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July 6, 2018 - Tim Pool Daily Show
14:50
Buzzfeed Defends False Rape Accusers

Buzzfeed has run two stories seemingly defending women who falsely accuse men of rape even when there is clear evidence the accusation was false.False Accusations can have devastating affects on people's lives, they can lose jobs, friends, or even go to prison for decades.Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BuzzFeed News has published a couple stories that are seemingly in defense of false rape accusers.
Now, a person who files a false rape claim is a criminal.
In the lightest sense, they're filing a false police report.
In the worst sense, they're obstructing justice or perverting the course of justice.
Depending on which country you live in.
False rape accusations have a serious impact on the lives of those who are falsely accused.
They can lose their jobs.
They can lose their friends, their family.
Sometimes they can lose where they live or get kicked out of school.
In the worst instances, they can be jailed for decades on false rape claims.
A false rape claim is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with.
So I find it interesting, then, that BuzzFeed has produced these stories that kind of paint these false rape accusers in a positive light, saying that many women are simply vulnerable, and that police are aggressive in going after them.
So, what exactly is BuzzFeed saying about these criminals?
Why are they running this sympathetic piece, and what are the ramifications of this story?
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The first story from BuzzFeed News.
Overly aggressive prosecution of vulnerable women for false rape claims could deter victims from reporting assaults MPs have warned.
No victim should be too scared to come forward to report a rape because of the fear of ending up in jail themselves.
The Crown Prosecution Service, the state prosecutor for England and Wales, has been criticized by MPs for its exceptionally aggressive prosecution of false rape claims, which they warn could deter victims from reporting rape.
The MPs called on the CPS to review its approach after a BuzzFeed News investigation revealed last week that hundreds of women have been prosecuted for false rape claims in the past decade, Many of them vulnerable.
I do find it interesting that BuzzFeed News calls this an investigation.
I mean, I guess technically that's what it is.
But what they're saying essentially is that police have prosecuted criminals.
I wouldn't expect BuzzFeed to go investigate bank robbers or people who lie about Terrorism, or call in false threats, or something like that.
And the premise of the story is actually kind of confusing.
If BuzzFeed is arguing that false rape claims are rare, which they are, then stories about them are also rare, and probably many women aren't going to be deterred because the stories just don't happen that often.
It's interesting that because of that, BuzzFeed is critical of prosecution and police for going after Criminals.
But what exactly does vulnerable mean, and why would BuzzFeed be sympathetic to these people?
Well, they said, in one instance, CPS prosecuted a 23-year-old with bipolar disorder after overruling the police decision not to charge her.
In another, the police charged a young mother who had reported a history of child abuse.
They noted the reputational risk to the force, Firstly, police don't decide who gets prosecuted.
and put in custody for more than 30 days, made a complaint or went to the media.
Labor MP Richard Bergen, shadow Justice Secretary, called the findings
extremely concerning with serious implications for our justice system.
Firstly, police don't decide who gets prosecuted.
They simply report their findings or do an investigation.
It's the prosecutors who decide whether or not to prosecute.
So I find it interesting that they've included this tidbit which is kind of irrelevant.
There are many instances where police want charges, and they don't come, or they don't want someone to go through trial, and they do, because the police do a different job.
Additionally, I find it interesting that they bring up the fact that one of these false accusers had a history of child abuse.
As if that is an excuse for committing these crimes.
In criminal cases here in the U.S., we do sometimes take someone's childhood or past into consideration when determining whether or not charges should be filed.
Sure, that's fair.
However, in this instance, it would seem that BuzzFeed is using this as an example of how this woman is vulnerable, as if to say maybe it was too aggressive to go after, even though she committed a crime.
Think about a similar but different crime.
Say someone called in a false bomb threat, or someone filed a false police report.
We're not going to say, well, because this person was vulnerable, they're absolved of their responsibility.
They committed a crime.
But let's take a look at what BuzzFeed's actually talking about.
Because they did an investigation, they claim, and the two women that are cited in this story were actually subject of their larger investigation.
Vulnerable women are routinely prosecuted and imprisoned for false rape claims in the UK.
It's not uncommon for judges to call these women wicked.
One male judge said a convict had betrayed the sisterhood.
BuzzFeed starts with the story of Rhiannon Brooker.
It says the rape case against Rihanna and Brooker's ex-partner had fallen apart.
