From Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine’s new press release Governor Kaine Announces 2008 Legislative Initiatives on Domestic and Sexual Violence (1/2/08):
“The Violence Against Women Act of 2005 also prohibits law enforcement officers from asking or requiring a victim of an alleged sex offense to submit to a polygraph examination as a condition for proceeding with the investigation of such an offense…
“In 2004, the Department of Criminal Justice Services conducted a survey of sexual Assault policies of law enforcement agencies. A little over 72% of respondents indicated that they sometimes performed polygraph exams on victims of sexual assault. Only 14.6% indicated that they never asked a victim to submit to a polygraph exam.
“The Governor’s proposed legislation would prohibit law enforcement officers, prosecutors, or other government officials from asking or requiring a victim of an alleged sex offense to submit to a polygraph examination, limiting the use of polygraph tests to those victims who specifically request them.”
In this news article Kaine (pictured) says, “We don’t do that with other crimes. Why would we do that routinely in a sexual assault?”
A few points:
1) I don’t know anything about how effective polygraph tests are, and Kaine is correct in his concern for further traumatizing rape victims. On the other hand, it is interesting that police use polygraphs far more for sexual assault cases than for other crimes.
One reason is probably that these crimes are often more intimate and less likely to have witnesses. But another reason is probably that the officers, through their own experiences, have seen that false accusations of sexual assault are much more common than false accusations of other crimes. Feminists insist that false rape claims are not any more common than false claims of other crimes.
To learn more about the prevalence of false accusations of rape, see my recent column U. of Maryland right to deny protesters a forum to publicly name alleged rapists, (Baltimore Sun, 10/15/07).
2) It is interesting that VAWA prohibits police from “asking or requiring a victim of an alleged sex offense to submit to a polygraph examination as a condition for proceeding with the investigation of such an offense.” For one, there’s a big difference between “asking” and “requiring.” I can understand feminist concern over requiring. On the other hand, their opposition to even asking is yet another example of feminists’ utter lack of concern over false rape allegations.
Glenn Sacks, www.GlennSacks.com
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackIn proposing prohibitions against even asking alleged victims of alleged sex crimes to submit to a polygraph test, Governor Kaine, marching in lockstep with the federal Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA), says we need to turn our attention to how we treat victims of sexual assault. Both he and the VAWA are making one very big assumption; that just because someone has claimed to be the victim of a crime, that they in fact actually are one.
It can usually be safely assumed that stabbing and shooting victims didn’t consent to being stabbed or shot. Although they may be lying about the circumstances of their injuries, the fact that they are the victims of some crime is evidenced by the seriousness of their injuries. With sex crimes, police cannot make the same assumptions. People do, everyday, engage in risky and casual, but entirely consensual sex with people they have just met, only to regret it afterwards for any multitude of reasons.
Whereas the stab wound or the bullet hole are almost always evidence of a non-consensual crime of violence, bodily fluids, and stray hairs, by themselves, are evidence only that sex took place. The circumstances of that sex often depend solely on the testimony of the alleged victim, frequently amounting to little more than, “He said. She said.”
If the Duke Lacrosse case, and the Jennifer Wilbanks, Audrey Seiler, & Karyn McConnell-Hancock abduction hoaxes, just to name a few, teach us anything, it should be that just because someone says they are the victim of a crime, it isn’t necessarily true. If it were, we could dispense with trials, and convict people on accusation alone.
Tamara Ann Moonier plead guilty to falsely accusing six men of gang rape after video of the incident showed her actually directing the action, even complaining about one of her “rapist’s” inability to perform sexually. Unfortunately, police rarely have videos and must rely on the good character of the accuser; which is unfortunately, not a given.
Gary Dotson spent 8 years in prison, and a quarter century under a cloud of suspicion, before finally being pardoned by the governor of Illinois after DNA tests cleared him of the rape for which he had been convicted. Those tests confirmed that the incriminating biological evidence found on his alleged victim belonged to her boyfriend at the time, corroborating her recantation that she falsely cried rape because she was afraid the reckless but consensual teenage sexual encounter may have resulted in a pregnancy.
An article published in the Virginian-Pilot on March 12, 2005, chronicled the tragic story of Michael Williams, convicted of rape and subsequently exonerated with DNA evidence after languishing in a Louisiana prison for 24 years. The article read in part, “Williams was convicted in a case with no physical evidence and one eyewitness — the 22-year-old victim, who had tutored him on his schoolwork.”
Many deceptive accusers claim their victimization at the hands of some vaguely described stranger who exists only in their imagination. In those cases, the resulting harm is limited to wasted police resources and unnecessarily frightened communities. However, unless someone, by coincidence, fits her fictitious description, as happened in the Dotson case, that is the only damage done. Oftentimes though, as in the Duke case, real people are accused. These potential victims, and their families, are every bit as deserving of protection from the state as are potential rape victims. In these cases however, the devastation inflicted on the wrongly-accused and their families, will be carried out with the state’s complicity if the police are prohibited from conducting a fair, thorough and objective investigation to include, when appropriate, the use of polygraph tests, simply in deference to political correctness.
What should frighten everyone is that forced sex, like consensual sex, typically occurs in private, without witnesses. These allegations can and are prosecuted with no evidence whatsoever beyond the credible-sounding story of the alleged victim, whose actual credibility is protected from even reasonable challenge by rape-shield laws. When police are prohibited from using one of the few tools available to them to help determine the truth in such situations, even less information is available to those making decisions whether or not to prosecute.
Polygraph tests are a tool. They should not be a routine requirement, but should remain an option available to police when there are already other reasons to doubt the veracity of an alleged victim’s story.
Why did it take over a year to prsecute little Tamara Moonier, when the police had a tape in their possesion the whole time? Please read this article about Tamara Moonier and her mother Wendy Moonier, who have been “Serial False Accuser’s” for 25+ years. They keep getting away with it because they know that they can. False Rape Accusations and other False Accusations are NOT Rare. People like the Moonier women keep getting away with it, even after Little Tamara Moonier went to Jail, Her and her mother have continually made Oter False Accusations against Tamara’s ex-Hubby: Read the story here: http://www.dontmakehermad.com/forum/index.php?topic=38.0
I am appalled at our justice System!!
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