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This Rape Infographic Is Going Viral. Too Bad It's Wrong.
Slate ^ | January 8, 2013 | Amanda Marcotte

Posted on 01/08/2013 7:12:47 PM PST by grundle

Yesterday, under the headline, "The saddest graph you'll see today," Dylan Matthews at the Washington Post published this infographic created by the Enliven Project to put the legal issues around rape, its prosecutions, and concerns about false accusations into perspective. The graphic quickly made the rounds on Twitter and Facebook, but unfortunately, while well-intentioned, it is also misleading in significant ways that can be used to undercut its basic message, which is sound: that false rape accusations are rare.

(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: rape; rapestudy
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1 posted on 01/08/2013 7:12:51 PM PST by grundle
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To: grundle

I guess all those ‘unreported rapes’ are unreported to the police only, as the Enliven Project knows about them.


2 posted on 01/08/2013 7:21:22 PM PST by skeeter
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To: grundle

The very general cop rule is, “Half of those actually perpetrated are never reported, and half the ones reported never happened...”


3 posted on 01/08/2013 7:23:54 PM PST by gaijin
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To: grundle

I published the graphic, yup, I'm the Washington Post blogger who cooked up that page, and do you know what? You and I were MARRIED IN A PREVIOUS LIFETIME...!!!

It's completely untrue that I have a little shrine behind this door here, dedicated to you, with flickering candles, newspaper clippings, and a silver .38..!

Because it's BLACK, not silver..!

We'll be together....FOREVER...!

4 posted on 01/08/2013 7:28:55 PM PST by gaijin
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To: gaijin

Dylan Matthews, of the WaPo.

5 posted on 01/08/2013 7:30:55 PM PST by gaijin
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To: grundle
Too bad it's wrong? Too bad it does not include this startling white-on-black data. So often false charges are made and shouted coast-to-coast only to be quietly acknowledged that the charges were false. I didn't see anything in the article about race.

These are US DoJ figures (see links below) and are separate from the FBI figures.

Criminal Victimization in the United States, [YYYY] Statistical Tables

Table 42: "Percent distribution of single-offender victimizations, by type of crime, race of victim, and perceived race of offender"
"Rape/Sexual assault"

Year of Stats Total
Rape/
Sexual assault
Race of Victims % White
Offenders
% Black
Offenders
%
Not known
& other
1995 255,260 White 78.7 15.3
38,330 Black 7.9 * 92.1
1996 216,710 White 82.2 8.8 *
44,890 Black 13.5 * 80.2 6.3 *
1997 234,800 White 74.8 8.0 *
43,890 Black 0.0 * 93.7 6.3 *
1998 225,330 White 77.2 9.9 *
47,430 Black 7.2 * 68.9 23.9 *
1999 274,020 White 79.4 7.3 *
67,890 Black 0.0 * 79.3 20.7 *
2000 199,360 White 81.5 7.0
33,780 Black 7.0 79.7 13.3
2001 183,160 White 71.3 17.1
29,980 Black 13.4 65.5 21.1
2002 134,140 White 76.0 13.1
59,490 Black 14.2 85.8
2003 131,030 White 57.9 15.5
24,010 Black 0.0 87.9 12.1
2004 139,900 White 65.1 8.3
39,300 Black 0.0 89.8 10.2
2005 111,590 White 44.5 33.6
36,620 Black 0.0 100.0
2006 194,270 White 50.6 16.7
17,920 Black 0.0 43.0 57.0
2007 185,430 White 75.5 7.6
12,780 Black 0.0 100.0
2008 117,640 White 74.9 16.4
46,580 Black 0.0 74.8 25.2

*0.0 Estimate is based on 10 or fewer sample cases
May not sum to 100.0 % due to rounding

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

6 posted on 01/08/2013 7:32:57 PM PST by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: grundle

The needle on my BS meter snapped clean off.

When I was in college in the 80’s, there were stenciled signs all over the sidewalks saying, “a woman was raped here.” Sure, I thought, right here on the sidewalk. Must have been inconvenient for all the other people to have to walk around them.

Notwithstanding the seriousness of rape and its high prevalence on college campuses, I really think these stray accusations weaken the message.


7 posted on 01/08/2013 7:41:04 PM PST by VoiceOfBruck (#include <std.disclaimers>)
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To: WilliamofCarmichael

What basic point have you shown us? I’m rather dense, so is this about race? I’m not surprised, because most sheep are white. Thanks for setting me straight in advance Will!


