That's absolutely true. But I believe that acquaintance rapes are less likely to be reported to the police in the first place. So when we're talking about how police treat rape victims generally, we have to consider that a good proportion of victims they interface with are victims of stranger rape.

The author of the original article promoted my post on wrongful convictions/mis-identifications (see the third or fourth comment down). I'm contributing to the thoughtful discussion here, not "hijacking." Don't call me a feminist troll, whatever the fuck that means.

That makes sense. Thanks.

That's nice that you don't think wrongful convictions are a women's issue, that they don't affect women directly or indirectly.

Here's a prime example of what I'm talking about: http://www3.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/ltc/

I don't have any reason to think that the 2-8% number isn't reliable. I'm not taking issue with false reporting statistics. I'm saying that mis-identifications are a major problem in criminal cases, regardless of the crime.

Thanks for that. But there are no accurate statistics for false identifications. The only reason we have a window into how false identifications lead to wrongful convictions is because people have studied the 150+ cases of wrongful convictions, where people have been exonerated due to new DNA evidence. Brain…

That's hyperbole. Thousands of people get convicted of rape every year. Police testimony is often critical to getting those convictions.

I still feel like people in this conversation should not be lumping together these dissimilar cases (stranger vs. acquaintance/relative/intimate partner). Victims from the latter categorically are much less likely to contact the police. So when we're talking about how the police handle these cases, I think we have…

The Innocence Project also studies the 150+ cases of people who have been exonerated to better understand how they were convicted in the first place. False witness identifications are a major cause of wrongful convictions. Many cases have no DNA evidence and there are people sitting in prison who cannot be…

Can you give me a source for that 80% number? Also (and this is not diminish victims), if rapes are not being reported/police are failing to pursue reported rapes, how can that number possibly be accurate?

Where are you getting your statistics from? If police are failing to report rapes, how do we know that non-stranger rapes are the overwhelming majority of rapes?

That's a very different scenario, for sure. I think this is a class issue as well. Police will take people more seriously if the are from a certain socioeconomic background. Police tend to be much less respectful to poor people and people of color.

Not exactly. There's falsely reporting rape. There's also falsely identifying the perpetrator (if it's a stranger). The Innocence Project has documented how unreliable eyewitness testimony is and how it has lead to people being put on death row for crimes they didn't commit. It's not that victims lie. It's how…

Eyewitness testimony, including those of rape victims, has led to wrongful convictions. Eyewitness testimony, of any crime victim, is often not reliable. This article fails to draw the distinction between how we remember traumatic assaults and how we remember features of a stranger who may have perpetuated the…

You go girl! Kill those brown boys! Three cheers for war everybody!

vBravo. Really.

Were your men provided with any kind of psychological services to help them cope with their problem and manage it without re-offending? Did you have any success stories? I mean, there are people who consider themselves pedophiles who manage to never commit an offense during their life times. Surely there are coping…

You can still commit murder or rape in prison though. So I don't think it entirely throws off the statistics.

You're the second poster who's said that recidivism rates for sex offenders are high. Studies I've read have reached the opposite conclusion. A 2002 US Dep't of Justice study found that the recidivism rate for sex offenders was 5.3 percent (for sex crimes) and 43 percent (for non-sex crimes). The overall recidivism…