Australia: Women accusing men of rape take justice into their own hands

Article here. Excerpt:

'Ingram is part of a bigger movement of young women who are willing to take the law into their own hands in sexual assault cases.

Despite police warnings that public shaming could backfire, women across Australia are joining private Facebook groups that share stories about which men to avoid.

"I'm a part of the secret underground feminist mafia that tells all of my friends, and even just women I meet ... about who the bad guys are, who the rapists are," said Anna, a member of one group like this.

Anna said she could think of five men she regularly told her friends to avoid. Even within the last month, she said, she'd cut a man out of her social circle after hearing about his ugly history.
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Some described Ingram's move to go public as vigilantism. She doesn't totally disagree.

"It's almost like taking back the power, taking back whatever you can, to put against the system that isn't working," she said. "It's like a little act of power and resistance."

This reasoning troubles Detective Superintendent Linda Howlett, who heads the New South Wales sex crimes squad. At the end of the day, she said, it would not help get an offender arrested or charged.'

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She personally knew FIVE men who were in her opinion dangerous enough to be avoided` because she knew them to be rapists? What kind of crowd does she hang out with, anyway?

I am sure she feels so "empowered" along with the rest of her "feminist mafia" (her words) when she posts the names of men in her closed, private Facebook account, accusing them secretly of being rapists. I bet the people who secretly accused others of witchcraft in Salem had similar feelings of being "empowered", too.

I can't say I know a lot about this particular case. But I think this one is Australia's answer to America's "Mattress Girl". I'm calling it crazy at this point, dangerously so. If I went around accusing people I knew/didn't know of being arsonists and had nothing but my words as "evidence", eventually someone, probably a judge and a couple shrinks, would sign an order to have me arrested under the state's Mental Hygiene Act and put me in a facility for the deranged so that I could get the help I needed. Aside from the crime in question, what is so different about that scenario and this woman's behavior?

Oh yeah, silly me: 1) she is female and 2) she is accusing men of rape

That's different.

Or is Australia fairly populated by rapist men and wholly incompetent police officers?

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I knew a woman once who loved opportunities to tell others about her experience of being raped. She was no petit woman: tall and muscular (you could almost call her "brawny"), an ex-marine. When I heard her sob tale, I couldn't help wondering about the "mechanics" of her being raped. After all, raping her (or any woman for that matter) would be no easy task. You'd have to get your pants down, her pants down, hold her to keep her from running away, pry her legs apart (and you only have two hands to accomplish all these tasks), and in the meantime hope she doesn't kick you in the groin. So, unless the alleged rapist is armed or has some way to blackmail his victim (e.g., her boss, or someone who could leverage power that way), then I can't help responding to stories of rape with a dose of skepticism. When I hear this stories, I think "maybe, maybe not," and just put it on the shelf on unaswerables. I'm convinced, though, that many rape stories (I won't venture to state a percentage) are simply "buyer's remorse." That is, the relationship went sour, she "felt bad" about the sex she had had with him, and retroactively defined the encounter as rape.

I try to take comfort in the fact that the topic of rape has little to do with my own life. There is only one woman on the planet with whom I've been sexually intimate: my wife. So I tell myself that I have no personal connection with this "rape hysteria." Except that I do worry about false accusations, which means that this topic is really close at hand after all.

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