8 posted on 01/08/2013 7:42:46 PM PST by STD ( People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face' but none of us can see theirs!)
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To: gaijin

What would this punkass goofball know about anything heterosexual?


9 posted on 01/08/2013 7:46:19 PM PST by A_Former_Democrat
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To: All
I should have pointed out that US DoJ figures from which the table above was derived included victims who reported the crime and victims of rape who did not report the crime to police.

I think US DoJ interviews 75,000 victims of crimes and develops tables from the result. The FBI figures are totals of reported crimes only.

10 posted on 01/08/2013 7:51:29 PM PST by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: WilliamofCarmichael

Really? The number of blacks raped jumped four-fold in one year in 2008, to 47,000, and whites accounted for 0.0% of those rapists? Really? Hard to imagine. Is this based on some crazy-ass statistical method?


11 posted on 01/08/2013 7:53:52 PM PST by dangus
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To: grundle

Is this the new Dan Rather ...Mary Mapes...?


12 posted on 01/08/2013 8:00:07 PM PST by Baynative (Those that work for a living are now outnumbered by those that vote for a living.)
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To: dangus; WilliamofCarmichael

He has conveniently linked his data sourced, which you seem to have completely ignored.

Sad.


13 posted on 01/08/2013 8:04:23 PM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: STD
The article is not about race. It is about tons of unreported rapes and why so.

It is I who speaks of race; to wit, the Black victim - white offender figures obtained from US DoJ data. There are several years when the US DoJ tables show zero white offenders.

That is what I was talking about. Also the DoJ figures attempt to show both reported and unreported crimes -- FBI figures show only reported crimes.

So the chart in the article should match the comparison of the DoJ tables and FBI tables. I think that another point of the article is that the graph does not match the differences between the official figures. I did not include the FBI tables.

14 posted on 01/08/2013 8:08:38 PM PST by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: dangus

I took the data from DoJ tables.. yes I believe that they interview 75,000 victims of both reported and unreported crimes and they do use statistical methods to interpolate their totals. I am not qualified to judge their methods.


15 posted on 01/08/2013 8:17:41 PM PST by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: grundle
There is a line toward the end of the article that I'm having trouble understanding ...

I can except the two thoughts separately, i.e.,

  1. Women who make false rape reports want sympathy.
  2. Accusing a real man of rape usually gets you very little sympathy

... but I can't understand what the writer is trying to say by combining the two. Am I supposed to think that women who make false claims of being raped without naming an assailant are more like to receive sympathy than real rape victims who name an assailant? or am I supposed to believe that women who falsely report being raped don't understand how little sympathy they're likely to get?

16 posted on 01/08/2013 8:29:30 PM PST by delacoert
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To: grundle

To phrase a headline the way the MSM would if reporting their spin on a subject “ #1 Falsely Reported Crime: Rape”


17 posted on 01/08/2013 8:31:10 PM PST by Cyman
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To: grundle

It’s simple to see why the graphic is so misleading. If the 10 guys on the upper right are the only ones convicted, then they are the only rapes that have been proven, in a court of law. All of the rest, over 90% of the chart, are just “alleged” rapes. You can’t discount an alleged rape as a being a false accusation if there is no investigation, so there is no way to limit the number to just the couple guys in the lower right.


18 posted on 01/08/2013 9:42:28 PM PST by Boogieman
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To: Cyman

More critically, in cases where FBI labs are able to analyze DNA, 20% of the accusations are proven to be false, in that the evidence shows somebody else committed the crime. 20% more are inconclusive.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194032,00.html

The famous “Innocence Projects” are often used by leftists to show how often men jailed by our unjust legal system are later shown to be innocent by hard DNA evidence that was unavailable at the time of their conviction. What they seldom talk about is that the considerable majority of these convictions were for rape.

Now this is obviously because DNA is more often available in rape cases than in most other types of crimes. But their claims that “many” men convicted of rape are innocent does not line up with their claim that “few” men are ever falsely accused.

It should also be noted that rape is the only crime in which conviction is routinely obtained based solely on person A’s unsupported testimony accusing person B. This in those cases where the parties agree intercourse took place but disagree over whether it was consensual.

Conviction or acquittal in such cases is based on nothing more than who tells a better story. The problem here is that we have all known people who are, like Bill Clinton, unusually good liars. And most of us have known people who under the stress of testimony in court would be unable to believably tell the truth.


19 posted on 01/09/2013 1:08:41 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: grundle

So nobody falsely accused of rape ever goes to jail? That’s what the graphic claims.


20 posted on 01/09/2013 7:53:33 AM PST by pepsi_junkie (Who is John Galt?)
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