UVA and the alleged frat rape - Rolling Stone backpedals

[Dick Whitman]

"False" being defined as the person doing the reporting knows that what he or she is reporting is a falsity, I assume.

 

[doctorquant]

DW beat me to it.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Right. Which gets us back to "if she says it was assault, it was assault." But what if it isn't?

 

[MisterCreosote]

No. That's an adjudication stat in which "false" basically means "unfounded."

 

[Dick Whitman]

No. That's an adjudication stat in which "false" basically means "unfounded."

What's that mean?

 

[MisterCreosote]

A rape accusation that is investigated and determined to not be rape, or an accusation in which sufficient evidence to convict has not been found.

 

[LongTimeListener]

A rape accusation that is investigated and determined to not be rape, or an accusation in which sufficient evidence to convict has not been found.

So what about the cases that are investigated by the police and determined to be consensual sex that the woman later regretted, but that result in the man being kicked out of school because of the 51 percent preponderance of evidence standard? Where do those fit? How about the Swarthmore case that was initially found by the university panel to not be rape and then, after the Title IX lawsuit was filed, was found to be rape?

It's hard to know which category all of those go into.

 

[Dick Whitman]

A rape accusation that is investigated and determined to not be rape, or an accusation in which sufficient evidence to convict has not been found.

So 90 percent of accusations result in charges? Is that what the study discovered?

 

[MisterCreosote]

So 90 percent of accusations result in charges? Is that what the study discovered?

No. Ninety percent of investigated accusations turn out to actually be rape. Not all of them are charged.

 

[LongTimeListener]

If they aren't charged and thus prosecuted, how are they factually determined to count as rape?

 

[Dick Whitman]

No. Ninety percent of investigated accusations turn out to actually be rape. Not all of them are charged.

Then how do we know that they determined them to be rape?

 

[MisterCreosote]

OK, hold on. I didn't have the report in front of me. My mistake.

The 10 percent number (actually, 2 to 10 percent) is false accusations, not unfounded, meaning evidence clearly shows no crime was committed. However, and this is a big however, included in those "false" stats are incidents in which the victim doesn't cooperate with investigators.

The estimate for "unfounded" was higher, around 35 percent, and "false" accusations are included in that number. "Unfounded" also means a bunch of other things, including a backlog of rape kits waiting to be tested, the inaccuracy of rape kits after a certain amount of time, etc.