Publish "Victims" Names in Rape Cases?

[mikhail]

victims arent named in rape cases because of

A/ The stigma attached to it. Everyone who knows the girl will know, and in a way she will be punished because of this by being treat differently in a mugging, assault etc there is no long term association with the crime in the same way.

b/ It could possibly make her a target to other rapists. Some rapist would like to cause the most amount of suffering possible.

and on a side note no man would want everyone to he knows to know if he had been raped. Dont forget men get raped too.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

I'm not saying it should be guilty until proven innocent or anything. What I'm saying is that it's a bit stupid that people in this thread want to protect the accused more than the alleged victims. Would they have the same opinion in cases of murder, grevious bodily harm or theft? I doubt it.

Yeah, the same opinion. The accused are assumed innocent in the court. Period. My personal opinion is that OJ is a multiple murderer and that Micheal Jackson thinks five year old boys are sexy. So what? I don't have the authority to act on those opinions. The agencies that do have the authority to act are constrained to act only within very tight limits, with very powerful restrictions on who is found guilty because we don't want to punish an innocent man for crimes he didn't commit.

Why do you think it's reasonable or even defensible to do otherwise, regardless of the crime? What your saying, in effect is that all men are guilty and we're all rapists at heart, so if one comes close to a description in a crime, that's good enough.

 

[alphamale]

victims arent named in rape cases because of

A/ The stigma attached to it. Everyone who knows the girl will know, and in a way she will be punished because of this by being treat differently in a mugging, assault etc there is no long term association with the crime in the same way.

b/ It could possibly make her a target to other rapists. Some rapist would like to cause the most amount of suffering possible.

and on a side note no man would want everyone to he knows to know if he had been raped. Dont forget men get raped too.

How about people who have been mugged? There's no stigma attached to rape - a person was just a victim of a crime.

 

[Willoughby]

How about people who have been mugged? There's no stigma attached to rape - a person was just a victim of a crime.

If only that were true. There is a great amount of stigma and i don't think you can say there isn't untill you have seen it close-up

 

[jfuh]

How about people who have been mugged? There's no stigma attached to rape - a person was just a victim of a crime.

That's total bs. A woman that is raped feels soild and dirtied by the act. Women often suffer severe trauma to over come the incident becase of an inflicted feeling of being degraded. It is also often the case that men are unwilling to later date such women because of the subconcious level of rejection towards women that are victimized by rape. So do not say there is no stigma attached to rape. For you to even contrast a rape victim with that of a mugging is dispicable and arrogant.

 

[alphamale]

That's total bs. A woman that is raped feels soild and dirtied by the act. Women often suffer severe trauma to over come the incident becase of an inflicted feeling of being degraded.

People who've been beaten up and robbed probably feel degraded. Women need to get over the "soiled and dirtied" stuff - they've just been the victim of a crime - there's no dishonor in being a victim of a crime. Of course women feel trauma, but that is no reason to violate the constitutional guarantees of the accused.

It is also often the case that men are unwilling to later date such women because of the subconcious level of rejection towards women that are victimized by rape.

Men who are unwilling to date a woman who has been raped are childish - she's better off without them.

So do not say there is no stigma attached to rape. For you to even contrast a rape victim with that of a mugging is dispicable and arrogant.

For you to claim there is is irrational and ultimately sexist.

 

[DeeJayH]

among all reasonable people there is no stigma over rape
sadly there are few of those now-a-days

traumatic....yes
victimized....yes

stigma........NO, unless the broad never gets over it

 

[Willoughby]

For you to claim there is is irrational and ultimately sexist.

men get raped aswell as women

People who've been beaten up and robbed probably feel degraded. Women need to get over the "soiled and dirtied" stuff - they've just been the victim of a crime - there's no dishonor in being a victim of a crime. Of course women feel trauma, but that is no reason to violate the constitutional guarantees of the accused.

of course we are not saying that these women deserve to feel dirty or to be stigmatised but it does happen so there is no need to reveal their names

Men who are unwilling to date a woman who has been raped are childish - she's better off without them.

just because they are better off without them it doesn't stop them being hurt by these men

 

[jfuh]

Talk to any police chief of a medium or larger city, and he'll tell you that false rape accusations occur all the time. My brother was a victim of such an accusation - he wasn't charged officially in court, but the false accusation followed him around for a long time. But that's fine with you - women can lie AND have their identity concealed.

Any police chief or medium or larger city? That's total bs and you have no proof nor evidence of such.

Fact:

Only 4-6% of sexual assault cases are based on false accusation. This percentage of unsubstantiated cases is the same as with many other reported crimes.

Source

 

[jfuh]

People who've been beaten up and robbed probably feel degraded. Women need to get over the "soiled and dirtied" stuff - they've just been the victim of a crime - there's no dishonor in being a victim of a crime.

