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Is it time to give men accused of sexual offences anonymity?

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MP Mark Pritchard has called a review of the law on anonymity for people accused of rape after police dropped an inquiry into allegations against him, writes Glen Poole.

“To be falsely accused of anything is an awful thing,” he said. “The law on anonymity does need to be reviewed, and fairness does need to play a far greater role in these cases.”

His calls were backed by Nigel Evans MP, the former deputy speaker who was cleared of rape allegations at trial last year. He said the law needed to be reformed “as a matter of urgency” to spare suspects “the full glare of publicity….there is scant regard given to the innocent person accused”.

False allegations are a uniquely gendered crime. According to the Crown Prosecution Service, 92% of people suspected of false allegations of rape, sexual abuse and domestic violence are women and the majority of victims are male.

So how long have men been denied the right to anonymity in rape trials?

According to the website Full Fact, complainants in rape cases have been entitled to anonymity in the media since the Sexual Offences Act 1976. The same Act extended this to defendants, but since the Criminal Justice Act 1988, defendants have had no statutory right to anonymity in rape cases.

In 2003 the House of Lords and the Home Affairs Committee proposed bringing back anonymity for defendants, but the Commons rejected the plans and the law remained unchanged following the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

The Coalition Agreement in 2010 also proposed extending anonymity in rape cases to defendants. But after the Ministry of Justice found a dearth of evidence on the prevalence of false rape accusations, the plans were shelved.

Estimates of the proportion of allegations of rape that are false range from 0.6%, a statistic favoured by some femininsts keen to downplay the problem, to the much higher 50% figure favoured by some anti-feminists keen to grab hold of any statistic that puts women in the worst possible light.

One in ten rape allegations could be false

More moderate observers agree that a figure of around 10% could be feasible. These include Fogg (2%-10%); Full Fact (8%-11%) and Hawkes (8% to 12%).

If one in ten of the 16,000 complaints for rape the police receive each year are false, then more than 30 men a week are being subjected to false allegations.

That’s more than 30 male victims a week who are being publicly named and shamed while their false accusers can hide behind the anonymity of being a “victim”.

There is only one convincing argument I have heard against anonymity for men accused of rape and that is that naming them can help encourage more victims coming forward.

With just a little imagination, it is not beyond the wit of legislators to make allowances were there is a genuine case for lifting reporting restrictions, so long as this is the exception and not the rule. As Ally Fogg argued after the acquittal of  Coronation Street actor Michael Le Vell in 2013:

“I see no reason why there couldn’t be an assumption of anonymity which could be lifted at any time by the presiding judge, if investigators plead that it offers significant prospects of helping the case.”

Now that two MPs have personal experience of being denied a right to anonymity when accused of rape,  maybe we’ll see a renewed political campaign to change the law for the benefit of all men. After all, men of every background are potentially at risk of being falsely accused of  rape and sexual abuse.

 —Photo Credit: Flickr/Ben Sutherland

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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  • Nick Langford

    It is quite wrong – and very naughty – to suggest that anyone who proposes that 50% or more of rape allegations are false is an “anti-feminist keen to grab hold of any statistic that puts women in the worst possible light.” I don’t know who Radar are – whom you reference – but I’ve no reason to suspect this is true of them, and I imagine they would object to your allegation, which you make with no evidence or logic.

    Angry Harry – a highly intelligent commentator whom no one would accuse of wanting to put women in the worst possible light – has shown that if 1 in 10 allegations – the figure you arbitrarily adopt – is false “then it would follow that men are ninety times more likely to rape a woman than is a woman likely to make a false allegation of rape.” That is hardly credible. AH shows that if the likelihood of a man raping a woman is the same as a woman making a false allegation and if only 1 in 10 rapes is reported – as feminists claim – then 90% of allegations must be false.

    Even if you disagree with AH, it is certainly worth reading what he has to say, and necessary to identify where his reasoning is wrong. My guess is that he isn’t far off the truth, and it certainly isn’t necessary to want to paint women in the worst possible light in order to agree with his argument – which with respect is much better argued than yours. Very often, when a woman is found to have made a false allegation it turns out that she has made many, which means that there doesn’t have to be a very large proportion of women making false allegations in order to account for a very high number. The alternative is to believe the feminist claim that a very high proportion of men are rapists, which is preposterous.

    • Inside MAN

      Hi Nick

      Wrong and naughty to suggest that some anti-feminists highlight statistics that paint women in the worse possible light (and men in the best possible light) but not not wrong and naughty to suggest that feminists highlight statistics that paint men in the worse possible light (and women in the best possible light)??

