CryRape

There is a rape crisis in the UK. Today it was revealed that a woman lied when claiming her husband had raped her. The British rape laws allow the victim anonymity whereas the alleged perpetrator can be named.

The accused man, who has now been cleared of all charges, is ruined both socially and emotionally. No one can understand the terrible damage done to an innocent man, even when acquitted. The reason the man is irreparably damaged is that there will always be those that whisper, “There’s no smoke without fire.”

I have seen the damage such an accusation can make. A colleague, a middle-aged man with a loving family, worked with a female workmate late one evening. He needed some documents to be prepared before he took a dawn flight to Australia, and she volunteered. At the end of their work it was late and the young woman asked him for a ride home.

My work friend dropped the young woman at her home but declined her invite for a drink partly because he thought she was coming onto him. She became angry when he rejected her advances but he told her he had to get home. He thought she might have been a bit drunk but took no action about it thinking he might do so when he returned from his overseas business trip.

When he returned home the police knocked on the door and his wife answered. They stormed in to the house and arrested him in front of his family. His wife was so shocked that she had a stroke very shortly thereafter. She is semi paralyzed and wheelchair bound ever since. My friend was traumatized by the experience and initially didn’t know how to deal with the accusation.
It took my colleague a while to regain his equilibrium and when he did he hired a private detective. After a thorough investigation he discovered that the woman making the accusation had done the same thing twice before, falsely accusing two other men of raping her before finally being proven to be a malicious perjurer.

When confronted with this history the woman withdrew her rape accusation. But my colleague’s wife will remain in her wheelchair for the rest of her life.

It is often noted that the vast majority of rape prosecutions do not end in conviction. But the truth is that this crime is extremely difficult to prove and often boils down to the relative believability of the protagonists. With the law being updated to keep up with changing social mores it is now accepted that the current rape laws should mean that a woman saying no, at any stage, means no.

There are further moves to interpret the law to mean that if a woman is too drunk to say no, then any sexual intercourse she later deems to have been perpetrated against her conscious will should also be deemed rape.

What strikes me, as truly menacing and stupid were the words uttered after the case of the woman who falsely accused her ex husband of rape. PC Elizabeth Graham of Durham Police domestic abuse investigation team said after the hearing that the force was very victim-focused and the allegation of rape had been taken seriously and fully investigated.

She went on to correctly say that she hoped the case would not deter genuine victims of rape and sexual assault from reporting crimes to the police.

Of course all of us would agree that genuine rape accusations must be made wherever necessary and then be properly investigated by the police and prosecutions made as appropriate.

But the forces of law and order should think again about being “victim-focused,” their only true aim, be “ justice focused.”