In this disturbing news account, a 14-year-old school girl claimed she was raped by two classmates, boys aged 13 and 14 (Wandsworth Guardian, 2/25/09). At least the older boy, and presumably both, were held in jail for five months. The case against them collapsed after a day in trial because "it emerged that the girl could have lied about being raped to hide the fact that she had tried to skip school."

According to the news report: "The girl is unlikely to face any criminal charges for wasting police time because officials fear it could prevent other rape victims from coming forward."

The mother of the older boy is now voicing her outrage over her son's treatment: "My son was banged up in a secure unit with murderers and gang members miles from home all on this girl's say so, which turned out to be a load of rubbish."

The mother noted that after her son was released, he received no apology from the police, much less any support for his ordeal, and has been stigmatized because all his friends know about the accusation.

According to the news account: "A police spokesman said: 'We are not in a position to comment as this may have a negative impact on victims coming forward.'"

The reaction of the police, not only in failing to charge the girl but in refusing even to speak about it, is disturbing on a multitude of levels, but, sadly, it is not atypical.

In society's zeal to combat rape, we have allowed an entire class of victims -- males falsely accused of that vile crime -- to be sacrificed supposedly so that legitimate rape victims are not dissuaded from coming forward. As a result, false accusers are not punished adequately if they are punished at all; would-be false accusers are not deterred because they know they can lie with impunity; men and boys are forced to sit in a jail cell for weeks or months or sometimes years on nothing more than a disputed allegation; and when the hapless males are finally released because it turns out their accusers are the real criminals, the ordeals of the males are regarded as just a necessary inconvenience for "the greater good" -- the war on rape.

But who, exactly, decided that the war on rape was a "greater good" than protecting the presumed innocent, much less the presumed innocent who are just children? Since when did it become acceptable to ignore serious criminality in order to combat serious criminality? While it is folly to attempt to weigh the harms inflicted by an actual rape with the harms inflicted by a false rape claim, can anyone seriously dispute that the two boys in this news account suffered grievous harm from their ordeal? Why is their harm less worthy of protection than the harm to a rape victim? The harm from a rape is inflicted by a criminal; the harm here was initiated by a likely criminal, but the boys' real injury was caused by a callous law enforcement apparatus that automatically accepted the girl's account over theirs and deprived the boys of their liberty by locking them away for months with serious felons. Why do we allow our law enforcement officers to be the tools of evildoers out to destroy our sons?

In any event, how helpful is it in waging the war on rape to refuse to punish a criminal whose lie was intended to send two young males to prison for years? The fact is, excusing false accusers will only encourage more false accusers, not actual rape victims, to come forward. A host of special laws and policies unique to rape have been implemented to make reporting actual rapes, and convicting rapists, easier than ever, perhaps as easy as it can possibly be. Among other things, rape accusers are afforded: anonymity; extensive counseling paid for by tax and tuition monies; heightened sensitivity when being interviewed by police; exemption from taking polygraphs; the ability to have rape kits preserved for years at taxpayer expense while they mull over whether to press charges against a man or boy; and special evidentiary rules at trial to jack up convictions.

The policy of treating an entire class of victims, who happen to be almost exclusively male, as collateral damage in the war on rape mocks the image of the blindfolded Lady Justice, who is supposed to mete out justice without favor. It tells those men and boys that they are not as worthy of justice as certain others simply because they were born into the wrong gender and were victims of the wrong crime.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 4:05 pm and is filed under False Accusations. You can trackback from your own site.