Compare that to the staggering odds a woman will be raped in her lifetime.
Quote:Listen closely, moron. A man's chance of being wrongfully sent to prison for rape, are roughly the same as his being struck by lightning. Compare that to the staggering odds a woman will be raped in her lifetime.
The Innocence Project has released fewer wrongfully accused rapists since their inception than women have been raped...TODAY. Pull your head out of your ass, you sick, twisted, piece of ****.
So it does not matter as long as it is not a very large number and it does not happen to you????????
Quote:Compare that to the staggering odds a woman will be raped in her lifetime.
.4 per thousand below in your staggering number......let me see about lighting risk................
There is no large percent of cases where DNA testing confirms that the man in prison is actually innocent. The number of such cases is relatively small compared to the number of convictions and the number of people incarcerated.
Meanwhile, women are being raped all the time, and a great many of those rapists are not caught or convicted. You seem to be assuming that many of these women are lying about being raped. Most women do not lie about that sort of thing. And it is insulting to all women, including the ones posting in this thread, that you not only make such assumptions, you aren't really concerned about the problem of rape
The case goes to the grand jury tomorrow. They will probably indict him on the rape charge. In the court of public opinion, he is already being seen as guilty. And, with this one, there is no issue of misidentification, and the victim, a 43 year old Russian tourist, has agreed to testify at his trial.
City axes aid to outreach programs as rape incidents see a 13% jump
BY Corinne Lestch
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Tuesday, July 27th 2010, 4:00 AM
BY CORINNE LESTCH
RAPES ARE on the rise in the Bronx. And anyone can be a target, from a child to the 79-year-old woman with Alzheimer's who was recently assaulted in an elevator.
"We've been seeing a lot more sexual violence toward the elderly," said Elaine Garbaty, Sexual Assault Treatment Program coordinator at North Central Bronx Hospital. "Rapists do not discriminate. They're just sick people."
But with funding cuts dramatically reducing the number of outreach and sexual abuse prevention workshops offered throughout the city, many Bronx women - young and elderly - can no longer access services to help them.
These include a program at Kingsbridge Heights Community Center in the Bronx, Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program in Queens and St. Luke's-Roosevelt Intervention Program in Manhattan, as well as New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault.
"Now that funding has been cut, it looks like the Alliance won't be able to work with us anymore, so it's kind of making us feel rudderless at the moment," said Asmaa Donahue, who works with African immigrant women as part of the local ARISE Coalition and Sauti Yetu programs.
Donahue, 44, said the two-year-old coalition had been planning new strategies to reach marginalized immigrant communities when funding was cut. Now, she doesn't know how the program will even continue.
Police Department numbers show Bronx rape complaints in the first six months this year are up 13% - at 139, compared with 123 for the same period last year.
Arrests for rape in the Bronx increased by about 12%, to 105 this year, compared with 94 last year.
The 47th Precinct, covering Williamsbridge-Wakefield, ranks second among the city's 76 precincts so far this year for the largest increase in rape complaints (19), a 58% jump, while arrests are down 50%.
The 44th Precinct in Highbridge ranked fourth citywide, with the number of rapes (18) up 28.6%. Arrests (13) were up 44.4%.
Susan Xenarios, who directs the St. Luke's sexual assault program for male victims, and helped form the Alliance, said she doesn't understand why the City Council removed funding - especially in areas where statistics seem to prove people need it most.
"The Bronx is underserved and underfunded to begin with," said Xenarios, 64. "You've got Kingsbridge - they're the only game in town that does long-term treatment for child sex abuse. This is their expertise, and this is a big chunk of their funding."
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/bronx/2010/07/27/2010-07-27_support_cut_as_rapes_rise_with_incidents_up_13_city_axes_aid_to_outreach_program.html
Increase in reported sexual assaults in Dallas raises concerns
07:21 AM CDT on Wednesday, August 4, 2010
By SCOTT GOLDSTEIN / The Dallas Morning News
A significant spike in sexual assaults reported in Dallas so far this year is prompting police officials to get to work on a public awareness campaign aimed at curbing the trend.
