Hey, Can A Woman "Ask To Get Raped"?

There is nothing circular about my logic here, Robert. He who throws the first punch in a fight is guilty of battery. He who responds in kind is not.

When the demented duo (or anyone else) show up to ridicule a rape victim, make no mistake; that can hurt as much as a punch.

Using the "Innocent" metric;

Yet you run your mouth as if you know that my behavior is worse, despite the FACT you are speaking completely from ignorance.

Dude, not only are you catering to trolls, you're now advocating for them and pretending you know my behavior is worse, even as you admit you don't know what the **** you're talking about.

How telling is it that you adamantly refused to admit he created puppets in the first place, and take great care not to impugn him with his obvious deed; but hesitate not at all to impugn me with your accusations. I have just one account here Robert. One.

Only you could know who started the sock war, but your unfounded accusations against me lead me to believe you're just speculating.

Regardless, the sock puppets on this thread were all created for the same reason; BillRM is a disgusting troll.

Apparently, some were created in an attempt to moderate his trolling and he created some to further it. Your choice to cater to, and now advocate for, disgusting trolls is the reason for all of them.

While my vote-count certainly appears to have benefited from these puppets; that's no excuse for you to accuse me of anything, which you are doing with zero evidence because there couldn't possibly be evidence for something I haven't done.

I seriously doubt a significant percentage, let alone an overwhelming majority, of the community would oppose sanctions for the deliberate targeting of innocents.

While your attacks on me may be somewhat popular, rest assured, the demented duo are indeed almost universally despised for re-victimizing victims of rape.

Only an asshole would think that was cool. And, you are the only person I've seen stand in defense of it.

For all your ranting about my attacks on the demented duo, you are a hypocrite. I do instinctually react to what I consider abusive behavior in kind. So do you. You’ve been doing it for several posts now.

Troll lover

You need to pop that inflatable high horse you never get off of

You simply delude yourself into thinking your behavior is righteous and thereby justified

Instead of being like a rabid dog about trying to get your "****" list banned, why don't you propose some rules to the community and see if they like your policy changes?

You think there's a "metric"? Not just ramblings of a wannabe white knight? But some actual "metric"? Why don't you share what it is then. Codify it as a rule that moderators can read and apply. I just hope it doesn't involve a rape kit.

a loudmouth who can't stop obsessing with being a white knight to uninterested damsels

they aren't interested in Sheriff Occom Bill's laws.

In her book, Brownmiller said that only 2 percent of rape allegations are false, citing findings by the female police in a New York City rape squad. The problem is that while this statistic has been widely repeated, with dutiful mentions of New York-based "research," no one has ever tracked down its source. This we learned from a comprehensive review of the literature on false rape charges published in the Cambridge Law Journal in 2006. The author, Philip Rumney, finds a couple of small studies that back up the 2 percent claim but isn't confident of their methodology.

Rumney's survey of the terrain is the best we found. He also takes aim at the findings on the other end of the spectrum—the research that purports to show that the rate of false allegations of rape is in the range of 40 percent, as well as the flawed (but often cited) work that makes a crazy high jump to as high as 90 percent. The 40 percent figure is usually attributed to a 1994 article by E.J. Kanin in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Kanin looked at 109 reports of rape to police in one small Midwestern metropolitan area over nine years. His pool was small. The police he studied always offered the victim a polygraph—perhaps signaling they doubted her veracity. And Kanin himself "warns against generalizing from his findings" and points to reasons for questioning them, as Rumney explains.

The hugely high 90 percent false rate is several degrees more suspect. The citation for it is usually a study in Scotland by police surgeon N.M. MacLean of only 34 rape complaints made from 1969-74. Complaints were labeled false if they were made after a delay. Or if the victim didn't look "disheveled" or upset or seriously injured. But those factors don't necessarily indicate that a rape charge is trumped up. When police use stereotypes about rape to sort real allegations from false ones, they can do victims a real disservice, as this model paper from the Oregon Attorney General's Sexual Assault Task Force explains. In a 1981 study of 16 reports that claimed the victim admitted to making it up in 14 of them, one case was disproved because the police decided the woman was too large for the alleged rapist to have taken off her "extremely tight undergarments" against her will. Need we say that this not the critical eye we want from the cops?

