4 ms·

No, but I have sat and feared how easily they could destroy my life. A little scandal here, an accusation there and life is over.

by nmz 4y ago

AlecSchueler 4y ago
Do you know how incredibly rare false accusations are in the things? Perpetuating the idea that it's a thing that women do does severe damage, it creates an atmosphere that is hostile to women speaking up about their assaults and it sews seeds of doubt.
- brigandish 4y ago
  You still seem to be labouring under the misconception that risk is about prevalence. If that were true then you wouldn't wear a seatbelt, as I'm willing to bet that you've never needed one. Risk is the chance of something occurring combined with the effect of that thing occurring. Hence, a one off but life threatening event may be considered high risk, so it doesn't really matter if false accusations are incredibly rare or not if the damage that flows from them is severe. For example[1], a trainee lawyer accused her boyfriend of repeatedly raping her, imprisoning her, and violently abusing her to the point of making her miscarry. The reality was that she needed an excuse for failing her legal exams. When he was put into prison on remand - he hadn't even gone to trial yet - an officer spread a rumour that he was a paedophile, to which the other prisoners reacted as you might expect, by attacking him. He was then moved onto a wing with rapists and murderers. He called it "your worst nightmare come true". Why is this a risk that anyone should ignore? The FBI has said[2]: > As with all other Crime Index offenses, complaints of forcible rape made to law enforcement agencies are sometimes found to be false or baseless. In such cases, law enforcement agencies “unfound” the offenses and exclude them from crime counts. The “unfounded” rate, or percentage of complaints determined through investigation to be false, is higher for forc-ible rape than for any other Index crime. Eight percent of forcible rape complaints in 1996 were “unfounded,” while the average for all Index crimes was 2 percent. 8% seems a fair amount higher than what I'd call "incredibly rare", especially given it's 4 times higher than for other types of crime. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02qs6pw https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02qs6pw [2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/1996/96sec2.pdf https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/1996/96sec2.pdf

No, but I have sat and feared how easily they could destroy my life. A little scandal here, an accusation there and life is over.

by nmz 4y ago

No, but I have sat and feared how easily they could destroy my life. A little scandal here, an accusation there and life is over.

AlecSchueler 4y ago

Do you know how incredibly rare false accusations are in the things? Perpetuating the idea that it's a thing that women do does severe damage, it creates an atmosphere that is hostile to women speaking up about their assaults and it sews seeds of doubt.

brigandish 4y ago
You still seem to be labouring under the misconception that risk is about prevalence. If that were true then you wouldn't wear a seatbelt, as I'm willing to bet that you've never needed one. Risk is the chance of something occurring combined with the effect of that thing occurring. Hence, a one off but life threatening event may be considered high risk, so it doesn't really matter if false accusations are incredibly rare or not if the damage that flows from them is severe. For example[1], a trainee lawyer accused her boyfriend of repeatedly raping her, imprisoning her, and violently abusing her to the point of making her miscarry. The reality was that she needed an excuse for failing her legal exams. When he was put into prison on remand - he hadn't even gone to trial yet - an officer spread a rumour that he was a paedophile, to which the other prisoners reacted as you might expect, by attacking him. He was then moved onto a wing with rapists and murderers. He called it "your worst nightmare come true". Why is this a risk that anyone should ignore? The FBI has said[2]: > As with all other Crime Index offenses, complaints of forcible rape made to law enforcement agencies are sometimes found to be false or baseless. In such cases, law enforcement agencies “unfound” the offenses and exclude them from crime counts. The “unfounded” rate, or percentage of complaints determined through investigation to be false, is higher for forc-ible rape than for any other Index crime. Eight percent of forcible rape complaints in 1996 were “unfounded,” while the average for all Index crimes was 2 percent. 8% seems a fair amount higher than what I'd call "incredibly rare", especially given it's 4 times higher than for other types of crime. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02qs6pw https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02qs6pw [2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/1996/96sec2.pdf https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/1996/96sec2.pdf