Rihanna had accused him of assaulting her numerous times over a two-year period, but detectives had found discrepancies in her story shortly after they arrested him, so prosecutors dropped the charges.
Elsewhere around the world, that would have likely been the end of it.
Not in Britain.
Instead, one afternoon in January 2012, police in Bristol, a city in southwest England, called the 28-year-old back to the station for another interview.
Rhiannon thought the process of the meeting was to bolster the case against her ex.
Police were indeed trying to make a case against her.
When the recording light went on in the interview room, detectives told Rhiannon that prosecutors just wanted to clarify some material.
They told her it was all completely standard, hopefully.
They said she wouldn't have to come back again.
Rhiannon told BuzzFeed News that the questions they asked were by now familiar.
Why didn't she report her ex earlier?
I didn't want him to be arrested, she told them.
Was she sure she had stated the dates and times of each allegation correctly?
No, she told them. They were just guesstimates.
It's not like I sat there looking at my watch, timing everything, Rhiannon recalled saying.
Rhiannon left the police station completely unaware the authorities were hoping to arrest her as soon as possible.
By 2014, Rhiannon was on trial.
She pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice, but was convicted and sentenced to three and a half years in prison, separating her from her nine-month-old baby.
The judge declared that she had lied in a completely wicked way.
Rhiannon is now a convicted criminal, virtually unemployable, and forever tarred as a liar.
That's a really interesting way that BuzzFeed News has opened the story.
Because it only takes a few minutes of research to find out that the courts had a lot of evidence against her.
That the man she accused had records from his work.
Proving that he could not have committed the attacks.
He had strong alibis.
And not only that, BuzzFeed actually acknowledges a lot of this evidence later on in the story.
Prosecutors introduced evidence showing that Paul's arthritis prevented him from making a closed fist, and a medical expert who reviewed photos of Rhiannon's injuries and said they were compatible with being self-inflicted.
They told the jury that Rhiannon had sent threatening texts to herself using a mystery mobile phone and then deleted them.
Perhaps the prosecution's strongest evidence was that Paul had a cast-iron alibi for two of the twenty charges, and that mobile phone analysis and other data seriously undermined others.
Prosecutors said that Rhiannon had spun a years-long web of lies about Paul that had tricked many people in her life, friends, domestic violence counselors, doctors, a lecturer, and finally experienced detectives, leading them to substantiate her false allegations without realizing the deceit.
After the first bit about Rhiannon, BuzzFeed talks about their investigation, where they say they've found at least 200 women in the UK have been prosecuted for lying about being raped in the past decade.
According to a BuzzFeed news analysis of press reports, most of these women were sent to prison, dozens of them with sentences of two years or more.
Prosecutors went after teenagers and women who reportedly had mental health issues, had experienced past physical and sexual assault, or were grappling with drug and alcohol addiction.
Women were prosecuted even when they reportedly went to police only under pressure, quickly recanted, or never named their attacker at all.
The CPS has prosecuted women who police were not sure had lied.
In one instance, detectives declined to charge the woman for making a false complaint.
Prosecutors went ahead anyway.
I find this really interesting.
Because what is BuzzFeed's stance on any criminal if they had a vulnerable status or a horrible past?
What is their stance on criminals who are teenagers and mothers or who were abused as children?
Simply because your life is rough doesn't absolve you of your responsibility and doesn't make you innocent of these crimes, and in no way means police and prosecutors shouldn't come after you for committing the crime.
In fact, I think it's fair to say that many people who do commit crimes had something bad in their past.
If we didn't prosecute people, or arrest people simply because they were vulnerable, meaning they had been victims of some kind of trauma, or were abused as children, we probably wouldn't arrest and prosecute many criminals.
So it's strange to me that BuzzFeed is running a story that is sympathetic to a woman who had clear evidence against her when she committed a crime.
From the BBC, it asserts in no uncertain terms Brooker faked the rape claims as an excuse for failing her law exams.
It says she also faked injuries to suggest he hit her.
Buzzfeed acknowledges much of this evidence, so I find it strange that they're framing the story in this light.
We have a case of a woman who lied for whatever reason.
She committed a crime and now she is being punished for it.
Why is that defensible?
Simply because someone has a bad past?
False rape accusations are devastating to our community.
Although they may be rare, we shouldn't be painting criminals in a favorable light, especially when there's evidence against them.
If someone is falsely accused of falsely accusing others, by all means, you have my sympathy.