      When two groups of people with opposing agendas come up with statistics for the same problem that range from 0.6% to 50%—-and when those two extremes fail to acknowledge that the figures they present as truth is in fact at the extreme end of wide spectrum of figures ranging from 0.6% to 50%—-then those people need to be approached with caution.

      I don’t know, or pretend to know, what the correct figure is —- nobody does—-but I do know that the people’s personal agendas (including feminists and anti-feminists) clouds their objectivity when interpreting statistics on issues like this.

      I’ve yet to meet an expert who knows this issues inside out and has both found a way to make sense of all the competing statistics and truly understand the different reasons it happens. I’d love to meet that person if he/she exists. I am an open book on the matter. If that person exists (and it’s not Angry Harry) then please someone let me know.

      Thanks

      Glen

      Best

      Glen

      • Paul

        “Wrong and naughty to suggest that some anti-feminists highlight statistics that paint women in the worse possible light (and men in the best possible light) but not not wrong and naughty to suggest that feminists highlight statistics that paint men in the worse possible light (and women in the best possible light)??”

        Glen, if you’d actually used those words in your article then your point would have been more accurate about feminists but you didn’t. All you said of feminists (spelt incorrectly by the way) was “femininsts keen to downplay the problem” Not exactly the same I hope you agree.

        Most anti-feminists I know accept that while there are some allegations of rape that are provably false, and some that are provably true the vast majority are somewhere between, spread across a probability spectrum.
        I’ve never heard an anti-feminist say that rape doesn’t happen or if it does is at such a low rate that we should ignore them but I’ve heard plenty of feminists say just that about false allegations.

        • Inside MAN

          Thanks for the feedback (and the proofreading Paul)

          Glen

  • karen woodall

    I cannot see where there is even need for argument on this matter…anyone, man or woman (and women face false allegations too if not of rape but of child sexual abuse) who faces such charges should not be named until or unless they are found guilty. In today’s climate just the allegation ruins lives and puts people in danger and the feminist claim that names must be named in order that other victims come forward does not stand up to scrutiny.

    It makes me smile when I see reference to 2010 research from the MoJ which states scant evidence for false allegations….who do we suppose undertook that research? Rape and sexual abuse may look like a uniquely gendered crime using feminist statistics, but just like the reality underneath the feminist mask surrounding family separation, the reality is that men as well as women make false allegations and use their children to do so and I would suspect that many more than 10% of allegations are false too.

    As Nick says, it is not anti feminist or anti woman or anti anyone to talk about the reality of false allegations, it is simply facing facts. People say horrendous things about other people and when one can say those things with guaranteed lifetime anonymity and the person one accuses faces the immediate impact of that because of a lack of anonymity, it becomes all the more easy to do so. It is, as someone said elsewhere, archaic and should be stopped immediately.

  • atheist4thecause

    404 on the 92% of false rape accusation statistic. I’m really interested in that study.

  • Partridge

    “More moderate observers agree that a figure of around 10% could be feasible”.

    I have read Angry Harry and in my view his work on this subject is impeccable, but, as an article on avoiceformen.com (/sexual-politics/ten-reasons-false-rape-accusations-are-common/) also points out, convincing studies have pointed to a greater prevalence of false accusations.

    “There is only one convincing argument I have heard against anonymity for men accused of rape and that is that naming them can help encourage more victims coming forward”.

    And can also encourage more false accusers to come forward! Similar arguments are made by feminists that to remove anonymity for accusers would discourage victims from reporting abuse, and even that to prosecute false accusers could discourage other potential victims of sexual assault from coming forward.

    Using this kind of illogical logic, we should not be prosecuting people who set fire to their property in order to make a false claim for the insurance money, because that could discourage potential victims of genuine fires from making insurance claims.

  • KeninNZ

    Just trying to follow the site

  • Anon

    Terminology and precision is important. I take a false accusation to be one in which someone is accused when the accuser knows that is not true. There is also wrong when the accuser genuinely believes that rape has or may have occured but it is incorrect. This can happen when the rapist is incorrectly identified or when rape is not clear as when questions of ability to consent due to inebriation are present. Rape accusations can in principle be wrong, false or correct. There is a further difficulty in deciding what category an accusation falls into. In many perhaps most cases it is going to be difficult to be certain especially if it boils down to one persons word versus another. It is quite possible, perhaps even likely that the two accounts will be mutually incompatible and yet genuinely believed to be true accounts by both parties.
    The key fact in the debate about anonymity is that the overwhelming number of accusations never even reach court and that those that do reach court about 50% are found to be innocent. This means that the overwhelming majority of those accused are to be considered by long established principles of justice innocent. It is these innocents who are damaged by the publicity of accusations and the current media and moral panic over a sex crimes. This is the key number ~95% are legally innocent of the crime of which they are accused not 10% or 50% who may be the victims of false accusations. At the end of the day it does not matter whether an accusation is false or simply wrong the impact is similar.
    Even the suggestion in jest of a complaint of rape is absolutly terrifying to men. I once overheard a girl use the word about me following a teenage party in a boastful hyperbolic way and despite the fact that we had done no more than typical young teenage mutual groping I was absolutely chilled and shocked. There was no suggestion that this was anything that wa snot consented to and even encouraged but those words made me realise how easily any woman can destroy a mans life whenever she chooses. Most women do not do this but should that be the only protection for men?

