Sunday, December 27, 2015

Historical 'rape'

Pertinent, and I'll make no comment other than I subscribe to The Scotsman because Scotland and New Zealand have surprisingly similar social dysfunction 'statistics':
THERE has been a five-fold increase in the number of rape and attempted rape cases in the High Court linked to domestic abuse over the last four years, figures show.
According to the Crown Office, there were 435 rape or attempted rape cases in the High Court in 2014/15 where domestic abuse was an aggravating factor, compared with 88 in 2010/11.
Prosecutors said the steep rise was due to changes in legislation and an increase in the number of historical crimes being reported.
But charities said Police Scotland’s pro-active approach to tackling domestic abuse was also having an impact.
The number of domestic abuse charges marked for the sheriff court was 31,373 in 2014/15, compared to 20,673 in 2011/12 – an increase of over 50 per cent.
Sandy Brindley, national coordinator for Rape Crisis Scotland, said police had adopted a new tactic of speaking to ex-partners of men being investigated in domestic abuse cases.
Oh bugger it. I will make one more comment. When the policing and justice system operates with a bias, the benefactor can be expected to exploit it.

And that is doubly worrying in view of the last piece of the article above.

Hell hath no fury etc.

4 comments:

JC said...

Some years ago I bookmarked every case of false rape that I saw plus many of the (mainly) US studies on the problem.. it was a depressingly long list.

False rape isn't the 2% of the feminist opinion but something like 15-50% of all initial reports. You'd get flurries of them around the Manawatu, Nth Auckland and Chch and police would come out with complaints of time and resources wasted as accusations fell apart upon investigation. They sometimes had a timeline, ie, accusation on the weekend but withdrawn the following Monday or Tuesday as tempers abated and sobriety set in.

You can get a flavour of the problem here..

http://www.cotwa.info/p/false-rape-allegations-assault-on.html

Interesting discussion by law practitioners here..

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/2004/12/2_false_rape_st.html

When you read many of these stories and surveys you get to understand why so few rape accusations actually make it to court (to the dismay of womens' groups). The courts have tried to make it easier for victims by hiding their sexual histories and possible previous accusations. I may be wrong but I think defence lawyers can still introduce this info if they can show relevance.

JC

Lindsay Mitchell said...

Thanks JC. A search of 'false rape' on this blog will also turn up a number of NZ cases.

Brendan McNeill said...

If your immigrant communities bring with them a 'culture of rape' then a nation's statistics will change. For this reason Sweden has become the rape capital of Europe and by a considerable margin, although it seems Germany is now doing its best to catch up.

I doubt that the Scotts record the hmm.. 'religious affiliation' of perpetrators, and no doubt there is a good number of Scottish Presbyterian's included amongst them, but like Sweden, I'd wager immigration and culture are a factor in the increased numbers.

S. Beast said...

Oh for goodness sake. Clearly false claims are easily weeded out (or they wouldn't have been identified as such in the first place).

FYI the police consider anything that doesn't have physical evidence to collect as "historical", meaning it could be a much shorter time period than what you might expect.