This is an appalling case. The woman involved, “Ruth,” was raped by her partner, a West Midlands police officer, and even though he had secretly made an audiotape in which listeners could hear her being raped, she was charged for making a false report and with “perverting the course of justice.” Prosecutors did not play the recording for the jury, but referred to what can only have been an inaccurate and incomplete transcript of it. This false transcript claimed listeners could hear the victim laughing and consenting, when in fact that part of the audio came from a porn movie had been playing in the background. When her defense attorney played the actual tape, the entire courtroom could hear Ruth telling the rapist to stop, saying that it hurt, and begging him to take it out. The jury took less than an hour to find her not guilty. That isn’t the end of the story. The police officer who raped Ruth will not be charged, even though he admitted to raping her in open court. Instead, the rapist is suspended from West Midlands Police on full pay. Later this year (and he’ll be getting paid the whole time) he will have a misconduct hearing — not because he raped Ruth, but because secretly recording her may have violated the police code of ethics. I have rarely seen so obvious or so deliberate a cover-up. Nothing will happen to the man who raped Ruth; he will get away with what he did to her, and so will the people who prosecuted her, even though the judge believes that "the whole prosecution was launched on a false basis,” and asked police to re-open the investigation. Instead, Warwickshire PD “reviewed” the case (Ruth was not re-interviewed), and now claims that there “isn’t enough evidence” to support a rape charge — although the tape and witness statements were somehow enough evidence for them to decide to prosecute Ruth. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Here, then, is the story of a “false” allegation, and I’m sure that if Ruth’s lawyer hadn’t been thorough enough to have the tape analyzed, there would be men calling for Ruth to spend the rest of her life behind bars, or even to be executed, and pointing to her as an example of a false accuser. The fact that there isn’t enough evidence for a charge or a conviction does not mean a rape did not occur. Charging women with false reporting under those circumstances serves only to ensure that fewer women will dare to report having been raped — which, of course, is what that kind of man wants. I find it extremely telling that men of that sort don’t care about false murder allegations, or false allegations of robbery, or burglary, or any other crime, even though the majority of those crimes are also committed by men. Only rape gets them all worked up, although rape allegations are far less likely to lead to a conviction even when they’re true. When people deliberately and maliciously make false accusations of any crime, they should be - and are - charged for doing so. This push by some men to punish false rape allegations with draconian cruelty, when they are totally unconcerned with other, more common types of false accusation, is nothing more than an attempt to intimidate women into not reporting rape and sexual assault to law enforcement. bbc.com/news/articles/…
