Times caption: Baroness Wolf of Dulwich is surprised at the belief that women never lie
A piece by Lucy Bannerman in yesterday’s Times, emphases ours. The comments section is well worth catching, too:
It is better for society that a few guilty men walk free than innocent men are imprisoned for rapes or sexual assaults they have not committed, says Baroness Wolf of Dulwich, an economist, author and university professor.
Public pressure to punish every sexual predator would risk more miscarriages of justice, she said. “I do feel strongly that it’s better that people who are guilty walk free than innocent people are imprisoned and have their whole lives ruined,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you don’t put a huge amount of effort into trying to find out what happened. It certainly doesn’t mean you go back to a world where you don’t take allegations seriously. But there is a huge world of difference between taking allegations seriously and taking the position that any allegation is true till proven otherwise, and that distinction seems so fundamental.”
Every rape and serious sexual assault case is being reviewed by the Crown Prosecution Service after four trials collapsed over failures to disclose evidence. Police and prosecutors are trying to avoid cases such as that of Liam Allan, 22, who spent almost two years on bail and was on trial for rape before police handed over text messages that exonerated him.
Lady Wolf, a professor of public sector management at King’s College London and an expert in women’s roles in the labour market, said that suffragettes would have been “horrified” to see the identities of men, who were later cleared, revealed in court, adding that it was not unsisterly to accept that some women lied. “One of the things that seems to me very strange is the belief that women never lie,” she said. “I find it really hard to understand how people can believe that. If you read about the terrible history of pre-civil rights in America, they are full of instances in which young black men were lynched on the testimony of white women, which, looking back, we can see was very clearly malicious.
“If we accept, as almost everybody would, that women can lie in those circumstances, why in the year 2018, when we know far more about false memory, emotions and the way people operate when they’re under stress, would some vocal feminists suddenly convince themselves that women don’t lie or at the very least, give a partial picture? [J4MB: Why? To ruin men’s lives, regardless of their guilt or innocence. To feminists, making men suffer is more than a social good, it’s a civic duty.] I think most of the suffragettes would be horrified by this. What’s interesting about them is how very constitutionally minded many of them were.”
Research shows that false allegations of rape are rare and conviction rates for lying are low. [J4MB: No, it doesn’t. See comments.] That did not mean, she said, that anonymous “victims” who falsely accused men of rape should not feel the full force of the law if there was evidence they were acting maliciously. “It’s no different from accusing your female next-door neighbour of setting fire to your fence when you did it yourself to steal the insurance.”
Campaigners say that publicising the name of a suspect is crucial to encourage victims of a serial offender to come forward, but Lady Wolf called for the anonymity of alleged rapists to be protected until conviction.
“People are innocent until they are proven guilty,” she said. “They are being accused of a particular crime and if you don’t have evidence for that particular crime . . . you can’t say, ‘Oh well, they’re guilty, because someone else thinks they might be guilty of something else’.”
She cautioned against trial by social media in the age of the #MeToo movement, and compared public shaming — no matter how noble the cause — to Stalinist denunciations and the Spanish Inquisition. “I do feel incredibly strongly is that if you don’t have the rule of law, you have nothing,” she said.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
I agree with her.
If there is one place where everyone should be truly equal and not in any Orwellian sense, then it should be before the law.
But then, she is probably in her sixties and so an equality of opportunity feminist, not an equality of outcome idiot.
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As men are effectively excluded from having an opinion it is heartening indeed to have a woman so clearly set out the conditions for justice and the way these have been manipulated to achieve targets as a political end. Many years ago Melanie Philips described the feminism she saw taking hold as an ideology of adolescents’. It isn’t uncommon for older feminists to so argue once they have experienced life with all its contradictions, for instance many with sons have pointed out the discrimination against boys and even Germaine Greer has expressed the view that many young women use their “allure” to get things from men rather than are passive victims.
Personally I think it important to recognise the problem isn’t “women” but a very particular brand of feminist who gets traction through milking the sensationalist media and its obsession with “sex” to persuade us all boys and men are an ever present danger to be quelled only by “gender equality”.
In a sense there aren’t that many “men’s rights” to be had often its about simply applying existing rights. As in this case its pretty clear that both the Police and CPS have been fiddling with investigations and evidence. As well as politicians seeking to “fix” trial rules. All to increase convictions.
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Salutes to the Baroness. The notion that women never lie is the biggest lie of all.
