La maggioranza degli incidenti di violenza sessuale non viene segnalata, ma molti credono ancora che false accuse siano comuni
https://www.thejournal.ie/two-thirds-of-people-who-experience-sexual-violence-do-not-report-it-to-gardai-6673034-Apr2025/
di TeoKajLibroj
11 commenti
These things arent mutually exclusive.
Even the threat of a false allegation can be incredibly harmful.
Our whole justice system with regards to crimes against the person is woeful. Particularly in regards to sexual assault and particularly in regards to sexual abuse of minors. Its utterly shameful and an affront to the entire purpose of a justice system at all.
This is a hugely emotive topic and news outlets are looking for clicks but the only report I could find is the [2022 report](https://www.drcc.ie/news-resources/sexual-violence-information/sexual-violence-prevalence/)
What is important is how they define ‘Sexual Violence’ they use the [CSO definition](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-svsmr/sexualviolencesurvey2022mainresults/backgroundnotes/)
>*’Sexual violence is defined in this survey as a range of non-consensual experiences, from non-contact experiences to non-consensual sexual intercourse. ‘*
I do not condone any sort of the acts that fall under the definition, however, with the definition being so broad there may not be sufficient outlets to report incidents to. You are not going to report your mate to the guards if he sends you a pornographic image you weren’t expecting but that scenario can fall under the definition of an unreported event.
Again, I don’t condone any of the behaviors listed in any of the reports but I like to understand the details of underlying reports.
The complicating factor in all of this is that the traditional division of a crime into the action and the intention (the *actus reus* and the *mens rea*) is particularly nuanced in matters of sexual offending.
As identified elsewhere by /u/Gek1188 the CSO uses a very broad definition of sexual violence. In broad terms, the *mens rea* would be similar for all of them but this becomes especially acute at the more serious end.
The underlying legislation, the Criminal Law (Rape) Act, 1981 actually went further than normal to expand upon what was to be considered in addressing the *mens rea*, by referencing the need for reasonable grounds to consider that a woman was consenting.
This goes to the heart of all such offending – the legal test is not simply whether the victim consented or not, it’s that the victim did not consent and the perpetrator either knew this or was reckless to it.
Consider the following scenario – one half of a married couple comes home from a night out having had a few drinks, gets in bed with the other half, they end up riding the hole off each other. Perfectly conventional, but technically unless there was a verbal consent, that would theoretically be criminal conduct. (On both persons part.) Obviously this is not the case.
Consider then the following, if one of your friends sends a photograph of a woman’s tits to a whatsapp group, that is technically capable of being an act of sexual violence for the purposes of the CSO. Now, for most people, that isn’t the case, it’s at worst distasteful, but the CSO is recording things, not prosecuting people.
At the more extreme end of things, if two strangers meet in a bar, go back to one person’s apartment and escalate from kissing to sexual intercourse, that is a relatively normal form of human interaction. If one person later says that they only had sex because they felt the other person would insist, that is not proof that the other person *knew* about this lack of consent.
This then leads to the area where both sides of this debate can often be quite dishonest. In many sexual encounters, one person will not have consented, but the other person will have had no reason to believe otherwise. Thus there is a victim but no crime. This is a reality that many people struggle to confront.
Unfortunately too many people seem to find it easier to imagine themselves being the victim of a false allegation than to imagine being the victim of sexual violence.
I was interviewed as a witness for a false allegation. The gardai nearly had me believing I was lying when I told them exactly what I saw very clearly and there was no assault that I saw. I felt under a lot of pressure to say I saw something I didn’t. And only when other witnesses were found and agreed with what I saw did they believe I was telling the truth.
Since that day I am sceptical about ANYTHING that I hear people have said during a police interview.
I’m sure false allegations exist, but not sure how anyone could come to the conclusion that they’re “common”
Both can be true.
Years and years ago a convicted rapist who was on the sexual predator list (or what ever it is), beat me and choked me within an inch of my life. I reported it to the Garda. Now this was 2012/13 or so but they did less then nothing. I gave a statement and all. Zilch.
I think on this daily now.
Been raped? Liar. Assaulted? Liar. Bullied? Liar. Harassed? Liar.
Fucking exhausting. I had recorded evidence of my landlord threatening to kill me with a hammer. The female guard I showed it to simply said ‘could be anyone, saying anything, you don’t want to go to court’.
Almost every single man I’ve witnessed being informed about rape or sexual violence automatically writes off the VICTIM of pertetating a crime by lying about a surely good man.
Girls and women, we were given some small rights but know that nobody is looking out for you and they’re taking them away. Be careful out there.
I am a woman and feminist I think false allegations are a thing, but is more common to have unreported abuse. And I actually advocate that there should be legal consequences for false allegations as they are damaging.
However, I also think the law should be harsher with abusers. It is crazy how easily some get off with little to no consequences.
There is cases of murdered women every week in Spain.
My father hit me, I would stab a man the first punch. Would not be a second one. I would be the one going to prison but he would be the one dead. It starts with the first punch and never ends. You do whatever you want in life but I am not going to be a punch bag. Is sad that there is no laws of self defense. We need more of that.
Just because the vast majority of sexual assaults go unreported doesn’t negate believing that false allegations are common. By definition it would be from two different groups. I’m purely making a logic point here.