Your complete arrogance of the matter speaks for itself. You've no place to speak on this if you do not even comprehend or even try to comprehend of the various pshycological affects on a woman who got raped. "Need to get over"? Easy for you to say as 1) it's obvious you've never been a victim of rape. 2) you think it's not a big deal 3) you've no idea what you're talking about. Heard of post traumatic stress disorder?
Here're some articles for you to read before you go off with more of your arrogant chauvinist rhetoric.
http://www.rapevictimadvocates.org/trauma.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001955.htm
http://www.aaets.org/article130.htm

Of course women feel trauma, but that is no reason to violate the constitutional guarantees of the accused.

Who said anything about violating the rights of the accused? Have you been reading anything in this thread? Read the title, this is about the announcement of the victim's name to the public.

Men who are unwilling to date a woman who has been raped are childish - she's better off without them.

Well there are quite a lot of such men. It's not childish either as many rape victims acquire non-curable std's (ie herpes II).

For you to claim there is is irrational and ultimately sexist.

What's sexist about what I've claimed so far? Please, enlighten me.

 

[RightinNYC]

Woah. What if those ten guilty people go on to rape, muder or steal from more people? Then you're effectively punishing more innocent people than just one by not proecting them.

Well, the US was founded on the Presumption of Innocence. Hence the innocent until proven guilty. It hearkens back to the notion that for a person to commit a crime against another person is a travesty and should be punished, but for a government to commit a crime against a citizen is a travesty of a much higher order and cannot be permitted.

The concept goes all the way back to Common Law,

Lord Hale (1678) says: "In some cases presumptive evidence goes far to prove a person guilty, though there be no express proof of the fact to be committed by him, but then it must be very warily pressed, for it is better five guilty persons should escape unpunished than one innocent person should die."

Fortescue says: "Who, then, in England can be put to death unjustly for any crime? since he is allowed so many pleas and privileges in favor of life; none but his neighbors, men of honest and good repute, against whom he can have no probable cause of exception, can find the person accused guilty. Indeed, one would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally." De Laudibus Legum Angliae, Amos' translation, Cambridge, 1825.

And it has been specifically reaffirmed by the US SC in Coffin v. US

Especially if the accused is innocent? I daresay rape victims aren't guilty of anything, either.

Where did I say they were? I simply said nobody should be adjudged to be guilty without due process (except in Guantanamo:lol: ).

 

[jfuh]

Morons,

I have a friend who was brutally raped by a guy she dumped. They were not intimate and he threatened to make her undesirable to other men if she dumped him. Three months after she cut him loose, he waited for her at her house. He made her open her front door and he took her inside by knife point and raped her. He commenced to beat her about the face to pile on insult. After he was finished with her, he made her strip down to bare nakedness and he forced her outside where he locked her out of the house. She had to walk over to her neighbor's house (whom she did not know) and ask for help.
After the arrest was made and a short time later, it was discovered that he gave her herpes ("undesirable to other men"). This was not raised during the trial, because she was embarrassed about it.

She has had one boyfriend since, in whom she was not intimate with. Before this event would occur she confided to him that she had a disease and he dumped her that very instant. They had been going out for two months. This was eight years ago. She is beautiful, 5ft 2in, and weighs 115 pounds and she absolutely refuses to be embarrassed about her condition ever again.

I believe that the least our fuc*ed up "politically correct" society can do for her was to keep her name out of the headlines and out of the minds of the "National Enquirer types" that are looking for their cheap thrill of the day. The event is embarrasing enough without plastering it all over the minds of her friends, co-workers, and neighbors so that she has to re-live it every time one of them feels the need to project sympathy.

I think it's absolutely rediculous of what some "news" organizations do just to make some headlines.
I think it more pathetic as how some people insist that such "publication" would decrease false accusations against rape.
For rapist as your friends ex, I think castration is the way to go, I have no sympathy whatsoever for rapists.

 

[jfuh]

among all reasonable people there is no stigma over rape
sadly there are few of those now-a-days

traumatic....yes
victimized....yes

stigma........NO, unless the broad never gets over it

No stigma my ***.
Tell the victim whom aquired non-curable STD's from the rapist that there's no stigma in her getting raped.

 

[RightinNYC]

Any police chief or medium or larger city? That's total bs and you have no proof nor evidence of such.

Fact:

Source

That's not at all conclusive. Here's an analysis of the conflicting numbers. I'll note that the lower numbers tend to be anecdotal figures from biased groups, while the higher numbers tend to be unbiased scientific studies.

http://archives.cjr.org/year/97/6/rape.asp

f you talk to sexual assault counselors, you'll most likely hear the low figure: that 2 percent of all accusations of sexual assault reported to law enforcement across the country are later found to be false, which, the counselors say, is the same rate as for other crimes. Of all the numbers out there, this has been cited most often, appearing in publications from The Boston Globe to the Houston Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Newsweek, and Editor & Publisher.