Rumney's smart debunkings leave us with a group of American, British, Canadian, and New Zealand studies that converge around a rate of 8 percent to 10 percent for false reports of rape. Not all of these studies are flawless, but together they're better than the rest of the lot. They include a massive 1997 report on sexual assault by the U.S. Department of Justice, which includes data from 16,000 local, county, and state law enforcement agencies. The DoJ found that "in 1995, 87% of recorded forcible rapes were completed crimes and the remainder were classified as attempts. Law enforcement agencies indicated that about 8% of forcible rapes reported to them were determined to be unfounded and were excluded from the count of crimes."

If 8 percent to 10 percent is about right for false reporting of rape, based on what we know so far, how should we think about that number? Rumney says he's not sure whether crying wolf is more or less likely over rape than over other crimes, because the comparative research is even less conclusive. So that's a question that appears to have no answer at the moment. (A 2001 Department of Justice report says that the rate of false reports is similar for other crimes, but it also gives the 2 percent figure without a source, so we're skeptical.)
http://www.slate.com/id/2231012

Wrong and so wrong you are more then likely once more being very dishonest indeed.

The details of the studies cover in one case a thousand people and the other over a ten year period show a 25 percents to a 50 percent false rape rate for non-strangers rape.

you are more then likely once more being very dishonest indeed.

October 1, 2010
Redefining masculinity is key to stopping rape
by Katrina Fox

Women can't stop rape. We've been trying for decades.

From the early days of the women's movement in the late 1960s and 1970s, feminists have launched anti-rape campaigns. But, while rape crisis centres continue to promote the message that rape is not a women's issue - rather it's a social problem that can only be rectified by a change in the male mentality into one that acknowledges men's power to stop rape - few people seem to be listening.

In Australia, we've seen evidence of male sexual violence inherent in Rugby League and several elite boys colleges, while in Canada, photos of the gang rape of a teenage girl were posted to Facebook.

According to the NSW Rape Crisis Centre, one in five women in Australia will experience sexual assault at some time in their life. Seventy per cent of sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows, such as a family member, friend or workmate. Of the remaining 30 per cent of sexual assaults most are committed by a person the victim meets socially or goes out on a date with. For one in 10 adult women who are sexually assaulted the perpetrator will be their current or past intimate partner.

Why these men believe it's ok to rape or sexually assault a woman or girl is bound up in conceptions of gender normativity and the imbalance of power between men and women that flows from such assumptions: Masculinity is associated with dominance and virility while femininity is deemed passive. Men's sexual prowess is regarded as something 'natural', while women's sexuality must be controlled.

One of the negative outcomes of the current obsession with 'raunch culture' is the slut-shaming of women and girls who dare to be sexual - sometimes with many different partners; who dare to explore their sexuality and desires - sometimes in public.

A recent example is the ThinkUKnow campaign created by the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre and developed by the Australian Federal Police and Microsoft Australia. While its motives may be honourable - protecting young people from unwanted images of themselves being distributed without their consent - the delivery is not. A short video, 'Megans Story' shows a teenage girl walking into class happy and confident after 'sexting' her boyfriend. Her confidence turns to shame and humiliation as the sext is forwarded to her classmates and teacher, and she runs out of the room in tears. The message is clear: If a boy behaves inappropriately (by forwarding a private sext of his girlfriend), the girl is to blame, not him.

This is a spin-off of the victim-blaming mentality that says a woman was 'asking' to be raped because of what she was wearing, or because she left a party with a group of men.

When are we going to see a prolific national campaign to educate boys and men that it's their responsibility for not raping or sexually assaulting girls or women? When is it going to become a mandatory part of the school curriculum to teach boys from a young age that it's not ok grab a girl's breasts or genitals unless she explicitly gives permission? When are we as a society going to redefine what 'makes a man' and reject the hyper-masculine qualities that see women violated sexually as an activity that bonds 'real' men together?

Let's be clear: The rape of women by men is not about men's uncontrolled lust - it's about power and domination that stems from fear and hatred of the female and the feminine.

On 29 October national Reclaim the Night rallies will be held across Australia and other parts of the world in which women march through the streets to protest against men's sexual violence. These events first took place internationally in 1976 and the fact they still need to happen today is a sad indictment of men's refusal to acknowledge and use their power to stop rape.

