JLM: 2002 Rape Allegations at Liberty University

[ExpectingUnicorns]

The system is not set up to side with the accused, in general once an accusation has been made it is almost always believed irrespective of whether it happened or not. The issue however is corroboration of an allegation. If there is corroboration in the form of verifiable injuries or witnesses, and a complaint is made immediately, the case will usually proceed (and likely end up in a conviction) provided that the victim goes through with it and does not decide to walk away. In most cases where charges end up not being pursued or dropped, either the victim will not testify in court or the complaint is made some time after the event and there is no corroboration of the accusation.

False accusations do happen btw, and are not uncommon. Studies on the subject suggest a false report rate between 2 and 20% IIRC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape). The actual rate is likely somewhere inbetween those two numbers and depends on the circumstances of the case. An assault by a stranger likely has a very low false report rate, while accusations that are made long after the event likely have a high false report rate.

I am not aware of any system that "almost always" believes the rape accuser. While written with an air of authority, this first statement must be only an opinion ~ certainly not a fact, as any simple internet search will confirm. (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=are+rape+victims+believed)

Corroboration of the rape allegation is only one of several "issues" involved in determining whether or not an accusation of rape is brought to court. As in this particular case, I believe there are many, many rapes, particularly at institutions of higher education, that are not prosecuted because those institutions are more concerned with their reputations and incomes than the safety of their students. This student, for instance, did want to formally charge JLM, she was apparently injured, some say hospitalized (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...rty-University-girl-claimed-raped-campus.html). And yet there were no formal charges brought.

Here is a wonderfully germane excerpt of a letter sent to Jerry Falwell, Liberty University, from the US Dept of Education, fining the university $165,000.



Read the entire letter here: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sites/default/files/1194_001.pdf

 

[ILOKAL]

http://www.readthehook.com/95992/cover-how-uva-turns-its-back-rape

 

[Tugela]

1.) Regarding not pursuing charges...I'd like to know how many times in these cases the school pressured them not to pursue charges, and or did not provide them with the support they needed to pursue charges.

2.) if rape is often his word vs her word, how do we know that percentage isn't just based on the assumption the women was lying? Do they have proof she was lying? I'm curious about what those statistics are basing their numbers on. Women do not commonly go around accusing people of rape if it did not happen. As a victim there is a huge sense of shame. And accusations are another huge stress. Few people are going to go through that experience unless they were actually raped!

I would be willing to bet there is a much higher percentage of women who NEVER report their rape, vs women who have made false accusations.

It happens more frequently than you think. Remember, a sociopath will have no reservation about doing something like that, and they can be motivated by things such as money, power, revenge or getting attention. Sociopaths don't feel shame, so using that as an argument that they wouldn't do it is not valid. Women are not immune from sociopathy, and not all accusations are made to LE, many are simply circulated among social circles, but the effect for those sorts of people is the same. There is much to be gained for a sociopath by doing that with very little downside to them - the worst that can happen is that people might not believe them, but most will just because the accusation was made. So you can bet that it happens not infrequently.

The likelihood that a woman will make a false accusation of rape or some sort of sexual assault is probably of the same order of magnitude as a man doing those things. In both cases the people doing it are sociopaths who represent a small minority of their sex, but they have a big impact on everyone else. Just because a sociopath is a woman does not mean that she is bound by some higher code of conduct, she is just as capable of lying, cheating and injuring others as a male sociopath. And not only can she do that, but she can be very believable doing so, since that is a special skill sociopaths have. How can you tell the difference between a lie and the truth if both people are equally convincing in their fervour?

You should not make the mistake of thinking that just because you would not make such a false accusation for reasons X, Y or Z, that all other women would not either. Sociopaths do not play by the same rules as you.

The studies on the issue are fairly numerous and they all come up with a relatively large number of false reports. And those are just the ones the police hear about. You can bet that many more such accusations are made socially as well, where they can be used as a social weapon.

 

[Tugela]

I am not aware of any system that "almost always" believes the rape accuser. While written with an air of authority, this first statement must be only an opinion ~ certainly not a fact, as any simple internet search will confirm. (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=are+rape+victims+believed)

Corroboration of the rape allegation is only one of several "issues" involved in determining whether or not an accusation of rape is brought to court. As in this particular case, I believe there are many, many rapes, particularly at institutions of higher education, that are not prosecuted because those institutions are more concerned with their reputations and incomes than the safety of their students. This student, for instance, did want to formally charge JLM, she was apparently injured, some say hospitalized (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...rty-University-girl-claimed-raped-campus.html). And yet there were no formal charges brought.

Here is a wonderfully germane excerpt of a letter sent to Jerry Falwell, Liberty University, from the US Dept of Education, fining the university $165,000.

View attachment 62946

Read the entire letter here: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sites/default/files/1194_001.pdf

That is really beside the point, the school is not the entity responsible for enforcing the criminal code, the local police and prosecutor are.

