Ramping Up The Rape Rhetoric...

A Powys woman jailed for falsely retracting rape allegations against her husband has lost her Court of Appeal bid to overturn her conviction for perverting the course of justice.

I thought at the time, when I started getting the news of this on Twitter, 'There will, of course, be much frothing at this'. And I wasn't wrong. First out of the traps was our old pal, Vera 'I Scoop No Poop For Anyone!' Baird.

She concentrated on the 'injustice' of the case, and how it would prevent women from coming forward, despite the fact that, as a lawyer herself, she should have known full well it's unlikely to be repeated, as the comments by the judge prompted the DPP to issue fresh guidance:

Giving the decision on the woman's appeal against conviction on Tuesday, Lord Judge said: "The reality of this case is that the appellant was undoubtedly guilty of a serious crime, from which police officers did all they reasonably could to dissuade her.

"Compassion for her position, and indeed for any woman in the same or a similar position, should have produced a non-custodial sentence.

"That is why this court acted speedily to quash the custodial sentence and replace it with a community order which would offer practical assistance to the appellant in the immediate aftermath of her release from prison."

He added: "The court also expressed itself in clear and direct language, which was immediately considered by the Director of Public Prosecutions, who has now issued fresh guidance about how cases involving false retractions of true allegations by vulnerable defendants will be addressed in the future."

In other words, we don't expect to see these sorts of charges laid against these women in the future?

If true, that's a monstrous injustice, isn't it? To the men falsely accused, that is. But does anyone speak for them?

Meanwhile, there's no subject so controversial that those axe-grinders Mumsnet can't make it just that little bit worse:

Another online survey, this time from Mumsnet, concludes that one woman in ten has been raped, and over a third have been sexually assaulted. The best data we have, from the British Crime Survey, suggests this is an overestimate.

Heh! I'll say. And how the hell can such a self-selected group be considered representative of anything?

The BBC reported it at length, but without challenging the Mumsnet figures. Doesn't the BBC College of Journalism include a course on statistical scepticism?

I don't think 'scepticism' is even in the BBC vocabulary.

It seems that, when it comes to rape sentencing propaganda, the booting out of such frothing feminists as Vera Baird and Harriet Harman did absolutely nothing. The myth persists that rape convictions are out of kilter with all other crimes, no matter how many times that myth is debunked.

It feels like I'm shouting into the wind, sometimes...

H/T: Mark Wadsworth and PJH via email