The impact of false accusations.

[Loren Pechtel]

It seems to me that every alleged victim reporting a sexual crime SHOULD be automatically referred to the local PD or Sheriff's Department so an officially conducted investigation takes place and conducted by personnel whose profession is to investigate rather than College Administrators drawing any conclusions and acting on them by penalizing the accused party.

Exactly. That's what both Derec and I are saying--this level of action is the realm of the police, not the college.

However, such Administration cannot remain passive to the possibility that the accusation is valid and there is an actual victim who would then be placed in the situation (during the time of the official investigation) to have to share the same environment as the party who sexually assaulted her.

Again, a police matter--it's called a restraining order.

Can you think of alternatives then in that situation? Alternatives meeting the need to preserve the "innocent until proven guilty" addressing the accused party while preserving the alleged victim's well being and safety?

Somebody's going to suffer.

I think the falsely accused person is harmed far more by being thrown out of school than the correct accuser is harmed by merely having her attacker around.

- - - Updated - - -

No, you can make a counterfactual statement without lying. You could be mistaken.

I think knowingly or maliciously false should be the standard.

I agree 100%. A long time ago when I lived in California, there was a case in San Francisco when a car accident victim accused the 2 EMTs attending her in the transport to have attempted to rape her.She consistently gave the same details of the alleged attempt to the Police, not deviating from what she believed happened. Most probably the result of a head trauma, her brain subjectively interpreted the EMTs medically justified handling of her person as an assault on her person. Creating what is referred to as a "false memory".

It sounds like she was doing a reasonable job of describing what happened, just putting a very wrong interpretation on those events.

 

[Metaphor]

No, you can make a counterfactual statement without lying. You could be mistaken.

I think knowingly or maliciously false should be the standard.

I could accept knowingly but that's awfully hard to prove.

I can't accept maliciously because in many cases it isn't. She doesn't actually have an interest in harming him, but rather in avoiding harm to herself.

I'm using typical redundant legalese language where 'knowingly or maliciously' is the same thing, like 'aid and abet'.

Deliberately lying is what makes it malicious, and that includes whether you are targeting someone or are merely recklessly indifferent to the effects of the lie.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I could accept knowingly but that's awfully hard to prove.

I can't accept maliciously because in many cases it isn't. She doesn't actually have an interest in harming him, but rather in avoiding harm to herself.

I'm using typical redundant legalese language where 'knowingly or maliciously' is the same thing, like 'aid and abet'.

Deliberately lying is what makes it malicious, and that includes whether you are targeting someone or are merely recklessly indifferent to the effects of the lie.

Ok, I accept that version.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Here is a better case:
The Central Park Five
http://video.pbs.org/video/2364990501/

Or how about:
The Norfolk Four
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-confessions/

The first link is dead.

The cases you are talking about involve police misconduct pressuring people into confessions.

The college cases are flawed from the top, not merely by the misconduct of a few officers.

So these are not false accusations... just mere misconduct...

Thank you.