In what type of situation is there that 10, or even 20 witnesses, could say that someone committed a crime, and for us to not be sure if it actually happened? Well, that sort of situation is exactly what I'm going to be discussing here. In recent years we've seen the rise of a new phenomena where multiple women have come forward at the same time accusing celebrity men of rape, with many of the alleged rapes having taken place years ago in the past. Obviously, with so many women accusing the same man of rape, the women have to be telling the truth, correct? Well, unfortunately there are ulterior motives. If a man is convicted in criminal court, it makes it very likely thereafter that he would also be found at fault in civil court. For that reason, with celebrity rape accusations, there are often some very large financial payouts. A woman has potentially millions of dollars to gain by falsely accusing a wealthy celebrity of rape. Very often there is an undisclosed settlement paid to the alleged victim to stop the lawsuit, with the amount paid not being made public. Once a celebrity is accused of rape and it is seen on the news, it doesn't take long for scores of other women to start coming forward claiming they were raped by this celebrity. They may do it for different reasons; the potential of receiving a financial settlement, temporary fame and attention, getting interviews and appearing on the news. Sometimes they feel that by accusing the man they are helping to make sure women are believed, by supporting the original accuser, and making sure a man whom they believe is a rapist goes to prison. After all, who is going to doubt that a man is a rapist if three or four women are saying the man raped them? But this phenomena sometimes rises to ridiculous levels. Harvey Weinstein had 87 women accusing him. Is that even believable? Surely the majority of these women must have been lying. Bill Cosby had 60 accusers. With so many women, why didn't more of these women come forward years earlier, if they were all actually raped? Oh, I'm not saying all these women are lying, but surely with 60 women, most of them have to be false accusers. It's not just celebrities, powerful men can also be accused for political reasons. Brett Kavanaugh, while he was being nominated to the Supreme Court, had numerous accusers, besides the three primary ones. In some of the cases it was obvious that the women's stories were not credible, and one of the women ended up retracting her allegations. Some resentful feminist women may view this as a strategy just to drag down rich powerful men. Others may hold the opinion that all women should be automatically believed when they claim rape, and be frustrated that a woman who is accusing a rich and famous man is not believed. In other cases, this phenomena may be a case of mass hysteria, where scores of women across the country seeing the news decide to jump aboard to rape accuser boat, feeling like they're becoming part of some greater movement and supporting fellow women. The phenomena of copycat crimes has been well studied in criminology. A terrible crime is covered in the news, and then shortly afterwards there are multiple similar copycat crimes committed by other individuals who saw the original story in the news. At the height of the #MeToo movement, 425 rich and powerful men had been accused of rape or serious sexual misconduct within a year. And that raises the question. In a case where there are 20 different women accusing a man, and we know probably a large number of these women are lying, couldn't it easily be possible they are all lying? If it's so easy for there to be 5 false accusers, why not 10? Why not most of the accusers? If most of them are lying, couldn't it be just as well possible they're all lying? There is no way 20 women have all been raped and they are just now all coming forward to tell the truth. That's too implausible. No, there is another explanation. Millions of women from across the country were watching the coverage from the news and a very small percentage of them - in many cases perhaps just a bit mentally ill or with serious emotional issues - decided to jump aboard the gravy train for stardom and easy money. The more accusers there are accusing a celebrity, the easier it is for more false accusers to jump onboard. Especially if these women watching the news coverage have the remotest past connection to that celebrity. For example, maybe 10 years ago they attended a party where that celebrity was at. Well that could make their accusation all the more believable.
In a similar vein, there's the question of created memories. This is a phenomenon wherein a listener hears a story and then creates a memory of something similar happening to him or her. People can become quite convinced that this event actually happened even though there's no truth to it. One of the most famous is the story of a ghost army of Agincourt appearing to fight alongside British troops against the Germans in WWI. The author originated the story, but shortly thereafter, several soldiers claimed to have seen this ghost army in the field, and over time, the ghost army morphed into angels. Despite his best attempts to debunk the stories, the author was accused of having used an actual event as the basis for a work of fiction. He ended up losing his job as a journalist as a result of the created memories of a bunch of soldiers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_of_Mons
the latest rich celebrity man has come under attack: Tony Robbins, self-help guru, accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women quote from that thread: The real problem is when the courts decided it was a good idea to start handing out financial damage awards to rape victims, based on nothing else than the female's testimony. No wonder we see the hysterical phenomena of gold-digging opportunistic women suddenly swarming around celebrities in a media-fueled firestorm. The sharks can smell the blood in the water and are circling. Criminal conviction (even guilty pleas) should not always be used to presume guilt in civil suites. Even though the standard wisdom is that the burden of evidence for guilt is much lower in civil courts than criminal.