The issues raised in that letter refer to the circulation of information and other administrative responsibilities imposed by various laws. They are not protecting the perps, they are just lax at compliance with administrative requirements. People get bent out of shape about what the schools are or are not doing when the schools are not the ones doing these attacks, people just always look for someone to blame, and the more people/institutions they can blame the better they feel about themselves. But that does not change the basic reality: when one of these attacks takes place, the victim needs to make a proper and timely complaint with the correct authorities, namely the police. The school has nothing to do with that beyond providing general security appropriate for the size of the campus. They do not have a mechanism for "pressuring the victim to stay silent" because they are largely out of the process other than collecting statistics. If a victim is pressured one way or another, it would far more likely come from his or her peers, not the school.

Schools do not have an omnipotent presence overlooking the behaviour of students.....they generally leave them almost entirely to their own devices and treat them as adults (which is what students are). The problem is that many students don't behave like adults, they still act as though they are children in high school, only in a university/college environment there is no staff monitoring their behaviour. So you will see these things like sexual attacks without the normal adult inhibitions because the people who do them are still acting like they are in high school. And when these attacks do happen, they are often hushed up by the victims themselves following the "no snitching" code of conduct so prevalent in high schools.

The issue is that we do not teach children to be responsible adults, but rather they are kept as a separate class of society that is almost completely isolated socially and in terms of accountability from everyone else, until one day they reach an arbitrary age and are suddenly expected to behave and act like adults. Problem is, some don't, they have never learned how, and in an open environment with little oversight, such as a university campus, that behaviour perpetuates and can create all sorts of problems.

 

[SolVol]

It happens more frequently than you think. Remember, a sociopath will have no reservation about doing something like that, and they can be motivated by things such as money, power, revenge or getting attention. Sociopaths don't feel shame, so using that as an argument that they wouldn't do it is not valid. Women are not immune from sociopathy, and not all accusations are made to LE, many are simply circulated among social circles, but the effect for those sorts of people is the same. There is much to be gained for a sociopath by doing that with very little downside to them - the worst that can happen is that people might not believe them, but most will just because the accusation was made. So you can bet that it happens not infrequently.

The likelihood that a woman will make a false accusation of rape or some sort of sexual assault is probably of the same order of magnitude as a man doing those things. In both cases the people doing it are sociopaths who represent a small minority of their sex, but they have a big impact on everyone else. Just because a sociopath is a woman does not mean that she is bound by some higher code of conduct, she is just as capable of lying, cheating and injuring others as a male sociopath. And not only can she do that, but she can be very believable doing so, since that is a special skill sociopaths have. How can you tell the difference between a lie and the truth if both people are equally convincing in their fervour?

You should not make the mistake of thinking that just because you would not make such a false accusation for reasons X, Y or Z, that all other women would not either. Sociopaths do not play by the same rules as you.

The studies on the issue are fairly numerous and they all come up with a relatively large number of false reports. And those are just the ones the police hear about. You can bet that many more such accusations are made socially as well, where they can be used as a social weapon.

False reports and remorse/vengeance motivated claims of rape tend to mask the real claims of rape, and to make college administrations, LE and the public cynical and unbelieving.

However, the evidence of vicious brutality such as JLM inflicted upon his victims from the first case at LU to the Fairfax victim throws cynicism right out the window.

 

[SolVol]

College athletes commit the majority of the rapes on campuses - http://www.ncava.org/statistics.html


Colleges either need to screen their athletes psychologically before offering them scholarships or keep their potential and actively sociopathological sexual assault perpetrators on a separate campus far away from the social life of the university under lock and key except for game days.

 

[MJPeony]

This link may well have already been posted. In any case, I hadn't read it until recently. Most in-depth info I've read on the college records and what did (or did not, as the case may be) go down regarding JM's rape allegations when he transferred http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/c...cle_118ecaf4-51a0-11e4-803f-001a4bcf6878.html

 

[ExpectingUnicorns]

That is really beside the point, the school is not the entity responsible for enforcing the criminal code, the local police and prosecutor are.

The issues raised in that letter refer to the circulation of information and other administrative responsibilities imposed by various laws. They are not protecting the perps, they are just lax at compliance with administrative requirements. People get bent out of shape about what the schools are or are not doing when the schools are not the ones doing these attacks, people just always look for someone to blame, and the more people/institutions they can blame the better they feel about themselves. But that does not change the basic reality: when one of these attacks takes place, the victim needs to make a proper and timely complaint with the correct authorities, namely the police. The school has nothing to do with that beyond providing general security appropriate for the size of the campus. They do not have a mechanism for "pressuring the victim to stay silent" because they are largely out of the process other than collecting statistics. If a victim is pressured one way or another, it would far more likely come from his or her peers, not the school.

