U.S. Senate committee to hold hearing on rape investigations
Concerned that police departments nationwide fail to investigate rapes fully, a congressional committee will examine the issue next week at a hearing spurred partly by a Baltimore Sun examination of the systemic underreporting of sex crimes.
The Senate Crime and Drugs subcommittee has asked representatives of the Office of Violence Against Women and a Pennsylvania woman who was jailed by police who erroneously accused her of making a false rape report to appear in Washington to discuss the problem.
The Sun reported in July that Baltimore led the nation for at least five years in the percentage of rape cases in which police concluded that the victim was lying, with more than 3 in 10 cases determined to be “unfounded.” Other cities have seen disturbingly high percentages of uninvestigated or dropped race cases in past years, and a women’s advocate in Philadelphia pushed for the congressional hearing after the Sun’s story reignited her concerns.
The newspaper’s report “made me believe that all of the issues [in other cities] were not just idiosyncratic problems, but that there is likely a chronic and systemic failure in police departments,” said Carol E. Tracy, head of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia. “I think it’s important to expose it, and to encourage the federal government, which has very little jurisdiction around this, to nevertheless exercise greater accountability on the data that it does receive.”
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Comments
Do you even think about what you write sometimes?
If the "victim" really WAS lying there is no "victim" or at perhaps you might want to consider the accused the victim?
Now obviously it's easy to not investigate and then you will mess over plenty of real victims. And to the extent that cops on the street weren't bringing this stuff in to be investigated that practice needs to stop, heads need to roll, and the city should be ashamed. But people who continue to use the language of victimization when the accuser is lying, should also be ashamed.
Posted by: Clarence | September 8, 2010 3:15 AM
What are you talking about? Take a writing class.
Posted by: KDM | September 8, 2010 9:18 AM
Ms. Jessamy's campaign website boasts an 80% decline in rape cases during her tenure to promote the “59%” drop in violent crime that she touts at every debate. She claims 684 cases in 1995 and 154 in 2009. Yet she suspected those figures were false. She demanded an audit early in August when the Sun first published these discrepancies. Yet she continues to use the numbers that she herself has found suspect.
The rape number was cited on her web site but didn't make it into the television commercial. Frankly, a 66 percent drop in robberies, which did make it into the tv piece, seems just as suspect. The city is safer than it was 15 years, but it'd be hard to make the case that it is 66 percent safer. -JF
Posted by: Skeptic | September 8, 2010 10:02 AM