By Jim Kouri
Monday, December 18, 2006
In another twist in an already questionable criminal case, DNa testing in the infamous Duke lacrosse rape case found no genetic material from any of the accused males in the woman's body or on her clothing, but analysts found DNa from several unknown male on the accuser's body.
This finding directly contradicts reports that she did not engage in sex with anyone prior to or following her encounter with the three Duke students.
Prosecutors reportedly ordered the DNa testing after the state crime lab failed to find a conclusive match between the 27-year-old woman and any member of the Duke lacrosse team.
The most recent lab findings contradict earlier reports in which the accuser denied engaging in any sexual activity in the days before the alleged assault. The woman, who was hired as a stripper at a Duke lacrosse party in March, claims she was gang-raped by three team members in a bathroom.
The horror faced by three Duke University students is disturbingly common -- too common. But in the name of political correctness, few dare to question the validity of the rape charges for fear of becoming targeted by feminists and left-wing groups.
One brave man who dared to question the validity of rape complaints, and in fact searched for studies that gauged the number of false rape and sexual assault complaints, is Frank Zepezauer, who conducted research for the Institute for Psychological Therapies. In a paper for the IPT, Zepezauer shocked many when he delved into different studies on the subject of false rape complaints. He discovered, contrary to what's disseminated by the mainstream news media and feminist groups, that false sex crimes complaints are far from being rare.
One study Zepezauer looked at was conducted by the US air Force Special Studies Division's Charles McDowell.
McDowell and his team of investigators studied 556 rape allegations. Of that total, 256 could not be conclusively verified as rape. That left 300 authenticated cases of which 220 were judged to be truthful and 80, or 27%, were judged as false.
In his report Charles McDowell stated that extra rigor was applied to the investigation of potentially false allegations. To be considered false one or more of the following criteria had to be met: the victim unequivocally admitted to the false allegation, indicated deception in a polygraph test, and provided a plausible recantation. Even by these strict standards, slightly more than one out of four rape charges were judged to be false, Zepesauer wrote in his IPT paper.
In another study, McDowell and his team recruited independent reviewers who were given 25 criteria derived from the profiles of the women who openly admitted making a false allegation. If all three reviewers agreed that the rape allegation was false, it was then listed by that description.
The result: 60% of the accusations were identified as false. McDowell also took his study outside the military by examining police files from a major midwestern city and a southwestern city. He found again that 60% of the claims of rape were false.
In another study Zepezauer looked at, this one by Behavioral Scientist Eugene Kanin, he reported on his findings at two large Midwestern state universities which covered a three-year period ending in 1988. The finding of the combined studies was that among a total of 64 reported rapes exactly 50% were false.
Kanin found these results significant because the women in the main report tended to gather in the lower socioeconomic levels, thus raising questions about correlations of false allegation with income and educational status. after checking figures gathered from university police departments, he therefore reported that "quite unexpectedly then, we find that these university women, when filing a rape complaint, were as likely to file a false as a valid charge."
In addition, Kanin cited still another source which supported findings of high frequency false allegations in the universities. On the basis of these studies, Kanin felt it reasonable to conclude that false rape accusations are more common than previously believed.
But feminists and left-wing activists will dismiss these studies as biased because men where involved. For instance, one feminist, Wendy Kaminer, stated that "it is a primary article of faith among many feminists that women don't lie about rape, ever; they lack the dishonesty gene." anyone believing women lack a dishonesty gene never dated women. If they do lack that gene, then someone out there is performing miraculous surgery to implant that gene. What's so amazing about such statements is: they are not based on any scientific evidence -- it is a sexist premise.
John O'Sullivan, a left-wing social scientist, discovered a widespread defense of the belief that "no woman would fabricate a rape charge. Feminists themselves admit as much."
Law Professor and left-wing political activist Susan Estrich stated that "the whole effort at reforming rape laws has been an attack on the premise that women who bring complaints are suspect."
Zepezauer wrote that, "Some feminists believe that even defending that premise [of false rape complaints] is in itself a sex crime."
Well-known Harvard Law Professor alan Dershowitz once said that he was accused of sexual harassment by female students for discussing in class the mere possibility of false rape allegations.
Zepezauer concludes his indepth study with this: "Believing the self-proclaimed victim of sexual misconduct has thus evolved from ideological conviction to legal doctrine and, in some jurisdictions, into law. California now requires that jurors be explicitly told that a rape conviction can be based on the accuser's testimony alone, without corroboration. Canada is proposing that a man accused of rape must demonstrate that he received the willing consent of a sexual partner."
The studies cited by Frank Zepezauer correlate with this writer's experiences working on sex crimes case in New York. I found that about half of the cases were false complaints and, in fact, during intense interviewing, the women sometimes freely admitted and rationalized the bogus complaints.
The current case of the Duke University Three, who are facing rape charges based solely on the word of an intoxicated stripper and prostitute, is a perfect example of the dynamic of politics and political correctness outweighing justice.
This is an unjust situation we face within our justice system. False charges of rape hurt women who are indeed victims of predators, and they hurt men, such as the Duke lacrosse players who have had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend themselves against a woman who will pay little if anything for her deception.
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