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The notion that women never tell the truth is more plausible.
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Wow – a female and a baron to boot. I think my privilege card isn’t worth anything here.
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Blackstone’s formulation “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”,is one of the cornerstones of English Law and the law across the western world.
It’s worth pointing out that this isn’t just a high minded sentiment, which we can take or leave depending on how we are inclined.
If you punish an innocent man, you run the real risk of turning that man and others who are sure of his innocence into criminals, with no respect for the rule of law and a desire for revenge.
It’s a very dangerous road to go down.
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Agreed that it’s a very dangerous road – but it’s one that the criminal injustice system has long gone down in the area of alleged sexual offenders – always male, of course. I wonder how many murders of women are attributable to false sexual offence allegations? It would be interesting to see the back stories to men killing ex-partners.
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I see Harman and a few of the other usual suspects are starting a move to overturn the MOJ’s recent decision to continue to allow an accuser’s past sexual history to be mentioned by defence barristers in sex offence trials. Harman says such a move would bring an element of “fairness” to trials. Surely, fairness should have no place in the administration of justice. What should, of course, is evidence, truth, and law. Defendants should be allowed to use any available evidence that proves the accuser to be a liar, and if the accuser’s reputation is trashed in the process so be it.
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Agreed. But false accusers rarely have their reputation trashed because they’ll enjoy lifelong anonymity except in the rare cases the CPS / police prosecute and they’re found guilty.
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As of last September an accuser in a rape trial can have their cross-examination by the defense counsel conducted away from the court-room and have their testimony videoed for the jury to view.
Of course this move, supposedly to reduce the stress for the accuser, will make it easier for false accusers to lie. Another nail in the coffin for men’s legal rights.
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By the way I would love to see Harman and Jess Phillips both of whom have sons, challenged on live TV or radio on how they can sleep at night, knowing that they are undermining their sons’ legal rights for ideological reasons and for political gain. I suspect that it’s because they are devoid of human empathy, but it would be great to see them try to squirm their way out of that one.
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When I read these sorts of articles “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” comes to mind. She claims the “suffragettes” would have been horrified at the current state of affairs yet I don’t think so at all. Locking men up for sexual offences has long been a hallmark of feminism for nearly 200 years. It’s just that it’s only been in the last 40 years that the feminist State became all powerful, before then they just didn’t have enough influence over society. I’m always suspicious about these women who claim to not support modern feminists but do support “old fashioned feminists”. Feminism has always been evil.
She also mentions her support for anonymity for alleged rapists, which, as I’ve said on here before, I’m against because it will remove the publicity from collapsed convictions and the only men you will hear about are men who’s lives have been completely destroyed. I’d also add, rape is not a very serious crime. There are many other crimes that can be committed against one that are more serious, for example:
1) Being murdered
2) Having your spine severed so you end up in a wheel chair
3) Having an arm cut off
4) Having a leg cut off
5) Having your eyes cut out
6) Having your house burnt down when you are uninsured
7) Being imprisoned by the police for any substantial period of time
8) Being knifed
9) Being the victim of substantial fraud (i.e. you lose all your life savings)
10) Probably other things that I can’t think of right now
Is anyone here seriously going to argue with me that rape is worse than any of those things? So why is it that a man who is a “convicted rapist” should be subjected to generally longer sentences than for all those crimes (except, possibly, murder) as well as negative publicity upon his release? And yet, even if we accept that, due to the corrupt feminist rape laws it is very likely that this “convicted rapist” is in fact completely innocent! Not to mention that, the definition of “rape” I used there was more along the lines of what you might call “rape rape”, once you start to use truly feminist definitions of rape such as “a husband having sex with his wife while she is sleeping” or “a guy touching a woman’s bum without her consent” then all of a sudden rape drops to be the least serious crime on the statutes. It even falls below downloading copyrighted movies from the pirate bay! Laughable!
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Slightly unrelated but have you seen this: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5584886/couple-kicked-out-petting-zoo/
A couple were kicked out of Marsh Farm petting zoo because that have ‘no kids’ as part of a ‘safeguarding’ policy because they might be ‘paedophiles’. Whenever the laughably hypocritical term ‘safeguarding’ is used you know it’s a FemiNazi that is behind it!
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On the plus side, I see it was a man AND a woman being treated with suspicion. It gives a certain bleak satisfaction, to see women now being treated the way men have been treated for decades. Welcome to our world ladies!
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