John Coughlin committed suicide after the sexual misconduct allegation surfaced. Bridget Namiotka claimed to have been groomed by her former partner who was three years older than her when she skated together with John Coughlin. But the surfaced photo below may show that they were actually in a relationship, which is neither rape nor grooming. This might be the case with other celebrities who are accused of rape except for Harvey Weinstein.
Wait, he sexually abused her for 2 years?? Why did she stay with him all that time? The young man probably hanged himself because he couldn't take the shame of being labeled a rapist in the figure skating community. I personally know a story about a man who was framed by his ex-girlfriend. When he tried to break up with her, she threatened there'd be consequences. She got her 3 year old daughter to accuse him of molestation.
He was forced into a plea bargain and served less than 2 years in prison. His ex-girlfriend had called everyone in his family and everyone he knew telling them he was a rapist. He felt tremendous shame. He finally killed himself several years later. The daughter now doesn't remember any of it.
Dear @kazenatsu 1. For your first statement, yes, it turns out there ARE cases included that turn out to be false charges or unsubstantiated claims. By probability alone, the more accusations you have the more likely that false ones will be included. However, as you state with the "probability of one or more TRUE accusations" increasing with the number of accusations, "probability" is not enough to convict someone. In either case, people have the right to DUE PROCESS and not to be deprived of liberty or punished without being convicted of crime or wrongdoing that calls for such penalty by law. This goes both ways. The higher number of accusations is not enough to argue WHICH ones are true or false. 2. So for your second point, I disagree. The longstanding issues of institutionalized rape and abuse being covered up can take years, generations, or centuries to address. For example: A. Genocide, rape and forced sterilizations of Native Americans by European authorities B. Multiple cases of rape and abuse by Catholic priests covered up by their administrations C. Military rape and assault cases covered up D. Prison rape, assault and other organized criminal activities not reported Just because cases aren't reported or aren't publicized in the media doesn't mean they didn't happen or have credibility. These wrongs can go unreported for years and years. So I disagree with your second statement asserting there's no way these can be true. Just because SOME of them may be false, isn't justification to dismiss ALL such claims. Because of this complication with rape and abuse victims not coming forward, there are programs being developed for courts to handle rape and abuse cases differently than the system we have now. If we offer a more effective system, I believe we can prevent and resolve a lot of these problems that you bring up.
What happens when there are so many accusations coming in all at once that most of them have to be false? And if most of them are false, that begs the question whether it could be probable all of them might be false. If 10 women can make false accusations together, certainly 5 of them can too. Wouldn't be all that improbable. I'm not truly sure what a logical way is to deal with such a situation.
True rape victims would say the money is not worth the experience, and that going to police is traumatising. But false accusers are stronger and glad to get money it fame or help convict an accused she suspects is guilty, like part of a wasp nest. The fact that some are false does not mean we should assume all are false. It just means we should not count the number of accusations as evidence. We need to let the strongest ones proceed, with the others dismissed. The case then needs to look at evidence, and the less backed up accusations should not get money. A good criminal defense attorney should explain the monetary motive and that since accuser's names are not published and penalties for false accusations are so low and monetary gains large, there needs to be evidence beyond her word. As for what evidence there is, I think the location sex took place can be suspicious enough to convict, if it happened between strangers in public. Also the act, such as anal sex, could be enough to convict. Also if the guy is significantly less good looking than her and inserted his penis without a condom, I would not believe his claim that it was consensual. If public sex guarantees the woman wins where consent is unknown, there will be some women who lure rich men to have sex in public. But if he accepts, he is as dumb as a woman who walks alone. Better that he fall than that hundreds of women know any guy can walk up to them and help himself to her body. We need to set up a safety net that makes it easy for people to quickly get away from their partner they depend on financial. That way in the case of rape, they don't feel trapped. I mean good bunk houses and legal/financial advisors.
