1) This is my 'hood. The Lynnwood courthouse is adjacent to the library where my daughter gets her Ladybug Girl books and across the street from the Fred Meyer where I buy gas. Marie's high school is on my jogging route. It's literally 4 houses away. And although you can't get there directly, it's separated from the Costco where Marie worked by a fence. My wife's godmother has worked at that Costco for about 15 years. 2) Lynnwood cops are renowned for their incompetence and their predatory nature. Lynnwood is largely known for aggressive traffic cameras and a zeal to entrap and prosecute drunk drivers. Otherwise, they're stunningly incompetent; there's a grow house next to my mother-in-law and no amount of bitching about the smell of the chemicals they're using has accomplished fuckall. To get relief my father-in-law, a prize-winning gardener, went over and tuned their system for them. 3) BUT that high school is damn near a reform school. There are a lot of thugs. It's mostly known as the place you go when you get pregnant in high school or threaten a teacher. 4) AND with a foster kid in a public housing project, criminal charges would likely be necessary in order to allow the housing project to move forward with disciplinary action. Which falls back onto the WA state department of social work, which is a sick joke that makes the Lynnwood PD look like those guys from CSI. 5) BECAUSE If they were serious about it they would have taken it to Everett as the Lynnwood municipal court is mostly used for traffic violations. Having been on one (1) date with a girl who falsified a rape claim and was prosecuted, I can vouch for the notion that the cops don't go there lightly. The lovely lady I was out with cut up her own neck with an X-Acto so that she could impugn a spurned love interest, whom the cops not only arrested, they roughed up. Her punishment upon pleading guilty was 20 hours community service and a year of academic probation.
This was an absolutely fascinating read. I was on the edge of my seat through the whole story. I'm gonna come back to read it again dry so I can really digest my feelings about it.
Interesting read. Rape and sexual assault are my particular fields of interest in the social sciences. I'm still undecided to how I feel about such detailed articles; this level of rape is uncommon. I worry it perpetuates the stereotype that all rapists are sick in the head when really, this is not the case. Since it is literally something I could discuss all day, some awesome TED talks on the subject can be found here and here and here and here. I have a couple other problems with this article, however. The biggest being: Well, that is a pretty broad range: between 25% and 66%. As well, I can't recall hearing this statistic before in an academic setting. Clicking on the highlighted "serial attackers" link takes you to this page which is another can of worms entirely, but is a dead-end in terms of serial rapist stats. So I did some googling. RAINN claims that "rapists are more likely to be a serial criminal than a serial rapist." I also came up with this Al Jazeera America article, as well as this Slate article. Both of which cite this 2002 study. Which, honestly, is way more interesting. Reading through the results section (pg 78) gives us our 2/3 number. However, some of their data is over 20 years old, and the samples were taken from a single "mid-sized, urban commuter university." No way is this generalizable to the population. And perhaps we will never know, because sensitive topics are insanely difficult to survey. Regardless, I highly encourage a read-through of the discussion (pg 80) at the very least, as I think it gives a little more context to the story posted. As well, this: A baseless accusation does not mean it is false. Simply because there is no proof does not mean it is a lie.Between one-fourth to two-thirds of rapists are serial attackers, studies show.
FBI figures show that police annually declare around 5 percent of rape cases unfounded, or baseless.
TIL "Rapes by strangers were uncommon — about 13 percent of cases. "
Geez I knew it was a significant number but that is `a massive number. Wow. Thanks for the link. Those are some fairly sobering stats.