Shot in the Dark

The New Victorians

140 years ago, VIctorian manners were deferential to women, as befits behavior toward a weaker sex that needed to be protected.

Apparently, we’ve regressed: a Kansas woman charged with falsely accusing an ex-boyfriend of rape won’t be prosecuted, because…

…well…

The woman was arrested for making a false accusation, even though she told police she did not want to press charges. Police investigated anyway due to the seriousness of her allegations. Her legal fees have been paid for by a legal defense fund created during the #MeToo movement.
The Chicago Tribune reported that prosecutors are dropping the charges against the woman because of the “cost to our community and the negative impact on survivors of sexual violence cannot be ignored.”
“We are concerned this case, and the significant amount of misinformation surrounding it, could discourage other survivors from reporting their attack,” [Douglas County District Attorney Charles] Branson said in a new statement. “That is unacceptable.”
Branson failed to address what dropping the case meant for victims of false accusations. As it stood, the woman only faced up to 23 months in jail for a felony false reporting charge. Had the male student been arrested, he faced decades in prison.

Is there a term for this, other than “infantlizing women?”

And in what other area do we refrain from prosecuting liars for fear of deterring the righteous?

Other than voting fraud in Minnesota, I mean?

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Mitch Berg

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3 responses to “The New Victorians”

  1. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Obviously, if it’s not prosecuted, it doesn’t really matter – a classic dilemma when dealing with liberals and laws – but it seems to me that the penalty for a false accusation ought to match the penalty for crime accused. So, decades in prison for little miss fake rape as well.

  2. MtkaMoose Avatar
    MtkaMoose

    This is not much different than the Jussie Smollett case in Chicago, Fabricate a story, cost police time and money to investigate, and face no consequences for lying.

  3. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    I’m ordinarily a supporter of a lot of #MeToo, but when advocates argue that perjurers shouldn’t be prosecuted, they lose me. The stats; for every 1000 sexual assaults, about 310 are reported to police, of which 2-10% of those reports (6-31 reports) are false. Criminal convictions are also about 2%.

    What do I conclude; if you want people to take rape seriously, you’ve got to prosecute false allegations, or else a significant part of the jury pool is going to know people who were falsely accused, but whose accusers were not prosecuted. And that is going to feed the abysmally low rate of convictions.

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