I want to respond separately to the notion of fake reports being a “growing problem.” You haven’t cited any evidence, so I don’t know is this is true or if you

I want to respond separately to the notion of fake reports being a “growing problem.” You haven’t cited any evidence, so I don’t know is this is true or if you are just repeating something somebody said on the internet. But if there was some evidence along these lines, my first question would be whether rape reports are growing. One thing that used to happen was that there was an enormous amount of disincentive to report rape. Society assumed by default that the woman was “asking for it.” The defence was allowed to grill her in open court about her sex life, and paint her as a harlot, implying or even openly arguing that she asked for it and/or deserved it. The notion of consent was weak, to say the least. Police where sexist AF and often laughed off reports, or went to investigate and told the suspect exactly who had reported them, opening them to retaliation. Women reported rape much less often, because there was almost no incentive for them to do so, and that’s exactly how society liked it. Naturally, this meant fewer accusations that couldn’t be proved, as well as outright fabrications. But also naturally, this meant many fewer guilty perpetrators were charged, much less convicted. If changes in the way rape is viewed, investigated, and prosecuted produces many more accusations, it is not necessarily a “problem” that there are more false accusations. If there are twice as many false accusations and simultaneously twice as many convictions, there is no problem at all, there is simply more reporting with exactly the same proportion of falsehood. If there are twice as many false reports and four times as many convictions, perhaps society is much better off. The fact is, false reports are sensational and get lots of attention. As they should, a false report is not only a crime, but a great injustice. We should work to discourage and disincent them. But not at the expense of discouraging all reports. And the side-effect of invading the privacy of those eho report rape is a return to the days when there were fewer false eports because women didn’t want to report rape at all.