And I think our court system in England and in the U.S.
tries its hardest So let's take a look at why false rape accusations are so terrifying.
guilt is proven. You get convicted, you go to jail, and we have little sympathy for those
who did commit these crimes.
So let's take a look at why false rape accusations are so terrifying.
This is a story from May 7th, 2018.
Every district attorney's nightmare. Two men exonerated in 1991 rape claim.
After 26 years, two men have been exonerated of a gang rape that the alleged victim now admits never happened.
The 1992 convictions of Van Dyke Perry and Gregory Counts for rape, sodomy, and kidnapping were vacated in New York court Monday.
Prosecutors had joined attorneys for Perry and Counts On a motion asking a state Supreme Court judge in Manhattan to vacate the convictions because of new DNA evidence and the woman's revised story.
And this story from two days ago.
Man says prosecutors failed to watch video clearing him of rape allegations.
Michael Willis is free, but says he paid a terrible price.
Baltimore resident Michael Willis is free, but said he's paid a terrible price because of a false rape allegation.
He said prosecutors had evidence to clear his name months ago.
Willis said he was in a relationship with a woman who went to Baltimore City Police with a rape allegation.
He said investigators confiscated cell phones, and prosecutors should have been aware of videos that cleared him.
Willis is now wondering what steps he must take.
He remained in jail 10 months on charges of first-degree rape, and multiple other sex allegations, a judge dismissed the
case against him.
I'm shocked, I'm amazed, I'm hurt, I'm traumatized.
I don't know how I'm going to be able to recover, Willis said.
In these stories, the person who is falsely accusing another person of rape
is the perpetrator, and those falsely accused are the victims, and we need to protect victims.
That's what our legal system does.
We can look to our history in stories of racism to see just why it's so terrifying that false accusations go unpunished.
A famous story, the 1920 Duluth lynchings.
On June 15th, 1923, African American circus workers Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac Magee, suspects in an assault case, were taken from the jail, attacked, and lynched by a white mob of thousands in Duluth, Minnesota.
Rumors had circulated that six African Americans had raped and robbed a 19-year-old woman.
A physician's examination of her subsequently found no evidence of rape or assault.
This is a very old story, and I'm not a historian.
I don't know the details surrounding what happened here.
But we can look back to many instances where women accused certain men, and those men were murdered because of it.
On July 4th, Northern Ireland wheelchair user spared jail after making second false rape allegation.
Just about a year ago, August 25th, the attention-seeking woman who falsely accused 15 men of rape.
Gemma Beale's sick lies saw an innocent man jailed for seven years.
We have the story from last year.
stories 15 times, now she's landed in jail for 10 years.
On July 6th, false rape claim woman jailed.
A woman who falsely claimed she was raped before going on the run has been jailed.
We have the story from last year.
Rolling Stone to pay $1.65 million to fraternity over discredited rape story.
This story from news.com.au.
Students shocking lie over rape claims has two footballers suspended from team.
She claimed she was raped in a bathroom to try and get sympathy from another student,
But she is now going to jail.
The root, which is far left, even comes in on this story.
White woman pleads guilty to falsely accusing two black men of rape.
First, she said that two black men violently raped her.
Then she said they didn't.
Then she said she'd only accused the men of rape because she was trying to gain the interest of a potential boyfriend.
Then she said she never told police that she was raped at all.
Now she admits that she lied about the lie she lied about.
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Look.
tim pool
There are significantly more people who are actual victims of sexual assault and rape than there are people who falsely accuse others of rape.
But the point is, we shouldn't have sympathy for people who try to ruin other people's lives regardless of the reason.
I seriously don't understand why BuzzFeed would try and...
Paint this story in this way.
Act like they did some great investigation for finding out that police in the UK prosecute criminals.
That's just what they do.
It's actually more surprising that they're trying to paint these women who clearly committed a crime in a favorable light or a sympathetic light.
So comment below and let me know what you think and we'll keep the conversation going.
Do you think this is a serious problem that needs to be looked at by police and prosecuted heavily?
Is it possible that these are rare instances but we should be paying attention to them regardless because a crime is a crime?
Or do you agree with BuzzFeed's assessment that these women are simply vulnerable and should be given some kind of special consideration?
Comment below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
Stay tuned.
New videos every day at 4 p.m.
You can follow me on Twitter at TimCast.
And if you like these videos, I've got more simple kind of drama, less newsy and less important, up on my second channel every day at 6 p.m.
at youtube.com slash TimCastNews.
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