Schools do not have an omnipotent presence overlooking the behaviour of students.....they generally leave them almost entirely to their own devices and treat them as adults (which is what students are). The problem is that many students don't behave like adults, they still act as though they are children in high school, only in a university/college environment there is no staff monitoring their behaviour. So you will see these things like sexual attacks without the normal adult inhibitions because the people who do them are still acting like they are in high school. And when these attacks do happen, they are often hushed up by the victims themselves following the "no snitching" code of conduct so prevalent in high schools.

The issue is that we do not teach children to be responsible adults, but rather they are kept as a separate class of society that is almost completely isolated socially and in terms of accountability from everyone else, until one day they reach an arbitrary age and are suddenly expected to behave and act like adults. Problem is, some don't, they have never learned how, and in an open environment with little oversight, such as a university campus, that behaviour perpetuates and can create all sorts of problems.

RBBM. This is not true. Even at LU they have their own police force to investigate the allegations. If "not enough evidence" is found by them, charges cannot be brought. It shouldn't be shocking to realize that these police could be influenced by their employers. If these hallowed halls of education only collect statistics (never influencing the outcome of the rape victims' accusations or keeping things quiet) then how did the AF Academy ever get itself involved in such a horrendous scandal, as well as the Naval Academy and several other notable universities ~ Penn State, anyone?

Yes, tugela, just search "universities discourage rape charges" and read a few of the 18,000,000+ articles. It won't be too far down in the list that you will see "76 Colleges Are Now Under Investigation For How They Handled Sex Assault Cases," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/college-sex-assault-cases_n_5675564.html.

 

[teeandcee]

College athletes commit the majority of the rapes on campuses - http://www.ncava.org/statistics.html


Colleges either need to screen their athletes psychologically before offering them scholarships or keep their potential and actively sociopathological sexual assault perpetrators on a separate campus far away from the social life of the university under lock and key except for game days.

LOL, I'm gonna be laughing about this all week.

 

[SolverGameChanger]

Thought this article is supportive of the conversation

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/opinion/sunday/mishandling-rape.html?_r=0

Paste from the article:

"Now consider that one large survey showed that around 40 percent of undergraduates, both men and women, had sex while under the influence of alcohol. Are all these students rape victims? And what if both parties were under the influence? Asked this question, a Duke University dean answered, “Assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent.” This answer shows more ideology than logic.

In fact, sex with someone under the influence is not automatically rape. That misleading statement misrepresents both the law and universities’ official policies. The general rule is that sex with someone incapacitated by alcohol or other drugs is rape. There is — or at least used to be — a big difference. Incapacitation typically means you no longer know what’s happening around you or can’t manage basic physical activity like walking or standing.

So where is this misleading statement coming from? It’s part of the revolution in sexual attitudes and college sex codes that has taken place over the last 50 years. Not long ago, nonmarital sex on college campuses was flatly suppressed. Sex could be punished with suspension or expulsion. This regime kept universities out of the business of adjudicating rape charges. Rape was a matter for the police, not the university.

Beginning in the late 1960s however, sex on campus increasingly came to be permitted. Only nonconsensual sex was prohibited. The problem then became how to define consent."

 

[Hoosgirl]

This is a heartbreaking read:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119?page=7

 

[cathyish]

This is a heartbreaking read:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119?page=7

Just a warning: the depiction of the rape is graphic, the statistics from the article are very chilling. One quote:

"Once successfully inside the frat house, women play the role of grateful guests in unfamiliar territory where men control the variables. In dark, loud basements, girls accept drinks, are pulled onto dance floors to be ground and groped and, later, often having lost sight of their friends, led into bathrooms or up the stairs for privacy. Most of that hooking up is consensual. But against that backdrop, as psychologist David Lisak discovered, lurk undetected predators. Lisak's 2002 groundbreaking study of more than 1,800 college men found that roughly nine out of 10 rapes are committed by serial offenders, who are responsible for an astonishing average of six rapes each. None of the offenders in Lisak's study had ever been reported. Lisak's findings upended general presumptions about campus sexual assault: It implied that most incidents are not bumbling, he-said-she-said miscommunications, but rather deliberate crimes by serial sex offenders.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119#ixzz3JdCCAUBP

 

[Hoosgirl]

Since I posted here about the Rolling Stone article, I wanted to post this follow up:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...a5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html

I don't know what to think!

 

[Conductor71]

Since I posted here about the Rolling Stone article, I wanted to post this follow up:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...a5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html

I don't know what to think!

We posted under Hannah's Journey too. Hardly anyone posting here now.

Attorneys were alluded to in article, and my feeling is Rollint a Stone was threatened with a lawsuit. It seems to me that some very powerful people affiliated with UVA a this story to go away. Makes it all the more likely to be true IMO.

