Okay, then I appologise for misinterpreting your words. In the case of Heard v Depp, he accused her of defamation. It wasn't a rape trial. She never accused him of rape, not openly... she implied it in her writing of an op-ed and she doubled down on her accusation on the witness stand. She was almost certainly not telling the truth and fits neatly into that 5% and that's very likely due to a type B personality disorder. You can watch the trial and you will see.
The courts evaluated the likelihood of her telling the truth, which is the correct place for such an evaluation to take place. I did say that rape is hard to prove, which is why I have routinely argued for better evidence gathering, more sensitive police handling, more timely court process and private closed courts that can speedily deal with these issues without traumatising or re-traumatising those involved. I want to see rape convictions go up, but I want to see rape convictions go up in a way that is fair to both sexes. False accusations do exist and they do happen, sometimes the accusations are not objectively true but the person believes them to be true. From working in mental health, I can assure you this happens a great deal.
The problem with the factual probability argument is that we don't have all the information and society is becoming more open. Here are some interesting stats about domestic violence here in the UK. Some things that jump out. “For every three victims of domestic abuse, two will be female, one will be male.” https://www.ncdv.org.uk/domestic-violence-against-men/
Related to the issue of domestic violence against men is coercive control. A survey of 2,003 adults in late-2018 by West London solicitors IBB found an equal portion of men and women (34%) saying they had experienced being in a coercive or controlling relationship.
Behaviours recorded included 30% men (23% women) suspected their partner of spying on them; 29% men (22% women) saying their partner monitored or controlled spending; 27% men (20% women) had a partner who intentionally destroyed possessions or deleted important emails or texts; 24% men (14% women) had a partner who hid or took away their phone, tablet or computer; and 24% men (11% women) had a partner who deprived or limited their intake of food.Yet 48% of men who responded said they did nothing about it, compared with 33% of the women.
ManKind noted convictions of women perpetrating domestic abuse has increased six-fold in the 15 years to 2018/19: up from 806 in 2004/05 to 4,599 (a 74% conviction rate). In 2018/19, a total of 55,486 men were convicted of domestic abuse-related offences (a 77% conviction rate). So yes, the statistics say that men are more likely to be perpetrators of domestic violence and women are more likely to be victims but that we have to look more closely at how we collect this information because we may have a confirmation bias error in place.
Here you are. Liam Allan. Ben Sullivan. Oliver Mears. Oliver Whyman. All of these men faced legal repercussions as a result of a rape allegation that was demonstrably conflated or false. Whyman (the last link is a particularly sad case).
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5144496/liam-allan-rape-case-met-police-cleared-croydon-crown-court/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42745181
https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/18613633.false-rape-allegation-drove-powick-dad-drink-drive/
It's not that these stories don't exist, it's just that they don't fit your world view and they get excluded at source or they aren't offered to you to consider. That's the whole point of Medium in my opinion, you meet people who disagree with you and you have a reasoned discussion. If you can't factor these court cases into your world view or you're prepared to dismiss them as a statistical anomaly then what you're basically saying is 'these men don't matter'.
If you want to read a longer article by me on the legal ramifications of a complicated rape case. Then you can find one here. https://medium.com/lucid-nightmare/a-deep-dive-on-a-footballers-overturned-rape-conviction-f528e3db67d9
That case was legally interesting and led me to conclude the public is ill equipped to deal with these sorts of crimes and so a centre ground position between the rights of men and women must be found. That's the position I continue to hold.
