By VennerRoad, 31st Oct 2016
Are police officers worldwide colluding with sexual predators to conceal their violation of women, or have we all be taken for a ride?
False rape accuser Rhiannon Brooker.
This is what feminist academics would have us believe. Time and time and time again, they, not-so-academic feminists, and others working in the sexual grievance industry, parrot the same mantra:
Rape is a vastly under-reported crime.
It is too difficult to report and too easy to get away with.
The conviction rate for rape is abysmally low.
Women seldom if ever lie about rape.
This latter point is stressed by American academic feminist Lisa Avalos in her 64 page paper Prosecuting Rape Victims While Rapists Run Free: The Consequences Of Police Failure To Investigate Sex Crimes In Britain And The United States, which was published in the Michigan Journal Of Gender And Law this year. This facile polemic is available at this link.
It is truly ironic that Professor Avalos should make such a big noise about this subject; she is clearly outraged at what she calls the myth that women often lie about rape, but when we fact check this publication, it turns out to be one written by a woman who lies about rape for a living.
Before proceeding any further and for the avoidance of all doubt, let it be stated that rape is a felony that when proved should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. For our purposes, rape may be defined as “The illicit carnal knowledge of a woman effected by force, intimidation, threats, or deceit as to the nature of the act.”
Physical force or the threat thereof is not an essential element in the offence of rape, but lack of consent is. If consent is given freely, it cannot be retracted retroactively. Consent is not really an issue herein though because the cases Professor Avalos considers were all – allegedly – forcible rapes, mostly by strangers.
Four of these women were in fact raped, but the other four were not. The case of Sara Reedy is well known, but was it anymore sinister than a routine miscarriage of justice? Many men – and not a few women – have found themselves on the wrong side of the law, including for imaginary crimes, because they were not believed by the police. Bar forensic evidence, Richard Buckland and Lewis Sproston could have been serving life sentences for murders committed by serial sexual predators. In the UK especially there have been some truly tragic cases of women who were convicted of killing their babies, most notably Sally Clark. The death of cricket coach Bob Woolmer combined tragedy with farce; the Jamaican police arrested half the cricketers on the island before it became clear the poor bloke had not in fact been strangled but had died from a heart attack.
Of the other three (anonymous) women who were falsely accused of faking their rapes, the case of the UK teenager is unforgiveable because there was forensic evidence to back up her claim. Although Avalos does not mention it here, this girl was said to have mental health issues – which can mean almost anything. Should the police always treat a woman who is not right in the head as a credible accuser, as credible as a woman who does not suffer from schizophrenia, perhaps?
The other four cases discussed herein were/are all unequivocally false accusers; Gail Sherwood and Layla Ibrahim were clearly women who had their own mental health issues. Neither of them accused named individuals, but due to the extensive nature of one fabrication and the effects of the other, they warranted custodial sentences. Eleanor de Freitas lied gratuitously, while Rhiannon Brooker is in a class by herself, not simply for the purposes of this study, but along with Alison Welfare and a handful of others, she is one of the most outrageous false accusers in the history of rape, plotting her false allegations months in advance and systematically drip feeding lies to her circle in order to destroy her victim.
Let us consider what Professor Avalos says about these women, and what the record actually tells us.
Gail Sherwood: According to our intrepid professor, this woman was stalked by a man for six months. Stalking is a relatively new addition to the lexicon of crime; thirty years ago it was unheard of, today it is commonplace, and is often used to describe harmless if annoying behaviour. Gloucestershire mother Sherwood claimed to have been stalked by this individual for months, assaulted by him, kidnapped, and raped. Yet no one ever saw him.
The abduction was carried out in her own car, and she had genital injuries, but not a shred of DNA evidence was found. Curious or what?
On one occasion (page 33) she found this bloke dressed in motorcycle gear standing in her living room. After giving her a warning, he left. She phoned the police, and...
The police investigated the case thoroughly, although according to Avalos they did this only because they had arrived at the conclusion early on that she was playing them. In order to absolve Sherwood, Avalos is forced to bring in a second stalker, or at least an accomplice (page 38).
She did not report the third rape because she felt she would not be believed, although she did tell a friend, who did report it. The police are said to have written it off as false. A local press report undermines these ludicrous claims: “The police operation involved forensic examination of scenes, police helicopters and sniffer dogs – exactly what you would expect if these were real allegations”.
