The weekend news cycle kept mentioning the same statistic about “only 2% of sexual assault/rape allegations are false.”
I have no idea where that number came from, but I’m 99.9% sure it’s horseshit.
Here is why:
I’m not a lawyer, but my dad was and I worked for him for years, so I’ve been around the block in legal circles.
I cannot count how many times during a divorce dad is accused of being inappropriate sexually with the kids once custody negotiations come up. There was never a reported history of it. No police reports. But as soon as dad wants 50% custody and mom thinks about the kids spending time with dad and his new girlfriend, all of a sudden dad is a child molester.
Same them with domestic violence. No police reports. No history of ex-wife going to work with a black eye. But as soon as child custody or alimony negotiations start, ex-hubby becomes Bobby Brown.
It’s like magic.
I want to start my own company. I’ve talked to a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs.
One thing that I have heard over and over again about dealing with employees is that it is way easier to fire men than women.
Men will threaten to kick your ass. They may threaten to shoot you in the parking lot or follow you to your house. You call security or the cops and it’s over.
Disgruntled female employees will threaten to say that you had wandering hands or made a pass or something of a sexual nature. There is no way to prove it didn’t happen.
“If you fire me, I’ll say you grabbed my ass” is disturbingly common in business.
I’ve been given the advice to always, always, always, have female HR staff and have them fire the women. Have them in the room whenever you do a performance review with a woman. Put a security camera in your office and record your reprimands of female employees.
I can’t attest to the actual rate of false allegations in criminal prosecutions.
What I can say is that in the areas of divorce and disgruntled employees the use or threats of false allegations of domestic violence or sexual misconduct are off the fucking charts.
I know were supposed to #BeleiveWomen but there is a much older saying “hell hath no furry like a woman scorned.”
Just after the dinosaurs deprived us of their presence, part of “the talk” I got from my father, was that some girls (yes girls, we’re talking middle school and high school here) would agree to have sex, then after period of remorse, cry rape. This was especially true if their fathers found out. Most of the ones I was aware of in high school were negotiated into a formal marriage (white shotgun). So yeah, I call BS as well.
Around hunters and sport shooters it’s pretty common during a nasty divorce, that the other half claims they were threatened with a gun.
We always give our customers the advice during a divorce to store the guns elsewhere – and get them out of the house, when the other one is not there.*
So if the claim arises it’s pretty easy to prove that no guns where in the household.
*) In Germany all guns are registered and have to be stored in a safe. In most marriages only one person is allowed to own guns and thus the other one only sees the safe but not the contents.
It is a made up number from some author, I just saw a write up on it
Five years ago, I had a former girlfriend accuse me of domestic violence.
http://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2014/05/trouble.html
Three fourths of all allegations of domestic violence are false:
http://www.saveservices.org/downloads/VAWA-Restraining-Orders
As for me, here is the conclusion of the story:
http://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2014/06/prohibited-person.html
My first real job after college I was running the office of a furniture factory. I had a female boss and was in charge of 50 ladies and 1 guy. The very first thing my female boss told me was that under no circumstances was I ever to talk to any of the ladies alone in a room with a closed door and that for any reprimands I would be smart to have someone from HR around. This was in 1992. She knew even then the potential pitfalls that awaited men.
After a couple of hostile reports, one guy I used to work for commented that he would never hire another woman. Too much trouble, too much risk.
As to women lying about being assaulted. A pt I worked on in an ER. She came in bloody face, knocked out teeth, a 4 letter obscenity carved into her abdomen and a 10″ butcher knife inserted into a VERY intimate place. When she was taken to the OR they discovered she did it all to herself. No only no damage to her organs but that the knife had been coated with KY jelly. LEOs later confirmed, they were able to prove she did it all to herself.
Friend has a small engineering company, so it’s XY-dominant, but there are female employees. EVERY office – there are only a very few offices – and conference room has at least 1 wall entirely of glass. Other than himself and his wife (CPA, and she runs the books) he has no employees, only contract hires and the contracts are legally-engineered to keep the company in control of who’s there, for how long and under what terms they can be discharged. He uses an outside HR firm – under contract, of course, to advise and oversee on HR issues.
Ounce of prevention, writ large!
Brought to you by The Department of Making Shit Up.
To add an anecdote of my own. Just last night a family friend who was a sexual assault crisis counselor for 8 years told me about the worst case she saw. It was a mother saying her 3 year old daughter was being molested by the father. Medical examination and questioning later and we find out that never happened. She did not know for sure, but she suspected just that, that the mother was jealous of or didn’t like that dad had started over with a new girlfiend and was doing just fine.