Through Tuesday, Dallas police reported 333 sexual assaults. Through the end of July last year, the department had reported 258.
Officials are still studying the data, but preliminary indications are that about half the cases involve alcohol and people who know each other, often on dates or in other social situations.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/080410dnmetsexassaults.29ce376.html
If false imprisonment is your big problem; what difference does it make what the crime is?
Also, please give us your estimate as to the actual number of men falsely imprisoned for rape.
02/27/2010
Stanford’s Avatar Study: Sexualized Female Avatars Increase Rape Myth Acceptance in Players
Yesterday we discussed the potential business applications of Stanford's recent study on avatars and their real-world impact on player behaviors. Companies, we argued, can take advantage of a player's tendency to mimic the behaviors of their avatar by pumping effort into making avatars look more like their real-life counterparts.
Stanford's study also addressed another, more serious matter: In some circumstances, the appearance of avatars in a virtual space can affect how we assess real-world situations. The bad news? It isn't all fun and games, especially when it comes to super-sexualized female avatars like those in World of Warcraft and other online games.
Pixels and Policy takes a look at why avatars change the way we view the real world, and the potential problems super-sexualization creates in both the real and virtual spheres.
Stanford's Disconcerting Findings
Stanford's study on how human players will often mimic the actions of avatars that resemble them isn't just about getting online gamers to hit the treadmill every once in a while. It also looked at the role virtual worlds and online gaming are playing in an ongoing cultural dialogue on gender and the role of women.
One of the centerpieces of Stanford's research involved assessing participants' belief in the "rape myth" - the idea that a suggestively-dressed woman knowingly invites sex, and that this woman is more likely to be raped. Stanford tested gamers' views on the rape myth in a simple but effective way: Dressing up virtual characters in either conservative or suggestive clothing.
The Stanford Report has an interesting breakdown of the research model:
Fox tested the influence of avatars on attitudes and views toward women. She showed participants two types of female avatars: a suggestively dressed woman in revealing clothing and a conservatively dressed woman in blue jeans and a jacket. Both types of avatars demonstrated either dominant behavior such as staring at the participant or submissive behavior such as staring at the floor and cowering.
The results are shocking. Both men and women who viewed the "suggestively dressed" avatar were more willing to agree that a suggestively-attired woman deserves to be raped, that she places herself knowingly in a situation to provoke the sexual attention of men. According to the Virtual Human Interaction Lab's results, all groups viewing the suggestive avatar were also more likely to agree that women gain power and influence by controlling their male counterparts.
The Trend Towards Female Sexualization in Online Gaming
Alone, the research produced by the Stanford group is shocking. What's more disturbing is that, in virtual worlds like Second Life, women often report 'sexualizing' their avatar in order to attract attention from other players. Our study on the role of super-sexualized female avatars on Second Life found that at least 70% of female players adjusted their bust size or purchased suggestive clothing in order to attract friends.
Sexualized female avatars are not unique to Second Life, where an add-on to allow large, bouncing breasts made headlines soon after its public launch. In fantasy online games like World of Warcraft, Night Elves and other female characters often occupy sexually suggestive roles and sport idealized bodies. Final Fantasy 12 sports an all-female race of scantily-clad warriors whose feet naturally bend into high heels. But what happens when these titillating features bleed into the real-world and influence players' perceptions of women?
Virtual worlds are not merely games or playpens for freeform creation - they are living, breathing entities inhabited by real people with real-world lives. The Stanford study notes that most participants only needed five minutes of interaction with a scantily-clad avatar before signs of rape myth acceptance began to show. This should be alarming when a recent report by Nielsen shows that time spent in front of video games is at an all-time high. This means that, on average, people are being exposed to more potentially sexually suggestive content for a longer period of time, dwarfing the five minute sample size used in the Stanford study.
