An Unbelievable Rape Story

alh
Wed, 16 Dec 2015 20:43:38 +0000

All these efforts to push the myth that false rape reports are common clearly paid off, as Marie’s disturbing story shows. And not just with this one victim who was strong-armed into “admitting” she lied when she did not. “In the five years from 2008 to 2012, the department determined that 10 of 47 rapes reported to Lynnwood police were unfounded — 21.3 percent,” Miller and Armstrong write. “That’s five times the national average of 4.3 percent for agencies covering similar-sized populations during that same period.” How many other victims are out there, branded as liars, just because the cops would rather believe that women are hysterical rather than that rape is a crime that happens as much as it does?

Somehow I fear that this story, which has a real victim and real consequences, will not get nearly as much national attention as was paid to the story of the Rolling Stone getting snookered by a fabulist at UVA. The very real struggles that rape victims have being believed isn’t as enticing a story as the baseless fears so many men have about false accusations. Like the police who ganged up on Marie, it is still easier for many of us to believe that women make all this up rather than this is a thing that is actually happening.