by Jim Kouri, CPP
A New York man was freed after enduring over 20 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit and he’s one of the lucky ones.
Alan Newton, who is now 44 years old, was imprisoned for brutally raping a 25-year-old woman in a Bronx building in 1984. Newton was serving a sentence of a maximum of 40 years in prison.
Attorneys representing the convicted man requested that prosecutors vacate Newton’s conviction based on new testing conducted on a rape kit used for the woman in a hospital emergency room following her alleged rape.
In 1994, Newton’s attorneys had filed a motion for a DNA test, but the request was denied by a judge. They made a similar motion again in 1998, and this time the judge ruled in Newton’s favor, but the victim’s clothing failed to yield the presence of male DNA.
Last year, the attorneys — who worked pro-bona as representatives of the Innocence Project — made another request, and the New York City Police Department’s Sex Crimes Unit was able to locate the hospital rape kit at a police storage warehouse in Queens.
Court papers say DNA testing on the kit “conclusively excludes” Newton as the rapist.
The horror endured by Alan Newton is disturbingly common — too common. But in the name of political correctness, few dare to question the validity of rape charges for fear of becoming targeted by feminists and left-wing groups.
One brave man who dared to question the validity of rape complaints, and in fact searched for studies that gauged the number of false rape and sexual assault complaints, is Frank Zepezauer, who conducted research for the Institute for Psychological Therapies. In a paper for the IPT, Zepezauer shocked many when he delved into different studies on the subject of false rape complaints. He discovered, contrary to what’s disseminated by the mainstream news media and feminist groups, that false sex crimes complaints are far from being rare.
One study Zepezauer looked at was conducted by the US Air Force Special Studies Division’s Charles McDowell.
McDowell and his team of investigators studied 556 rape allegations. Of that total, 256 could not be conclusively verified as rape. That left 300 authenticated cases of which 220 were judged to be truthful and 80, or 27%, were judged as false.ÂÂÂ
In his report Charles McDowell stated that extra rigor was applied to the investigation of potentially false allegations. To be considered false one or more of the following criteria had to be met: the victim unequivocally admitted to the false allegation, indicated deception in a polygraph test, and provided a plausible recantation. Even by these strict standards, slightly more than one out of four rape charges were judged to be false, Zepesauer wrote in his IPT paper.ÂÂÂ
In another study, McDowell and his team recruited independent reviewers who were given 25 criteria derived from the profiles of the women who openly admitted making a false allegation. If all three reviewers agreed that the rape allegation was false, it was then listed by that description.ÂÂÂ
The result: 60% of the accusations were identified as false. McDowell also took his study outside the military by examining police files from a major midwestern city and a southwestern city. He found again that 60% of the claims of rape were false.ÂÂÂ
In another study Zepezauer looked at, this one by Behavioral Scientist Eugene Kanin, he reported on his findings at two large Midwestern state universities which covered a three-year period ending in 1988. The finding of the combined studies was that among a total of 64 reported rapes exactly 50% were false.ÂÂÂ
Kanin found these results significant because the women in the main report tended to gather in the lower socioeconomic levels, thus raising questions about correlations of false allegation with income and educational status. After checking figures gathered from university police departments, he therefore reported that “quite unexpectedly then, we find that these university women, when filing a rape complaint, were as likely to file a false as a valid charge.”ÂÂÂ
In addition, Kanin cited still another source which supported findings of high frequency false allegations in the universities. On the basis of these studies, Kanin felt it reasonable to conclude that false rape accusations are more common than previously believed.ÂÂÂ
But feminists and left-wing activists will dismiss these studies as biased because men where involved. For instance, one feminist, Wendy Kaminer, stated that “it is a primary article of faith among many feminists that women don’t lie about rape, ever; they lack the dishonesty gene.” Anyone believing women lack a dishonesty gene never dated women. If they do lack that gene, then someone out there is performing miraculous surgery to implant that gene. What’s so amazing about such statements is: they are not based on any scientific evidence; and it is a sexist premise.
John O’Sullivan, a left-wing social scientist, discovered a widespread defense of the belief that “no woman would fabricate a rape charge. Feminists themselves admit as much.”ÂÂÂ
Law Professor and left-wing political activist Susan Estrich stated that “the whole effort at reforming rape laws has been an attack on the premise that women who bring complaints are suspect.”ÂÂÂ
Zepezauer wrote that, “Some feminists believe that even defending that premise [of false rape complaints] is in itself a sex crime.”ÂÂÂ
Well-known Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz once said that he was accused of sexual harassment by female students for discussing in class the mere possibility of false rape allegations.
Zepezauer concludes his indepth study with this: “Believing the self-proclaimed victim of sexual misconduct has thus evolved from ideological conviction to legal doctrine and, in some jurisdictions, into law. California now requires that jurors be explicitly told that a rape conviction can be based on the accuser’s testimony alone, without corroboration. Canada is proposing that a man accused of rape must demonstrate that he received the willing consent of a sexual partner.”ÂÂÂ
The studies cited by Frank Zepezauer correlate with this writers experiences working on sex crimes case in New York. I found that about half of the case were false complaints and, in fact, during intense interviewing, the women sometimes freely admitted and rationalized the bogus complaints.
The current case of the Duke University Three, who are facing rape charges based solely on the word of an intoxicated stripper and prostitute, is a perfect example of the dynamic of politics and political correctness outweighing justice.
This is an unjust situation we face within our justice system. False charges of rape hurt women who are indeed victims of predators, and they hurt men, such as Alan Newton, who lose 20 years of their lives for a crime they never committed.
Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country.  Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com. He’s also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com.  He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com. Kouri’s own website is located at http://jimkouri.us
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