None of this advocates banning the option of dressing your avatar in a skimpy skirt and tower heels. After all, part of the amusement factor in virtual worlds is the plethora of customization options available to a player. And true, as our study on sexualization in Second Life found, many female players dress their character in ways they admittedly would never dress themselves. But that is of little comfort.
Children and Sexualized Gender Roles
Of primary concern are children, whose views on abstract concepts like gender and social equality are still forming. More children than ever are hooked into all sorts of online games, and too few have any kind of content control for overt sexually-oriented clothing. Sure, World of Warcraft will filter curse words and Second Life restricts access to certain adult shops unless a player is over 18, but neither of these services do enough to combat the flood of super-sexualized female imagery their players and developers produce.
Should a child's online gaming experience reinforce a gender role of sexualization and objectification even before the child can fully comprehend these ideas? If it takes only five minutes for an adult mind to gravitate towards disregarding the individuality of a super-sexualized female avatar, what happens to a child playing games several hours a day for years?
Will watching an endless parade of scantily-clad avatars in impossible heels and physically improbable breasts turn a ten-year-old into a future rapist? It's not likely, but that doesn't mean it isn't important to reinforce positive gender roles from a young age. Stanford's report noted that rape myth acceptance rose even when a female participant's own face was put on a suggestive avatar. This suggests that even a female gamer makes value judgments based first on a sexualized appearance, even if that judgment is cast upon a virtual version of themselves. Is this really a gender paradigm we want young girls developing?
In 2007, game developer and feminist thinker Andrea Rubenstein voiced concern about hyper-sexualized female character designs built for the tastes of a largely male audience. Now that Stanford has shown that these "suggestive" avatars have an impact on how players view real women, her words are even more important:
The problem comes in when “attractiveness” for women is defined, as Sheri Graner Ray points out in her book Gender Inclusive Game Design, “as male players would like them to be–young, fertile, and always ready for sex” (p. 104).
For player characters, an argument can be made for them disproportionately being young (although that argument weakens when you get into MMOs and the like), but what do fertility and sexual readiness have to do with being a competent hero? Men certainly aren’t typically portrayed like that, and rather the elements that are exaggerated in them tend to be strength and otherwise power-related.
Game developers have every right to design avatars that they think will appeal to their market, but would their act so cavalierly towards the sexualization of female avatars if they knew that these avatars were in some respects informing and enforcing players' real-world views towards such important issues as gender equality and rape? If Stanford's research holds up, the design of an avatar is much more than an aesthetic choice. It can alter our real-world views on groups that appear similar to that avatar.
Stanford's research is both highly alarming and much overdue. As more academics and policymakers realize that the virtual and real worlds are interacting like never before, perhaps developers will start realizing that the overt sexualization of female avatars is more than just a game.
http://www.pixelsandpolicy.com/pixels_and_policy/2010/02/stanfords-.html
So are we talking abut the national averages for rapes per thousand or do we carefully picked out small spots that happen to have higher numbers for some reason?
I picked the most recent reports--within the past week.
and asserted, based largely on undocumented anecdotes, that reading this material encouraged similar behavior in children.
With an average life expectancy of 80 years old, that would mean one in every 31 women can expect to be raped at some point in their lives.
1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime (14.8% completed rape; 2.8% attempted rape).1
17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape.
9 of every 10 rape victims were female in 2003.
While about 80% of all victims are white, minorities are somewhat more likely to be attacked
Every 2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted.
Here's the math. According to the U.S. Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey -- the country's largest and most reliable crime study -- there were 248,300 sexual assaults in 2007 (the most recent data available).
There are 525,600 minutes in a non-leap year. That makes 31,536,000 seconds/year. So, 31,536,000 divided by 248,300 comes out to 1 sexual assault every 127 seconds, or about 1 every 2 minutes.
The Unvictims
Sexual assault has fallen by more than 60% in recent years.2 Had the 1993 rate held steady, 6.8 million Americans would have been assaulted in the last 13 years.