Sometimes the figure is attributed to a particular source, but that's still no guarantee the numbers can't be challenged. Marcia L. Roth, the author of the 1996 op-ed article in the Louisville Courier-Journal, attributed the 2 percent rate to the 1993 book Rape, the Misunderstood Crime, by Julie Allison and Lawrence Wrightsman. But Allison and Wrightsman weren't so unequivocal. Noting that the frequency of false rape reports is difficult to assess, they didn't do their own study; instead they looked at a synthesis of research findings from a 1979 book, Understanding the Rape Victim, by Sedelle Katz and Mary Ann Mazur. Katz and Mazur, it turns out, had reviewed studies dating back to 1956 that showed the frequency of unfounded and false rape reports ranging from a low of 1 percent to a high of 25 percent. Allison and Wrightsman simply chose the study that showed 2 percent.

The FBI has been saying since 1991 that the annual rate for the false reporting of forcible sexual assault across the country has been a consistent 8 percent (through 1995, the most recent year available). That's four times higher than the average of the false-reporting rates of the other crimes tracked by the FBI in its Uniform Crime Report.

If you look to academe for such studies about false reports, you'll come across the unusually high percentage found by the Purdue University sociologist Eugene J. Kanin, now retired. In an examination of rape reports from 1978 to 1987 in an unnamed midwestern city of 70,000, he found that of the 109 rapes reported to the police, 45, or 41 percent, were subsequently classified as false. Kanin also got the police records of two unnamed large state universities and found that in three years, 50 percent of the 64 rapes reported to campus police were determined to be false.

However you look at it, no matter what numbers you believe, the percentage of rape claims that are false are significantly higher than that for other crimes, by a factor of 3 or 4. And this only counts allegations which are later dropped, and not the many more which are false but in which the accuser maintains their claim.

 

[RightinNYC]

Something to remember:

The "right" to publish the names of victims of any crime, rape included, is guaranteed by the Constitution and the SC. There is currently a self imposed gag order for most papers on publishing rape victims names, although there are some who do. There are no laws one way or the other on the matter, and no law attempting to either mandate it or forbid it would withstand constitutional scrutiny.

 

[vergiss]

Har! :lol: The names of the alleged victims in all cases EXCEPT rape are published, megabrain.

I live in Australia. How the bloody hell would I know what goes on in your court system? Generally, here, the victims names aren't published in any case.

How about people who have been mugged? There's no stigma attached to rape - a person was just a victim of a crime.

...you're kidding, right? Not only do they have to put up with rumours, accusations that they were "asking for it", that they "wanted it" and hearsay about their sex life, so do their partners, their relatives, their children...

I was assaulted as an 11-year-old. You can't just get over the "dirty" feeling, it's there whenever you remember what happened. I never told anyone for years, and for a long time, the mere thought of anything remotely sexual - even kissing - made me feel ill.

When you're mugged, you're intimidated, maybe lose a personal possession. When you're sexually assaulted (and I'd assume brutally physically assaulted), they totally dehumanise you. It's a feeling you'll never know until it happens to you, and I hope it never does. I've felt the shame, and the stigma - one I told someone who I thought was my friend, and she remarked in an argument a few weeks later "We both know you started being a slut early, didn't you?" and then proceeded to tell every mutual friend what I had told her, in confidence.

Yeah, the same opinion. The accused are assumed innocent in the court. Period. My personal opinion is that OJ is a multiple murderer and that Micheal Jackson thinks five year old boys are sexy. So what? I don't have the authority to act on those opinions. The agencies that do have the authority to act are constrained to act only within very tight limits, with very powerful restrictions on who is found guilty because we don't want to punish an innocent man for crimes he didn't commit.

Why do you think it's reasonable or even defensible to do otherwise, regardless of the crime? What your saying, in effect is that all men are guilty and we're all rapists at heart, so if one comes close to a description in a crime, that's good enough.

Erm, what? Where the hell did you pull that from? My objection is that the people in this thread are going in assuming from the beginning that the victim (which alphamale rather tellingly put in inverted commas) is a liar. Where did you get the rest of that from? You're acting as if I'm encouraging vigilante justice or harassment of the accused, or something. :shock: I won't even start on the paranoid "All men are rapists bit..."

Say a 15-year-old girl accuses her teacher of molesting her. Would you want her name published? Would you decide from the beginning she was taking revenge on him for failing her, or something?