  • http://redpilluk.co.uk William Collins

    I do not know what the correct figure for false rape accusation is either. But only one side is able to deploy public bodies to do their propagandising for them. That is the salient fact. The 2013 Crown Prosecution Service Equality and Diversity Unit’s report “Cases Involving Allegedly False Rape and Domestic Violence Allegations” derives the 0.6% figure as the ratio of the number of prosecutions for false allegations to the number of prosecutions for rape. I am forced to admire the manner in which the propaganda is constructed, whilst avoiding (as a lawyer would) strict mendacity. The report concludes that,

    “The review has allowed us to examine the suggestion that false allegations of rape and / or domestic violence are rife. It is plain that there were a large number of prosecutions for rape and domestic violence but that only a very small number of individuals were prosecuted for having made a false complaint”.

    The juxtaposition of these two statements gives the impression that the claim made in the first sentence is justified by the second sentence. It is not. The second sentence would appear to be correct, assuming the data itself is correct, which I will accept. However the first statement is not correct. The reader is being led by the presentation to conflate the number of prosecutions for false accusation with the actual number of false accusations. It is not true that the review “has allowed us to examine the suggestion that false allegations of rape and / or domestic violence are rife”. Actually the true rate of false rape/PV allegations has not been addressed by this report at all. What the data collated by the CPS report shows is merely that the number of prosecutions for false accusation is small – not the actual number of false accusations. That the number of prosecutions for false allegations is small I think we would all agree with. The DPP’s claim that “This report presents a more accurate picture” (of the level of false allegations) is untrue. It almost certainly presents a grossly misleading picture – and apparently deliberately since the authors are not stupid.

    Data in the same report would, on the same fallacious basis, indicate that false allegations of domestic violence are at the 0.005% level (6 plays 111,891). And the same reasoning implies, of course, that paternity fraud does not exist at all.

    Finally, I note that when false rape accusations are exposed, one is generally struck by the frivolity of the motivation. Commonly it is to avoid the embarrassment of admitting to a causal sexual encounter (e.g., to a regular boyfriend), or to gain sympathy (e.g., from a wavering boyfriend), or as retaliation over a relatively trivial gripe. Not only is the frivolity of the motivation grossly incommensurate with the damage that it does to the accused, but this observation is in favour of a relatively frequently level of false accusations – though I know not what exactly.

    • Inside MAN

      Hi William

      Yes it’s totally misleading to present the 0.6% figure as representative of false allegations—there are “consent workshops” in the UK that use this figure as “evidence” that false allegations are a myth which is entirely misleading.

      Glen

  • Nigel

    Glen you give a potted history of anonymity. Of course law is a social construct and the evolution of the law ” rape” to the current formulation as any penetrative sex with a penis that is not consented to from it’s origins as a physically violent assault by a stranger is a study in itself. However the debate in the 70s was partly informed by the view that having widened the scope of rape ( to include partners and husbands for instance) and reduced the requirements for evidence of struggle. One  would expect a growth in reporting  and this was to be helped by concealing the identity of the accuser. The debate recognised that this would inevitably increase at least the probability of false, mistaken or mid directed accusations and this was at least part of the justification for protecting the identity of the accused prior to actual conviction. Of course since the seventies the range of possible behaviours included in the legal framing of rape has grown considerably. It would seem to me that the logic applied then is stronger now. Though actually personally I think the just approach is to apply anonymity by exception if the judge so decides. In which case all involved would be confronted by the seriousness of the accusations.  I don’t think it helps justice to frame a particular crime as so special that ordinary processes are suspended. 

    • Inside MAN

      Thanks for that additional information on the evolution of anonymity and rape laws Nigel, really useful.

      I still think exceptions are important. One obvious example is where there’s a strong possibility that the accused is a serial sex offender, particularly in institutional settings.

      Imagine a young man is brave enough to come forward and say he was sexually abused by one of the staff in a children’s home. There may be all sorts of reasons why that one victim is unlikely to achieve a successful prosecution. However the publication of this alleged perpetrators name may open the floodgates and uncover numerous victims, some of whom are more likely to achieve justice.