Some men have made an effort in this area, such as Men Can Stop Rape, an international organisation that aims to redefine masculinity by mobilising men to use their strength for creating cultures free from violence, especially men's violence against women, but they are few and far between.

By and large, preventing rape is still put on women's shoulders. Well-meaning college campuses distribute advice to female students on how to avoid being sexually assaulted: don't get drunk or stoned, don't leave a party with a group of guys or alone, carry a whistle. The problem is, it's all about controlling women's behaviours, not those of men.

A Facebook friend recently circulated a document that turns the tables and offers "100 per cent foolproof tips to prevent rape/sexual assault". It includes helpful suggestions to potential rapists such as: "Use the buddy system: if you are not able to stop yourself assaulting someone, ask a friend to stay with you when you are in public" or "When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!"

Facetious as some of the advice may be, it's a stark reminder that there is only one way to stop rape: Don't do it.

Katrina Fox is a freelance writer and editor-in-chief of The Scavenger.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/39246.html#

For all those professing to be standing up for the right of folks to be able to have a discussion topic without it being continually disrupted by trolls, off-topic posts and demands for abusers to be banned, how does 50 pages worth of such disruption fit into the grand scheme of things?

Once a victim of Miami-Dade’s 'Day Care Rapist,’ Jupiter woman finds purpose as national voice for sexual assault victims
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Oct. 24, 2010

The first thing Julie Weil's attacker asked her was whether she believed in God.

He was driving her minivan from the church parking lot near Miami where he'd ambushed her and her two children, hitting her over the head with the handle of a butcher knife before he shoved them all into the van.

"I answered, 'Yes, I do believe in God,'" Weil said. "He said 'Good, then you'll forgive me for what I'm about to do to you.'"

For the next several hours on that day - eight years ago this month - the stranger she would later know as Michael Siebert brutally beat and raped Weil four times and forced her screaming 3-year-old daughter and 8-month-old son to watch.

Weil, who now lives in Jupiter, still vividly remembers the horror on her daughter's face. It was the image she saw in her mind when she testified before a U.S. Senate committee last month, urging lawmakers to improve the way the legal system deals with rape.

The 39-year-old mother's journey from victim to survivor has placed her in the national spotlight as an emerging advocate for thousands of women like her.

It's not a mission Weil would have imagined for herself that night in October 2002, as she lay naked, bruised and bleeding on the floor of her van, back at the church parking lot where Siebert left her.

Earlier, he had found her address on her driver's license and driven her by the house she shared with her husband and kids. He threatened to come back and kill them all if she went to the police.

"I felt like my life was over, like he just entirely completely ruined my life, my children's lives, my husband's life," she said. "I didn't see any way that we would ever get out of this."

For six months as Miami-Dade police searched for her attacker, Weil lived as a prisoner in her own home. But they eventually caught Siebert, and Weil through therapy and her family's support was able to work with prosecutors over the next four years to make sure his case went to trial.

Siebert, known as the "Day Care Rapist," received seven life terms in prison plus 15 years for Weil's attack. Weil and her husband moved from the South Miami neighborhood where she'd grown up and settled in Jupiter, hoping to put the attack behind them.

But a year after the trial, just before Christmas 2007, Weil heard about the murders of 47-year-old Nancy Bochicchio and her 7-year-old daughter Joey outside the Town Center at Boca Raton.

Watching news reports of the murders brought back memories of what had happened to her. Because she had survived, she said, she felt a need to help other mothers stay safe.

She established the website keepingmomssafe.com and used the forum to provide safety tips to mothers based on what she had learned from her own case.

One lesson: Pay attention to your surroundings.

Before Siebert abducted her, she said, she was distracted and talking on the phone just before she buckled her son into his car seat. Other mothers have been abducted while changing a baby's diaper from the trunks of their cars.

Weil said she also began to realize that her case was a success story compared with those of other rape victims.

Authorities in her case vigorously pursued her attacker and eventually caught him. Her story twice appeared on America's Most Wanted, including video of Siebert as detectives arrested him.