But, thanks to the decline, the actual number of victims was about 4.2 million. In other words, if not for the historic gains we've made in the last decade, an additional 2,546,420 Americans would have become victims of sexual violence.
http://www.rainn.org/statistics
City Council wants answers on rape reports
Local leaders want answers on 'unfounded' rapes
08/04/2010
Last Updated: 3 hours and 21 minutes ago
By: Christian Schaffer
The Baltimore City's police commissioner says his department failed victims of sexual assault. The question now -- how can trust in the department be restored?
The police commissioner and the Baltimore City State's Attorney appeared before a panel of city council members Wednesday night, to answer questions about the police department’s failure to move forward with dozens of sexual assault allegations over the past several years.
Police Commissioner Fred Bealefeld told council members that changes have already been made -- because they had to be. ‘We have failed sexual assault victims in Baltimore. And we have an enormous amount of work to do with our partners to restore the public trust and confidence,’ he said.
From now on the first, uniformed officer who responds to a rape call can't dismiss a victim's claim as unfounded. Instead the officer must forward it to detectives. ‘We must ensure that victims have confidence that their reports of sexual assault are taken seriously,’ Bealefeld said.
But the commissioner admitted that over the past several years, many victims were not taken seriously. The department has already identified more than 100 cases that will be reviewed -- claims that were dismissed outright, with little or no investigation.
Council members worry those victims' attackers will never be brought to justice. ‘They might write a little report about that, but most of the ‘unfoundeds’ will not be found. And that's the issue,’ said 14 District Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke.
And even if police decide to move forward with a case that had been labeled as 'unfounded,’ State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy told council members that her office will only prosecute what she called 'viable' cases. Councilman Jim Kraft asked her to define that term. ‘We need evidence to proceed,’ Jessamy said. ‘So prosecutors will take cases to court where there is evidence that a person is guilty.’
But in cases where no report was taken, evidence might not exist, leaving Baltimore City with dozens of newly discovered rape allegations, but no suspects charged with any of them. ‘’It's a crime. It's not just a shame,’ Clarke said. ‘It's illegal, against the law, do something, arrest them.’
The police commissioner said the department and its partners are still in the process of working out how they'll proceed with all those old cases. The 100 or so that have been identified are just from January of 2009 until now.
Council President Bernard ‘Jack’ Young and State’s Attorney Jessamy said they support an outside review of those cases, meaning an agency other than the police department would handle it.
Commissioner Bealefeld said that wouldn't be the path he'd choose -- but if that's what put in place he'll support the external investigation.
Police have also established a hotline for women who think their cases should have been taken more seriously. The number is (443) 279-0379.
So far there have been about 40 calls to the hotline.
http://www.abc2news.com/dpp/news/region/baltimore_city/baltimore-city-council-grills-commissioner-on-rape-reports-
This was written for Manhattan Spirit Newspaper by a man who realized that he had commited rape after learning about date rape and reflecting on a night he had spent with a woman from England. It describes the rape in detail and may be upsetting.
Confessions of A Date Rapist
Seven years ago I raped someone. I did not use a knife, a gun or a fist. I did not threaten her and she did not scream for help, but I had sex with a woman who did not consent--and that is rape. I don’t think of myself as a bad guy. I have a college degree in the arts from a prestigious school, and my parents, still married, are very supportive. I do not hate women or the world, or myself for that matter. My female friends here in New York, as well as many of my ex-girlfriends, think I am a bright, caring, understanding person. But none of that kept me from raping.
I did not understand that what I did was rape until about a year ago. What made me finally realize my crime was the recent surge in media coverage of the phenomenon of "date rape." The St. John's University and Palm Beach rape cases, as well as other highly publicized scenarios where the alleged assaults were more ambiguous than a knife to the throat and a demand for sex, made me think about what date rape really is, as I relived that night.
I went to an upper West Side bar "scamming" with some of my friends. We had already been drinking steadily and by the time we got there, we were still coherent, but basically numb.