Police medical examiners concluded that all her injuries could have been self-inflicted, and to cap it all, she caused the arrest of an innocent man.
Sherwood claimed to have received written communications from this man, which she is said to have burned because the police would not have believed her. Avalos swallows this because she is obviously as gullible as she is dishonest.
Let us be clear about this, if a woman is raped on a single occasion, her attacker may well get away with it, certainly if she does not report the assault promptly and undergo a proper examination. The man who attacked Sara Reedy raped her orally, which explains why a rape kit would be insufficient. But a man who harasses and attacks the same victim again and again and again, a victim who reports him, he is going to get caught in this Millennium, in this country. Even if he is not caught, he will leave forensic evidence that will validate the victim’s claims. Where there is no credible evidence in a case like this, there is no victim, end of.
Next we come to Layla Ibrahim. We need not waste too much time on this woman; Gail Sherwood was given a two year sentence for multiple false allegations; Ibrahim was given a three year sentence, but whereas Sherwood had caused the arrest of one innocent man, Ibrahim’s actions led to four men being arrested. She too had inflicted injuries on herself, which were persuasive, but not persuasive enough.
Ibrahim claims an alien pubic hair had been found on her person, but again, rape is a crime that leaves physical evidence, and as her non-rape was reported promptly, the question remains why was there no DNA or semen on her? That is of course a rhetorical question. Ibrahim is still protesting her innocence to this day. To no avail.
If it is possible for a skeptic to make out a case for either of these women – less so for Sherwood, obviously – the suggestion that either Eleanor de Freitas or Rhiannon Brooker were really raped beggars belief. In both cases they accused named individuals, who were arrested. And in both cases they are refuted by chronology.
The de Freitas case was discussed in a previous article, and the International False Rape Timeline contains the exculpatory CCTV evidence that was unearthed by Alexander Economou, the man she falsely accused. According to the complainant, he drugged and falsely imprisoned her as well as raping her. Yet she was seen shopping with him happily the following day.
Needless to say, Avalos ignores all this, instead she carps on: “...the police officers involved in the rape investigation believed de Freitas and refused to cooperate with prosecutors.”
One would hope they believed her initially, otherwise why would they have made an arrest? But: “there was a violation of the requirement that all relevant state agencies cooperate effectively in order to support victims. The priority in all cases involving gender-based violence must be to ensure that no further violence is inflicted on the victim...for a state entity to treat a person reporting gender-based violence as a suspect for false reporting after an inadequate or nonexistent investigation is a very grave matter.”
Leaving aside the fluff about gender-based violence (this is a false narrative), a false accuser is not a victim. Her claim that their investigation was inadequate or non-existent is ironic, because that is exactly what Economou said, namely they took this woman at her word, even though she claimed to have been raped two weeks previously. Then they arrested him. They appear to have made no meaningful investigation at that point, and who’s to say they would have? Had he not been a man of considerable financial resources and even more determination, the outcome of the case might have been very different.
Avalos pads out her non-argument with a load of guff about sex discrimination coupled with cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. And she does not mean being arrested and thrown into a cell on the whim of a scorned woman, as was Economou.
The fact that this young woman took her own life was tragic, but it was whose fault, exactly? It goes without saying that Avalos has made no mention of the fact that she had falsely accused another man of raping her a year earlier. Which brings us to Rhiannon Brooker.
Avalos skips over the facts of this case for a very good reason, the man Brooker falsely accused, Paul Fensome, spent five weeks in prison and was facing a life sentence. In addition to that, the case against Brooker was so overwhelming and the circumstances were such that to claim she is innocent would necessitate libelling her victim, something Avalos is probably wary of, not that this fear prevented her collaborator Lisa Longstaff from making similar false allegations against Alexander Economou.
The truth about Brooker’s false allegations came out because Paul Fensome had a cast iron alibi for one of the alleged attacks. When the police went back over the forensics, they realised they’d been conned. The investigation into Brooker was carried out by senior women detectives; the full circumstances of her case can be found in the Court Of Appeal judgment, an appeal by the prosecution against the perceived leniency of her sentence, an appeal which unfortunately failed.
