And Scott Greenfield has a word or two to pick with District Attorney Kathleen Rice:
Allowing a woman who lied about a heinous crime being committed against her to avoid prosecution, causing four men who committed no crime to be arrested, smeared throughout the media, sit in jail and have their names perpetually tied to a gang rape, has no rational connection whatsoever to encouraging real victims to come forward. It does, however, have a strong connection to encouraging false accusations, since the conditions of counseling and community services offer little disincentive to not take the risk.
13 Comments
Can the falsely accused file a civil suit against the accuser?
Kimsch
Sure they can, but she’s likely judgement proof.
I am a Hofstra alumni, and a big supporter of Hofstra. I will suspend all further donations unless this woman is expelled.
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Women believe that women can’t be criminals, only victims. Look at the Garrido case. Both Husband (Phillip) and Wife (Nancy) have been charged exactly the same–but all the female bloggers are calling for Philip Garrodo to be put to death, while labeling his wife a “victim”.
I have a problem with the false accuser spending less time in jail than the falsely accused. Too bad the DA doesn’t.
Robert, she has been expelled. Hofstra apparently did the right thing there.
It does, however, have a strong connection to encouraging false accusations,
I am surprised/disappointed/curious as to why no one ever looks at the problem of false accusations and the argument that we want to encourage women to report their rapes in terms of statistical Type I and Type II errors.
Type I errors are false positives, of which false accusations are a subset. Type II errors are false negatives which includes women who were raped but do not report it.
When I learned about this stuff, I learned that reducing one type of error almost certainly increases the other type of error. Reducing false positives of say, a pregnancy test, increases false negatives, saying you were pregnant when you are not. Reducing false negatives, releasing killers from jail will increase false positives, killing innocents on death row.
I would hope that if that analysis is accurate, that it would be easier to convince the lawyers and academics behind various rape advocacy groups that it is morally, ethically, and legally important for them to concern themselves with false positives.
Not punishing this woman will in the absolute scientific statistical sense increase the numbers of false positives, and do little to reduce the number of false negatives.
A gross miscarriage of justice in a locality (Nassau County) where a strong anti-male bias pervades the entire legal system.
This vicious perjurer deserved indictment. The prisons have far, far too many innocent “sex offender” male inmates, often of minority and poor backgrounds. Visit the website of The Innocence Project if you have any doubt.
She’s been “suspended”, not “expelled.”
Scott Greenfield is correct in that deciding not to prosecute may encourage false accusations. It may also, however, encourage those that have already made false accusations to admit they are lying.
I think the young men should get a judgment against her and hold it over her for the rest of her life or at least until she declares bankruptcy. They could probably get a default judgment and just keep renewing it every few years. Who knows, maybe the girl will acquire assets in 10-20 years.
Its not like the woman is getting off scott free.
Articles say that she has to undergo psychiatric treatment as well as what one article labeled as “extensive community service.”
Is that enough? I don’t know.
Is it more than she would have gotten if she had gone to trial? I don’t know that either.
But it seems clear that this will follow her around for a long time, as well it should.
Now if we could only get into Mr Peabody’s Way Back Machine and restore the lives of the falsely accused men, that would be great.
[…] Controversy continues on Long Island over D.A.’s refusal to prosecute Hofstra false-rape complainant [Greenfield, earlier] […]