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

I'm already on record on this thread saying that NO names should be published for any crime until the accused has been found guilty, and then only that the name of the convicted be released to the public.

Since that is such an eminently sensible and practical idea, everyone on this thread promptly ignored it.

 

[vergiss]

I'm already on record on this thread saying that NO names should be published for any crime until the accused has been found guilty, and then only that the name of the convicted be released to the public.

Since that is such an eminently sensible and practical idea, everyone on this thread promptly ignored it.

Well, largely I agree (although that paragraph was more directed at alphamale). However, showing the likeness of an accused criminal can be useful in bringing other crimes to justice. Often the victim of another rape or robbery will see him (or her) on TV and realise "Hey! It's the same bastard!" - which in turn will help the current case.

 

[jfuh]

That's not at all conclusive. Here's an analysis of the conflicting numbers. I'll note that the lower numbers tend to be anecdotal figures from biased groups, while the higher numbers tend to be unbiased scientific studies.

http://archives.cjr.org/year/97/6/rape.asp

However you look at it, no matter what numbers you believe, the percentage of rape claims that are false are significantly higher than that for other crimes, by a factor of 3 or 4. And this only counts allegations which are later dropped, and not the many more which are false but in which the accuser maintains their claim.

No, that's not true. From your own source his own numbers he'd obtained are inconclusive. Not to mention that this review was in response to the histerical figure published by the KC star of 25% of all rape claims were false claims.Then there's the very fact that the person who wrote this article is not a scholar of this field nor of statistics, but a journalist.

Also no where in the source that you provided is there any mention that false rape claims are 3 to 4 times that of any other crime. Provide your source for this figure.

 

[RightinNYC]

No, that's not true. From your own source his own numbers he'd obtained are inconclusive. Not to mention that this review was in response to the histerical figure published by the KC star of 25% of all rape claims were false claims.Then there's the very fact that the person who wrote this article is not a scholar of this field nor of statistics, but a journalist.

Also no where in the source that you provided is there any mention that false rape claims are 3 to 4 times that of any other crime. Provide your source for this figure.

Hooo boy. You claimed "the numbers are 4-6%." I explained that it's not that simple, there are many other estimates, and then provided the one governmental figure available, from the FBI. You miss that?

The FBI has been saying since 1991 that the annual rate for the false reporting of forcible sexual assault across the country has been a consistent 8 percent (through 1995, the most recent year available). That's four times higher than the average of the false-reporting rates of the other crimes tracked by the FBI in its Uniform Crime Report.

 

[vergiss]

I may have missed it, but do you have the actual FBI source for that?

 

[jfuh]

Hooo boy. You claimed "the numbers are 4-6%." I explained that it's not that simple, there are many other estimates, and then provided the one governmental figure available, from the FBI. You miss that?

No, what I saw was from the article source that you gace that used that document as a source. So yes, I did miss your FBI source.
Now, for the sake of argument let's use your 8%. That's still only 8%. So then are you advocating for the publication of the other 92% of true cases which then results in the humiliation of the rape victim? Cause you know, that is the topic at hand.

 

[RightinNYC]

I may have missed it, but do you have the actual FBI source for that?

The FBI doesnt post records back to 1995 on its site, but if you google "FBI rape unfounded" you'll find numerous places where it's cited.

 

[RightinNYC]

No, what I saw was from the article source that you gace that used that document as a source. So yes, I did miss your FBI source.
Now, for the sake of argument let's use your 8%. That's still only 8%. So then are you advocating for the publication of the other 92% of true cases which then results in the humiliation of the rape victim? Cause you know, that is the topic at hand.

Did I say that?

First off, the publishing of those names is a constitutionally protected right that most papers simply choose not to exercise.

Secondly, why should rape be the ONLY crime in which the alleged victim is not named? Those accused of pedophilia are no doubt just as shamed and embarassed, perhaps unjustly so, just as those accused of raping and being raped.

I would argue that by setting rape apart from every other crime, and by making the decision to publish the name of the accused but not the accuser, the system is perpetuating the stigma attached to rape. Personally, I'd prefer that nobody who is being accused of a crime have their name be published until they are proven guilty.

 

[vergiss]

The FBI doesnt post records back to 1995 on its site, but if you google "FBI rape unfounded" you'll find numerous places where it's cited.

:neutral:

Secondary sources, particularly when they're opinion pieces, are not trustworthy in any case. I've heard so many stats quoted from so many sources, I don't know what to think.

I don't know what goes on in the US, but in Australia the victims of paedophilia go unnamed. If a victim of crime doesn't want his or her name made public, regardless of the crime, I see no issue with that. The problem with keeping a name suppression on all accused criminals is what I said - identifying them in the media can solve other crimes, and the victims of these other crimes in turn can testify in the current case.