It will be seen from this that Brooker had made false allegations against her own father when she was a child. In December 2014, Women Against Rape held a meeting at the House Of Commons where they pleaded her case and others; her lover painted a picture of her being the victim of a police conspiracy. Clearly this woman is a head case and a danger to any man with whom she comes into contact. Including you, pal!
What does Avalos have to say about this evil woman? At page 58 she carps on again:
“Even if Sherwood, Ibrahim, and Brooker actually lied about being raped, such long custodial sentences seem extraordinarily unjust for a nonviolent crime and could certainly discourage other victims from reporting rape, particularly if they have children. The compelling evidence that actual rape victims have been separated from their children and imprisoned as a result of police disbelief of their complaints is deeply disturbing.”
Seriously? Again, Paul Fensome was facing a life sentence. If you want to argue that falsely imprisoning a man for life is a non-violent crime, go ahead and make out the argument, but if you think it is a crime that demands punishment, get real. A man who sets fire to an empty warehouse is committing a non-violent crime. A man who steals a million dollars in a sophisticated fraud is committing a non-violent crime. Would any reasonable person suggest these do no warrant prison sentences?
How is a false allegation of rape that may have destroyed a man’s life diffferent? But all we hear from Avalos is the de rigueur wailing and gnashing of teeth, namely that sending these damned liars to gaol will only discourage genuine victims from coming forward, the so-called chilling effect.
There is copious evidence that in spite of the prison sentences handed down at times to false accusers, others are not deterred from reporting rape falsely, so the obvious solution is to increase such sentences. Bad actions must have bad consequences; if they do not, people will keep doing them. See in particular the article about the tragedy of the commons.
Avalos states openly that women who report rape falsely must not be prosecuted, that is her conclusion, indeed she seems to be unwilling to accept that there is any such creature as a false complainant. Sadly, she is by no means unique. In this connection, brief mention should be made of another feminist academic, and one who aspires to the same lofty airhead heights.
Joanne Belknap is a feminist who according to her University of Colorado at Boulder webpage has secured almost two million dollars in grant money to conduct research on women, girls, and crime. Part of that so-called research includes a vacuous paper published in Violence Against Women. Therein she suggests that only .005% of rape allegations are false – a ludicrous claim – and that both the Tawana Brawley and Duke Lacrosse hoaxes were genuine rapes. These are two of the most thoroughly documented rape hoaxes within living memory; the former resulted in an in-depth official report which is but a mouse click away.
In December last year, Katie Barnes of Clemson University directed similar innuendo at the Duke Lacrosse case, implying the real issue here was violence against women.
If Professor Belknap secured two million dollars for her vacuous researches, and rubbish like this is published in supposedly peer-reviewed journals, it is time someone stepped in – if not a high powered academic then a politician – and put all these claims under the microscope. Peer-review means precisely that: fact checked, validated. When feminist airheads are spouting their contrived statistics about rape, the mythical gender pay gap or anything else, there is always room for sophistry, but when the facts of a case are written in stone – de Freitas, Brooker, Duke Lacrosse... – either the author is being honest or she is not. And at this level, pleading ignorance is not a valid excuse anymore than it is for Hillary Clinton and her private e-mail server.
A few more words about the so-called poor investigation and no-criming of rape allegations by the police. In the case of a genuine rape, which almost always involves some sort of injury to the victim, the police will usually pull out all stops. But for a woman who claims to have been taken advantage of while she was drunk three weeks ago, what are they supposed to do?
The police are not stupid, they realise that a woman may delay reporting a rape for an hour or two due to shock, but a case that is weeks, months or years old will probably be simply a case of she said/he said when it will be down to a jury to decide who is the more credible: the alleged victim or the alleged rapist. If you think that is an easy thing to do in a rape case or any other, check out this video. The bottom line is that the accuser has nothing to lose, she will almost certainly not face prosecution, so if she is making a false allegation out of malice or any other reason, the real victim is on a hiding to nothing.
Under those circumstances, or if they believe it to be a case of regret sex, why should the police not advise the complainant of the possible serious consequences for her if after precious resources have been wasted she is shown to be lying?
One final point on the subject of false reporting, the police have a number of appellations including The Filth. This is only part insult, because if police officers did not have dirty, filthy, suspicious minds, many of the more devious perpetrators would never be brought to book. Run the names Susan Smith and Jeremy Bamber through your search engine before you side with Professor Avalos and her mantra of believing accusers uncritically.
To Wikinut Articles Page