Through the entire night, even though I was drinking, I remained in control of my body. The booze accentuated my confidence and made me feel invincible--immune to rejection. Tonight, whatever I wanted I was going to take and nothing was going to stop me.
This was a period of my life where I was "slutting" heavily. I would pick a woman up at a bar and sleep with her the same night. I started to think I was entitled to sex. After talking a woman up and buying her a few drinks, I would do everything I could to make her go to bed with me. Usually she was willing. Sometimes, however, it took a little more work to convince her.
I was often cruel to these women. If the sex was good, I might see them again, but I would quickly get bored and after gaining their trust and having them fully confide in me, I would abruptly blow them off. They would be shocked and hurt and would call me in the middle of the night to cry and call me names and demand an explanation. I would tell them, "I don’t have to give you an explanation. Good night," or I would be brutally straightforward, saying, "I’m bored with you," "I don’t like your body" or "You don’t turn me on anymore."
She had only recently arrived and did not know much about the city. We talked for awhile and a mild seduction took place. I made her believe I was interested I what she was saying, and she thought I really cared about her. Our thighs rubbed together, my arm brushed against her breast
I was getting to her.
We drank some more and I grew confident that I was not going home alone tonight. She was staying at a friend’s place in midtown, and I assumed that when we left together, it meant she was going over to my place.
This was exactly the kind of assumption which often leads to a date rape. She had no idea that I wanted to sleep with her that night, but from my point of view, it was a given. Why else would I leave the bar? If I was not going to have sex with her, I would much rather drink more and try my hand at someone else. So it was understood on my part that we were going to sleep together. That understanding was not mutual. There was no understanding.
I asked her if she wanted to leave the bar, saying, "Do you want to take a walk?" I told her that I would take her back to the bar or to her friend’s place. She believed me, and I was on the road to getting her to sleep over.
I have always had a secret agenda with women. I would do anything I could to seduce them. I would use empathy, understanding, humor, even my deepest secrets to get them on my side. I would show that I was a "sensitive guy" and use that for the sole purpose of bedding them.
This time I used a woman’s drunkenness and unfamiliarity with the city for my purposes. Now that she was out of the bar, she had no friends to help her, no one to call, nowhere to go except where I wanted her to go.
We started walking and she asked, "Where are we going?" I said, "Just walking," all the time knowing that we were walking in the direction of my apartment.
We would stop sporadically and make out. During one heavy session I said to her, "Come back to my place." She refused. I said, "What do you mean, no? This is New York City. You don’t leave a bar with a guy and not sleep with him. C’mon, this isn’t England. This is the big city! This is how we do things."
She still refused, but I could tell I was influencing her with that ridiculous line. So we walked some more and made out some more, all the time getting closer and closer to my apartment. I used that "New York code of etiquette" line time an time again as I took her through unfamiliar streets.
We reached my apartment and I asked her if she wanted to come up. She said no, and I said, "Just come up for a little bit and then I’ll take you back." That sat better with her and I congratulated myself for the brilliant sell.
To use language as I did is abusive and irresponsible. I took advantage of someone’s innocence for my own ends. I was so confident that I could manipulate her that I did not understand where seduction ended and abusive behavior began.
Before I admitted to myself that I raped this woman, I would say, "She deserved it. If she was gullible enough to fall for that line, then I am not responsible or what happens." But I am responsible. I know I have a command of the language, and I can make some people do what I want by shaping my speech in a certain way and charging it with emotion.
We got up to my apartment and I began kissing her, but now she was not responding as she had on the street. I asked her, "What’s the matter?" But she just stared blankly past me into the wall. I gave up on kissing her and began to touch her in ways that would appear lewd on the street. Still no response. I felt like I was fondling a rag doll.
Not that I cared. I did not need any response on her part to get what I wanted.
I tried to take her blouse off and she locked her arms to her sides. I was stronger than her, so I pulled and forced her arms until I got it off.