      I am fully aware that trial by attrition, where there’s little hard evidence other than the testimony of numerous accusers can be problematic but where a group of boys (or girls or both) have been subject to assault by an adult in a position of trust the we as a society (I believe) should be doing everything in our power to ensure that adult is brought to justice.

      There of course potential problems with this (just as there are potential problems with anonymity), there will be potential problems whatever approach we take and as always with justice it’s not just about getting the right laws its about ensuring those laws are applied in a fair, just and sensible way.

      Best

      Glen

      • Nigel

        I agree and I would think that there would be no reason for automatic anonymity for the adult abused as a boy but a strong case for it if still a child. As I say there are in fact measures the courts can take in this and indeed many other criminal proceedings to protect identities. On balance I’d be for a presumption in common with all other criminal law and rely on the courts to decide if there are compelling reasons for defendant or “accuser” to have their identity protected. In this way serial offenders or accusers would be easily identified and people with compelling reasons for anonymity could apply, or indeed where the prosecutors or courts felt there were reasons (as happens sometimes in fraud cases or where there is a fear of revenge or silencing in cases of gang violence).
        Of course this doesn’t solve the problem of the prurience of our “press” but that is another issue.

  • Chris

    I heard one story of a woman who had made something like 9 false rape allegations over a ten year period. Because the accuser had her name protected by anonymity law her prior history of false allegations would be unknown to her victims, the public and even authorities. The other problem was she faced almost no punishment until after the last case. Remember that if less than ten percent of allegations lead to a conviction then a high number are either false or otherwise non offenses.

  • http://lifenstory.com/gospel_truth Bela

    It’s very important to have anonymity for men accused of rape. As once a man is accused, people blindly believe that he must have actually done it. The fact is women file fake cases for variety of reasons some being revenge to very silly like having a day off in office. Though even after the accusation turns out to be fake the man does not get back his dignity. This is attack on the basic rights of men and should not be tolerated at all. http://lifenstory.com/gospel_truth/

  • Mike

    That the woman (i.e. the false accuser) gets to remain hidden and the accused (i.e. the man does not) is proof in itself that the system is bias against men. Need we say more? Could there be any better example? Oh I have one; why is it that there are ZERO consequeces to the falsly accusing woman once it is finally found out that she lied, and ruined a mans life?
    Had enough yet gents?

    • Inside MAN

      Mike

      There are successful prosecutions against women who make false allegations every year.

      However —- as with every crime —- the person on trial is the accused not the accuser. Finding the accused not guilty is NOT the same as finding the accuser guilty. That is a separate process in all crimes and rightly so.

      Glen

  • http://www.theskirtedman.eu Jeremy Hutchinson

    Under the UK legal system I thought all were innocent until proven guilty. Now we have trial by court after trial by media, trial by public, trial by social media yet only trial by court has the actual facts. Media sensationalises to produce sales, public and social media come to results on one sided gossip and biased selfish reasoning and objectives.

    Not providing anonymity, in this modern era does not allow innocent until proven guilty. Even those found not guilty by court are still guilty by media, public, social media especially when the media do not re-print the actual and subsequent known reasons and facts. When they do it is usually a very small article and further in the paper.

    I do not see why under the current anonymity rules that once the accused is found not guilty the accuser are not named by default. They say the accused must be known as it allows others to come forward. Surely this can apply to the accuser as others may have had similar experience with false statements.

  • Nicholas

    Simple answer: Yes, because we live in a ‘rape culture’ (that is, to deconstruct the term, a culture where the notion of rape – a grotesque and violent act – is utilised for the political objectives of white-western-feminism).

    • Nigel

      I agree with the appropriation thesis, and this is a common tactic . However in English law rape is penetrative sex with the male organ without consent. This could have occurred even if apparently pleasurable at the time (or in the Evans case forgettable). The 2003 Act is a long way from the wider public understanding of Rape, there need be no “violence” as commonly understood. In fact across the UK let alone the wider “west” the actual legal constructions of “rape” vary considerably (for instance many include male victimisation by a female which is legally impossible in England). My point is not so much whether the English formulation is right or wrong simply that it isn’t what most public discourse assumes it to be. Hence indeed there are constant calls to “educate” juries simply because in survey’s they assume it to be “a grotesque and violent act”.

  • http://dadbloguk.com John Adams

    It is very easy to over-complicate this issue. If the complainant has annonymity, the accused should also have annonymity until the verdict has been reached. Perhaps I am missing something, but why would giving both parties annonymity discourage potential victims from coming forward?

    The other thing is that we’re living in a different world, even from 2003. The moment that someone is accused of rape or abuse, armchair juries using social media are pre-empting the genuine jury’s decision and convicting / aquiting as they see fit. The law needs amending to recognise this.