In the hours after Weil reported the rape, detectives took her to the Roxcy Bolton Rape Treatment Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where she received a rape exam by medical staff specially trained to deal with sexual assault victims.

But in many other counties, including Palm Beach County, Weil discovered, there are no medical treatment centers similarly devoted specifically to rape cases.

Worse still, Weil says, in many other places law enforcement officers either fail to believe the victims or are otherwise insensitive.

In one Pennsylvania case, police accused a victim of lying and threw her in jail while her rapist continued to attack other women. That victim, Sara Reedy, testified with Weil last month at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on what lawmakers called "the chronic failure to report and investigate rape cases."

Both women urged the committee to improve the system for rape victims. Among other measures, Weil supports the SAFER Act of 2010, which would create a national registry to track untested forensic evidence from rape cases.

Weil now works with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, or RAINN, as a member of the group's national speakers' bureau to raise awareness of the plight of victims as they deal with the legal system and society as a whole.

According to RAINN, when factoring in unreported rapes, only 6 percent of rapists will ever spend a day in jail.

RAINN spokeswoman Elizabeth Crothers says Weil is one of 700 speakers for the organization, but Weil stands out in her determination to improve the system for rape victims.

"When we heard the (Senate) committee was meeting, I immediately thought of her," Crothers said. "It was as if that hearing was tailor-made to what she does."

Weil says her work has given her a new purpose. In addition to her testimony before Congress, Weil has worked with prosecutors and law enforcement, offering tips on how they can more sensitively deal with victims.

As for herself, Weil says she doesn't see herself as a victim but as a survivor.

Her marriage survived the attack and eventually grew stronger. Although both her children suffered from the effects, they now go to school, have friends and participate in sports and other activities.

Weil says she still feels a twinge of fear every time she gets in her car. She says she doesn't think she'll ever forgive Siebert for what he did to her children more than what he did to her.

Though he's in prison for life, she says every once in a while she searches for his name of the state Department of Corrections website, just to make sure he's still locked away.

Reading the phrase "Sentenced to Life" seven times under his name still gives her the same sense of empowerment she feels whenever she speaks in public, the same sense she felt when she walked out of the courtroom after Siebert's sentencing.

"I wish I could frame that and hang it up next to my high school and college diplomas," Weil says of Siebert's sentence. "It was hard work. It was something I never thought I would make it through, but here I am, with a new purpose."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The SAFER Act

•The SAFER Act of 2010 (H.R. 6085) would create a national registry to track untested forensic evidence from sexual assault cases.
•Supporters say the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Registry would, for the first time, give policy-makers accurate data about the extent of the nation's backlog of unprocessed rape kits, including evidence in possession of local law enforcement, and lead to quicker elimination of the DNA backlog.
•They say it will also provide up-to-date information to victims and the public, and would establish best practices for the use of DNA evidence in rape cases.
•Status: Bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. Was referred to two House subcommittees on Sept. 20.

Rape statistics

•Including the number of unreported rapes, only one in every 16 rapists will ever spend a day in jail.
•A 2010 survey showed that 66 percent of rape crisis treatment centers had to reduce their prevention education and public awareness efforts because of funding losses.
•One in 6 women and 1 in 33 men in the United States have experienced either a rape or an attempted rape.
•Seventy-three percent of rape victims are acquainted with their attackers.
Sources: National Alliance to End Sexual Violence; Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network; Florida Council Against Sexual Violence
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/once-a-victim-of-miami-dades-day-care-990138.html?viewAsSinglePage=true

ehBeth, I told you that responding to BillRM with statistical information that contradicts his assertions of a 40% rate of false rape allegations was pointless. After responding to him for 200+ pages in this thread, I know, all too well, that he just disregards the information. But, to humor you, I reposted information that indicates that the false reporting rate for rapes seems to be about 8--10%.

Cheerleader Required to Cheer for Man Who Assaulted Her
October 15, 2010
by Caroline Heldman

If someone assaulted you, would you want to then cheer for his performance on a basketball court? A 16-year-old Texas high school student sure didn’t.