If the rape did not start when I verbally manipulated her, it was certainly starting now. Now I was forcing her to do something against her will. I was using my strength as well as unfamiliar surroundings to my advantage--and completely disregarding her signals to stop.
I eased her down on the bed and she moved like dead weight. She did not resist me, but she did not hop onto the bed in anticipation either. She just stared straight ahead and began grinding her teeth furiously.
Grinding her teeth and tensing her body were the only ways she could safely express her fear. Here was a girl in a dark apartment with a man she never met before who could easily kill her, in a city which I described to her as a moral vacuum. She did not cry, scream, or fight. Only recently have I put myself in her place and realized the terror she must have felt. To me she was a source of sex and that was all. Getting the sex was a little more challenging than I was used to, but it was still a game.
I got the rest of her clothes off the same way I got her shirt off--I forced them off. There she was, naked on her back with her knees locked firmly together, staring at the ceiling and grinding her teeth. Not a word was spoken during this struggle. It was just me trying to get her legs apart and her trying to get them back together. . .
The sex lasted about a minute or two, and when I was done, I had the familiar aftertaste of unsatisfying sex. My power, so active five minutes before, was spent. All of the manipulative force I’d used left me empty.
I did not want this woman sleeping in my bed. I also did not want to walk her home, but is was dark and she did not know the area. She sat up in bed and again said she wanted to leave. By now it was 4 a.m. and I could not let her go out alone, even if she did know how to get back. I still find it amazing that after raping her I could feel concerned for her safety.
"Just sleep over," I said reluctantly. "You can leave when it’s light out."
She did sleep over, and she never stopped grinding her teeth through the entire night.
When we awoke the next morning, I insisted she wait and walk out with me, since I had to leave for work anyway. I guess I still wanted to be a nice guy. The last thing I said to her when we reached the street was, "You have to walk that way to get back to your friend’s place."
I’ve talked to my male friends about this and there is a fair amount of denial. "I did something like that once, but I don’t think it’s rape. It isn’t like you forced her to have sex with you."
But I did force her! What constitutes force? Do they require that I threaten her life? Do they require physical injury? If I were walking in a dangerous and unfamiliar neighborhood and a man twice my size walked up to me on a deserted street and said, "Give me your money," I would probably hand it over. The thought going through my head would be, "This guy could easily kill me. He did not threaten me, but merely demanded I give him something. I could run, but I would not know where to go for help. I may lose my money and feel violated, but it is better than having him kill me."
I do not remember her name but I think about her now. It hurts me to know that I damaged someone like that. Have I caused her to mistrust men, to be more confused about sex than she needs to be, to fear that she might have AIDS? (I did not use a condom when I assaulted her.)
Maybe she blamed herself for getting into that situation with me and allowing herself to be taken advantage of. Maybe she buried it deep in her subconscious for years until she could deny the pain no longer and had a nervous breakdown? I have an image of her in long-term therapy, my face conjuring up awful memories as she recounts the events of that night. I am responsible for her realization that a man can steal from you something that belongs to you, that you are supposed to be able to share with someone only when you desire to. It can be stolen from you as easily as someone might snatch a chain from around your neck.
I am aware that the power to rape is inside me. Now, when I meet a woman and see that she likes me, here’s what I’m learning and wanting to do. I’m more cautious about making unwanted moves. I am learning to interact non-aggressively. I’m learning to talk with her, not to her, possibly about intimacy with her, but speaking and listening with genuine interest. If the interest is not there, I know something’ wrong.
Most of all, I will not seduce. I will not try to pull desire out of her whether or not it is there. Even if she initiates sexual contact, I want to proceed more slowly than before. I don’t want to rely on body language or guesses or assumptions about what we should be doing. I want consent, without any coercion, if we’re going to be intimate.
I never want to rape again. And until I understand more about my own power, I will do everything I can to make sure I do not express it as rape.
-Written by Jack M.
http://www.survivingtothriving.org/confessions
