bring that up, oh well). And I appreciate mitigating circumstances. But what often happens on those rare occasions a rape allegation makes it to trial, is an accuser that is forced to go through a beat down that accusers in crimes will never endure.

Don't get me wrong, it absolutely sucks that victims of rape who press charges have to go through that. I do not wish it to happen to anyone. But the question is, what's the alternative? How to we reduce or minimize that without also compromising the ability of a person who has been wrongfully accused to provide the best defense possible within our system?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/10/2/reported-rapes-nearly-doubles/

Can you understand now why some of us don't automatically accept a rape claim as true? We still need to have actual standards of evidence to make sure the accused's life isn't wrongfully ruined. Those who automatically accept the rape as true tarnish the reputation and devastate life of the accused. Sure, you may be in the right 82% of the time, but your lack of caution is creating 18% additional victims. That's on you.

Also, worthy of mention:

Harvard has a student population of 21,000. Thirty-three reported rapes, even if all of them were 100 percent true, is 0.15 percent of the student population — far from the constant claims of one-in-five.

Even if you accept the idea that just 20 percent of women report their rapes, and adjust accordingly, that would still be only 0.78 percent of the student population experiencing a rape, which is much more in line with federal statistics.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/study-1-in-5-campus-rape-reports-are-false/article/2573324

This quote didn't seem to take into account that the entire student population isn't made up of women. If all the reported rapes are women, and since approx 50% of the population is women, then that would be 1.58% of the population experiencing a rape, or 6% over the course of 4 years. Definitely a problem worth addressing, but you actually get people to dismiss such a worthy problem worth addressing by making bogus claims such as "1 in 5 women experience sexual assault while in college".

Axulus, why did you snip this from the article, not putting it in your op:

The sexual offense figures are released as the topic of sexual assault and harassment comes to the forefront of campus dialogue. Late last month, Harvard released what University President Drew G. Faust said were "deeply troubling" results of a campus-wide sexual assault climate survey. In particular, the survey found that 31 percent of surveyed senior women at Harvard College reported being victims of some kind of sexual misconduct—what the survey termed "non-consensual sexual contact."

There were a mere 33 cases where an alleged victim went through the trouble of reporting the crime. If it is really, really true like you are assuming that this mere 33 is representative of the whole, then you should also assume that 18% of the 31% who reported non-consensual sexual contact in the survey are lying. But then that would mean that 82% of the 31% are telling the truth = 25%.

And that conclusion you would have reached is exactly the thing you are railing against:

Definitely a problem worth addressing, but you actually get people to dismiss such a worthy problem worth addressing by making bogus claims such as "1 in 5 women experience sexual assault while in college".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We can't conclude that 80% were real based on this.

It's not that 18% were false accusations, but that 18% were false accusations done so badly they could be shown false. The real number of false accusations almost certainly is higher, probably a lot higher.

 

[laughing dog]

We can't conclude that 80% were real based on this.

It's not that 18% were false accusations, but that 18% were false accusations done so badly they could be shown false. The real number of false accusations almost certainly is higher, probably a lot higher.

Please show how you gamed the data to come to the conclusion that the real number of false accusations is probably a lot higher.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

We can't conclude that 80% were real based on this.

No, we can't but not for reasons you are thinking. First, 33 is pretty small a number. Second, we haven't been presented with enough information. However, I am using Axulus's assumptions to show his position is contradictory. So it's fair to say that using his assumptions 25% have nonconsensual sexual contact.

It's not that 18% were false accusations, but that 18% were false accusations done so badly they could be shown false. The real number of false accusations almost certainly is higher, probably a lot higher.

Actually, no, that is not what the report said. It said the 6 comprised both categories of "false" and "unfounded." Unfounded means they could not corroborate the claim with additional evidence beyond testimony of the accuser. That is to be expected and does not mean what you are claiming at all: "done so badly they could be shown false."

If you want to go on making assumptions we could play this all day, rather than just seeing how Axulus contradicted himself. For example, why assume that those who report these crimes are representative of the whole population of victims. If a woman wants to get a man in trouble, then she'll report him not keep it silent. So there could be a bias in over-representation of false claims which are reported as compared to claims which go unreported such as those in the survey.

