A common tactic for the “believe all women” crowd is to claim that prosecuting false accusations will lead real victims to avoid reporting a crime. The mental gymnastics it takes to achieve the claim ignores the fact that false accusations actually hurt real victims because they make people less inclined to believe the next victim. Thus, false accusations need to be prosecuted to deter further criminals.
As it stands now, there is virtually no punishment for a woman who falsely accuses a man of sexual assault. The charge for such a false accusation is usually a misdemeanor charge for filing a false police report, a charge that doesn’t take into account the enormous toll the false accusation takes on the actual victim.
Now prosecutors in Kansas are feeding into this culture by dropping the charges against a woman police believe fabricated a rape claim in order to get back at her ex-boyfriend for moving on with his life. As The Daily Wire previously reported, the woman called police before entering a hospital for a rape examination. She gave police access to her phone, which quickly proved to them that the sex between the woman and her ex-boyfriend’s best friend was consensual. Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson said the messages showed the University of Kansas student “fabricated the rape story to effect the relationship between herself and the victim … and her ex-boyfriend.”
“The State believes the evidence presented at the preliminary hearing, including: the testimony of (the victim), (her ex-boyfriend), law enforcement officers, and evidence collected by law enforcement, specifically, text messages from the Defendant to her friend … indicate the sexual encounter … was consensual,” Branson said in a statement.
The woman told the Kansas City Star that her messages joking about and downplaying her sexual encounter were due to her inability “at the time to admit she had been raped.”
The woman only called the incident rape the next day after one of her acquaintances said they would tell people what happened. The accuser texted this person back, saying, “I’m pretty sure it was borderline rape and I have the bruises and statements to prove it so if you want to go there let’s do it.”
Those bruises were on her arms, legs, and neck. She had been drinking the night before and said she didn’t remember how she got them. Bruises tend to show up 1 to 2 days after an injury, not hours.
The woman was arrested for making a false accusation, even though she told police she did not want to press charges. Police investigated anyway due to the seriousness of her allegations. Her legal fees have been paid for by a legal defense fund created during the #MeToo movement.
The Chicago Tribune reported that prosecutors are dropping the charges against the woman because of the “cost to our community and the negative impact on survivors of sexual violence cannot be ignored.”
“We are concerned this case, and the significant amount of misinformation surrounding it, could discourage other survivors from reporting their attack,” Branson said in a new statement. “That is unacceptable.”
Branson failed to address what dropping the case meant for victims of false accusations. As it stood, the woman only faced up to 23 months in jail for a felony false reporting charge. Had the male student been arrested, he faced decades in prison.
As is typical, media outlets won’t name the woman because she claims to be a victim of sexual assault.
Post a Comment