Police Believe That Women Falsely Report Sexual Assault

At the end of the conversation, he asked what she thought of the #MeToo movement. Her response caught me off guard.

In a chilly tone of voice, she said, “I hate it. It’s all out of proportion . . . I say an open robe is not rape.”

In the age of #MeToo, that’s controversial. We may not like it. She was alluding to the fact that some women use sex to advance their careers. There’s a certain ring of truth to it. Her context is Hollywood, after all. And we’ve always known what women had to do to get the leading screen roles from men in power, right?

And who of a certain age can forget her rather racy response to a question by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show:

Johnny: Do you dress for men or dress for women?

Angie: I dress for women and I undress for men.

But in the larger framework, the open robe remark is insensitive to women, and certainly to every one who has been used, abused, or taken advantage of by men. Unfortunately, many police departments are of the same view as the Police Woman.

Research shows that there is a mistaken belief that women falsely report sexual assault. In fact, a Globe and Mail investigation showed that . . .

○ Police dismiss 1 in 5 sexual assault reports as “unfounded” or baseless.

○ About 5,000 cases each year go uninvestigated and unrecorded.

○ Fewer than one in 10 victims report their assault to police.

○ Fewer than half of the cases that do go to court end with a conviction – among the lowest conviction rates of any type of violent crime.

○ An average of 5,500 people report sexual violence to Canadian police each year.

○ But their cases drop out of the system as unfounded long before a Crown prosecutor, judge or jury has a chance to weigh in.

Source: Doolittle, Robyn. Why Police Dismiss 1 In 5 Sexual Assault Claims As Baseless. The Globe And Mail, February 3, 2017