Or, Ahah!, it was seniors who were surveyed last month, that means that many of those surveyed haven't even completed their college education yet. Let's go ahead and make an assumption we can extrapolate: 31% in three years means ~40% over 4 years. So, 40% will have been claiming to have been victims of non-consensual sexual contact by the end of 4th year of college.

Let's just claim whatever we want in our ideological drive to make a point and not hold ourselves accountable to our own assumptions.

 

[JonA]

in no other crime is the crime itself held in high suspicion

What does that even mean?

in no other crime is the accuser assumed a liar. Mistaken? yes. But not a liar.

Call it what you want - wrong is wrong.

We assume the accuser is wrong as a matter of presuming the accused to be innocent.

in no other crime is the accuser put on trial as a matter of course.

Well that's simply false. People who claim they've been robbed, for example, are 'put on trial' in as much as their claims are examined openly in a court of justice - being subject to all the meticulous and often critical questioning that entails.

in no other crime is the accuser's character examined more closely and judged more harshly than the accused.

Again more BS. Do you think that just saying something makes it true?

Is there no room inside the presumption of innocence for the person who was raped?

Allegedly raped.

There's no crime until the courts say there's a crime, and our Constitution requires due process for the accused before the courts can make that ruling.

 

[JonA]

You can say you didn't do it, without saying it wasn't done;

More complete nonsense from you.

Many defenses work the angle that no crime was even committed.

It's like Legal Defense 101.

 

[Toni]

I'm genuinely curious: What powers and authority are possessed by the Harvard Police Department? Can they make arrests? If so, will those arrests be investigated by HPD or by Cambridge PD? Can/will such cases be brought to trial? What sort of training do HPD officers receive? How are they certified?

From Wiki, it appears that they are private police officers. How does that differ from being a mall cop? I know that sounds flip, but I'm genuinely curious. From Wiki:

The Harvard University Police Department (HUPD), a private police agency of Harvard University, is a full-service police department responsible for the safety and security of students, faculty, staff, and visitors at the university’s Cambridge and Boston campuses. The HUPD’s chief of police, since 1996, is Francis D. “Bud” Riley.[1] The chief performs his duties under the direction of the university’s general counsel,[2] Robert W. Iuliano.[3]

 

[JonA]

I'm genuinely curious: What powers and authority are possessed by the Harvard Police Department? Can they make arrests? If so, will those arrests be investigated by HPD or by Cambridge PD? Can/will such cases be brought to trial? What sort of training do HPD officers receive? How are they certified?

From Wiki, it appears that they are private police officers. How does that differ from being a mall cop? I know that sounds flip, but I'm genuinely curious. From Wiki:

The Harvard University Police Department (HUPD), a private police agency of Harvard University, is a full-service police department responsible for the safety and security of students, faculty, staff, and visitors at the university’s Cambridge and Boston campuses. The HUPD’s chief of police, since 1996, is Francis D. “Bud” Riley.[1] The chief performs his duties under the direction of the university’s general counsel,[2] Robert W. Iuliano.[3]

It's probably all a good point and relates to the arguments that have been made by others regarding the university's lack of real-world authority and thus its inability to actually convict someone of a crime or even the requirement that its standardsfor 'justice' be the same as those used in a real court.

 

[whichphilosophy]

You can say you didn't do it, without saying it wasn't done;

More complete nonsense from you.

Many defenses work the angle that no crime was even committed.

It's like Legal Defense 101.

...or there is insufficient evidence

 

[laughing dog]

Allegedly raped.

There's no crime until the courts say there's a crime, and our Constitution requires due process for the accused before the courts can make that ruling.

A rape victim is a victim of rape regardless of what any court says because the rape occurred. That is true whether there is an allegation or not. That is true whether there is a trial or not. That is true whether there is a conviction or not.

A college or university can determine that an allegation of rape is valid or invalid and sanction the alleged rapist or the accuser without any court action, because they are not trying anyone for a criminal act but for a violation of their student conduct code or institutional policies.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Allegedly raped.

There's no crime until the courts say there's a crime, and our Constitution requires due process for the accused before the courts can make that ruling.

A rape victim is a victim of rape regardless of what any court says because the rape occurred. That is true whether there is an allegation or not. That is true whether there is a trial or not. That is true whether there is a conviction or not.

What ld said. There is no conviction unless the courts say so. If a test kit and evidence indicate a rape happened, it happened. The only question is who did it and can it be proven in court.