High school football star Rakheem Bolton and two others were indicted for sexual assault of a child–identified only as H.S.–at a post-game party in 2008. According to H.S.–a fellow student and cheerleader at Silsbee High–Bolton, football player Christian Rountree and another juvenile male forced her into a room, locked the door, held her down and sexually assaulted her. When other party-goers tried to get into the room, two of the men fled through an open window, including Bolton, who left clothing behind. Bolton allegedly threatened to shoot the occupants of the house when the homeowner refused to return his clothes.

In September 2010, Bolton pled guilty to a lesser charge of Class A Assault and was sentenced to one year in prison, a sentence that was suspended by the judge in lieu of two years probation, a $2,500 fine, community service and an anger management course.

Silsbee school officials had two responses to the incident. First, they urged H.S. to keep a low profile, such as avoiding the school cafeteria and not taking part in homecoming activities. With the support of her family, she refused to do so, rejecting the notion that she had anything to be ashamed of. Secondly, school officials kicked her off the cheerleading squad for refusing to cheer for Bolton. No kidding.

Bolton had been allowed back on campus during a brief period when one grand jury withdrew the charges before another grand jury reinstated them. During a basketball game, H.S. cheered for the entire team but refused to cheer “Rakheem” during his free-throws, so she was off the squad.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/10/15/cheerleader-required-to-cheer-for-man-who-assaulted-her/

High School Cheerleader Kicked Off Squad for Refusal to Cheer for Her Rapist
by Alex DiBranco October 18, 2010

.Rah, rah, sis boom bah: Silsbee High School in Texas wants their cheerleaders smiling, energetic, and willing to cheer for their rapists by name. Go team!

H.S., a Silsbee student, reported being raped in 2008 by Rakheem Bolton, a fellow student and athletic star, with the help of two of his friends. In the end, Bolton recently ended up getting off without serving any jail time by pleading guilty to a lesser assault charge, spending two years on probation, doing community service, paying a fine, and attending anger management courses. Hardly seems like an adequate punishment, but it's unfortunately not uncommon for attackers to bargain down their charges. What really gets the blood boiling is how the students' high school treated the victim when the rape charge was levied.

Bolton was set to be on the school's varsity basketball team, and they couldn't risk losing by barring him from playing for a silly thing like a rape charge. That could impact their chances at winning. Who cares about the traumatic impact it would have an a cheerleader who needed to vocally support a team including her rapist?

But H.S. fulfilled her role as a cheerleader, participating in all the cheers for the team as a group. She simply refused to shout the first name of the man who assaulted her when he stood up alone to make free throws. It seems like she was being more than accommodating, when an student athlete facing trial on rape charges most likely should have been suspended from the team, even if his presence wasn't a source of immediate distress to his victim in her position as cheerleader. In a display of extreme disrespect for a rape survivor and disregard for her well-being, school officials insisted that H.S. had to scream "Rakheem" with the rest of the cheerleaders, or she'd be kicked off the squad.

Not only that, Caroline Heldman reports on Ms. Magazine's blog that school officials pushed H.S. "to keep a low profile, such as avoiding the school cafeteria and not taking part in homecoming activities." As though she should somehow be ashamed for having been raped and brought charges against her attacker. Where exactly was she supposed to eat so as to not cause discomfort to the star athlete? H.S. also refused to take this offensive "advice."

H.S. sued her school district for removing her from the cheerleading squad. In an absurd court ruling, the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals decided to uphold the school's decision, claiming that a cheerleader was but a "mouthpiece" for a school to use to "disseminate speech — namely, support for its athletic teams." Her silence apparently "constituted substantial interference with the work of the school because, as a cheerleader, H.S. was at the basketball game for the purpose of cheering, a position she undertook voluntarily." Well, I'm sure H.S. never expected to be "volunteering" to cheer for someone who had assaulted her. And the idea that just being silent during Bolton's free throws, a barely noticeable act, was "substantial interference with the work of the school" — um, we're talking extracurricular sports, not classroom disruption — makes little sense.

Tell Silsbee officials that this is no way to treat rape victims, and insist that they publicly issue an apology to H.S. immediately. Furthermore, tell them to instate a policy outlining appropriate treatment of sexual assault survivors, which does not put the onus on the victim to ensure smooth interactions at the school.
http://womensrights.change.org/blog/view/high_school_cheerleader_kicked_off_squad_for_refusal_to_cheer_for_her_rapist