 

[Tugela]

Since I posted here about the Rolling Stone article, I wanted to post this follow up:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...a5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html

I don't know what to think!

Numerous studies on the subject of false allegation of rape suggest a false report rate of between 2 and 20%. I would guess that the rate is on the lower end of that scale when it is an incident involving a stranger and is immediately reported, and on the higher end of that scale when it is alleged well after the fact and in private. The Rolling Stone story would fall into the later category, so it should not be surprising that it appears to be false since there is a reasonably good probability that any such story is fabricated or embellished.

That is the problem with these sorts of stories. While there is no doubt that rape is common, what most people don't understand is that false claims are common as well. In the absence of anything else, how can you tell the difference between what is factual and what is fiction? That is why you can't just accept an allegation, it has to be investigated thoroughly and corroborated, or you risk doing something just as bad as rape itself (arguably even worse).

 

[Tugela]

We posted under Hannah's Journey too. Hardly anyone posting here now.

Attorneys were alluded to in article, and my feeling is Rollint a Stone was threatened with a lawsuit. It seems to me that some very powerful people affiliated with UVA a this story to go away. Makes it all the more likely to be true IMO.

No, they would be sued by the fraternity that was accused, not by the University. And it is reasonable for the fraternity to do that, since they have been publically humiliated and associated with a "rape culture" as a result of an incident that does not appear to have happened, and that is something that Rolling Stone should have fact checked before they printed. And it did not seem like it was a hard thing for Rolling Stone to do, since other news outlets managed to find the holes in the story pretty quickly.

They were reckless and consequently they should be held responsible for the damages that resulted from that recklessness. Why should the inmates of the fraternity have their reputations ruined as a result of an "Oops" and not have recourse?

 

[eileenhawkeye]

The retraction is extremely vague, and doesn't even make any sense. I don't see anything that tells me Jackie is a liar. I am extremely doubtful that Hannah's case would have gotten the intense and "straight-forward" investigation that it did if she wasn't killed by a townie. If the main suspect was a fellow student, and it happened on campus, the whole story would have played out so much differently. Maybe it is just me, but I feel like I was constantly reminded that Hannah was abducted far from the campus and not where students hang out. Maybe that is true, but it is interesting that it was something that was constantly emphasized. UVA's PR Firm has been in high gear since September.

 

[Conductor71]

No, they would be sued by the fraternity that was accused, not by the University. And it is reasonable for the fraternity to do that, since they have been publically humiliated and associated with a "rape culture" as a result of an incident that does not appear to have happened, and that is something that Rolling Stone should have fact checked before they printed. And it did not seem like it was a hard thing for Rolling Stone to do, since other news outlets managed to find the holes in the story pretty quickly.

They were reckless and consequently they should be held responsible for the damages that resulted from that recklessness. Why should the inmates of the fraternity have their reputations ruined as a result of an "Oops" and not have recourse?

I agree, in essence, that the a Rolling Stone reporter should have fact checked, but I would say that the fraternity does not have to worry at all about their reputation as they have effectively thrown "Jackie" under the bus on specifics. I guess it doesn't matter that multiple women have come forward with similar stories that support what she is saying? No one will remember that in the aftermath, will they?

This makes for an interesting juxtaposition with JM's situation that's for sure.

 

[4 Free Speech]

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1.../p2p-82199541/

University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan said the school is aware of the reports discrediting the Rolling Stone story, and "remains first and foremost concerned with the care and support of our students and, especially, any survivor of sexual assault."
"Over the past two weeks, our community has been more focused than ever on one of the most difficult and critical issues facing higher education today," Sullivan said in a statement. "Today's news must not alter this focus." UVA will continue to review its practices and policies related to sexual assault, Sullivan said.
Police in Charlottesville, Va., who had begun investigating the allegations at the request of the university, said it would continue its probe. "Our purpose is to find the truth in any matter and that's what we are looking for here," said Charlottesville Police Captain Gary Pleasants in a statement. "These articles do not change our focus going forward."

Let's hope they continue with the investigation as UVA has promised. There are so many incidents.

 

[Tugela]

I agree, in essence, that the a Rolling Stone reporter should have fact checked, but I would say that the fraternity does not have to worry at all about their reputation as they have effectively thrown "Jackie" under the bus on specifics. I guess it doesn't matter that multiple women have come forward with similar stories that support what she is saying? No one will remember that in the aftermath, will they?

This makes for an interesting juxtaposition with JM's situation that's for sure.

The problem with that is when a story makes the headlines, invariably all sorts of people will come out of the woodwork with all sorts of claims loosely following the initial allegation, especially if it involves an individual or organization that has a high profile. It is predictable since it happens so frequently. Usually none of them have any actual sort of proof or corroboration, they just make claims. In this particular case involving the fraternity the specifics of the allegations apparently are suspect, and if that is so, then what about the others?