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This image captures the moment a former high school football star breaks down in court when his rape charge is dismissed. The dismissal occurred after the 16-year-old accuser admitted that the alleged incident never happened, concluding six years he spent in prison.
https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics/
"One in five women in the United States experienced completed or attempted rape during their lifetime"
"Nearly a quarter (24.8%) of men in the U.S. experienced some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetime."
"Nationwide, 81% of women and 43% of men reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime."
"One in three female victims of completed or attempted rape experienced it for the first time between the ages of 11 and 17"
And
"The prevalence of false reporting for sexual assault crimes is low — between two percent and 10 percent."
Sources for all this are linked in the site above.
I think it says a lot that some folks downvoted this despite it just being sourced stats of the level of sexual violence experienced by both men and women and the rarity of false reports. OP chose to post info about a case from more than 15yrs ago and didn't even bother posting sources (probably because the age of the case would have tipped off how rare these types of situations are). Yes, these types of false reports are awful but the sheer number of incidents of rape against both men and women are staggering.
I upvoted it because it should be said, but to play devil's advocate in regards to why people might be downvoting it: On threads about sexual assault, people discussing false accusations is generally discouraged, not because false accusations aren't a problem in theory, but because it distracts from and to a point dismisses the discussion about the injustice of sexual assault currently being presented. This is essentially the same thing; if people truly believed that these issues should be discussed separately, then this is as much a breach of that rule as discussing false accusations on a post about a sexual assault incident is.
If as few as 2% of reported rapes are false accusations but as recently as 2018, it was estimated that only 25% of rapes were reported to police, I think the argument that stuff like this "should be said" falls apart. When looking at false reports, you're looking at essentially a statistical anomaly when looking at the total number of incidents of rape. Yes, it can be said to happen, but focusing on false reports actively discourages both men and women from reporting acts of sexual violence. The problem of people not feeling safe to report or that they wouldn't be believed is a problem orders of magnitude greater in size than false reports.
stating the real issue.
I'm not sure you read what I thought "should be said" correctly-- my comment agrees with this point.
(not the person who you replied to) I thought your comment was well-reasoned and easy to understand. I had those feelings about it but didn't have the words to describe it. It's kind of like putting crime statistics under an article about a murderer who is black because you're expecting racism. Kinda. Your breakdown was more accurate.
Thank you! :)
thanks for these statistics. Very useful for reasonable discourse on the topic!
Came here for the rage, stayed for the sensibility.