Woman who lied about rape asks for 'bygones to be bygones'

[Zim]

As someone who has been fairly close professionally to incidents of this type on both sides I'd just like to state that I think sometimes too strong is a better way to react to rape accusations than too soft. Rape is underreported far more often than faked. It's a very hard crime to prove and difficult on the victim to admit. I've seen women (and children) whose lives have been destroyed by admitting to being raped. The children get it doubly worse as they're often put right back in the home of the person they accused. Even as someone who's had to take precautions to make sure noone got the wrong idea I'd still rather live in a society that took these accusations too seriously than not enough.

This is one of those legal areas where I do not believe there is a happy medium. If you come down hard on false accusations, you discourage real victims. If you tilt toward the accuser, you hand a powerful weapon to unbalanced/amoral women. It's an unpleasant bit of business.

I have seen both sides of this (not personally, thank goodness). I've known women who were violated, and I saw a guy get destroyed by a false accusation of rape. I don't see any easy answers.