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James Behan is a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin, and a spokesperson for Men’s Voices Ireland. He is also a staff writer for Trinity’s University Times.
James Behan
In our discussion, James referred to a study by Dr Roisin O’Shea which indicates a poor quality of decision-making in custody cases in Irish Circuit Courts.
James has written for the University Times about men suffering from domestic violence (be it from male or female partners) and the lack of services for them.
He has also written about the huge imbalance in the suicide rate (80 per cent of the people who die by suicide are male), and its causes.
In the discussion I raised the claim, since removed, on the Men’s Voices website that, in Ireland “at least nine per cent of rape cases are provably false” (emphasis in original). The claim was sourced to this snippet from the Irish Independent, which appears to be based on this study. which does not support the claim; James supplied this link, I was not able to find it before the recording.
At the time of writing, the Men’s Voices website still approvingly cites a claim that 90 per cent of rape allegations in Spain are false, using as its source a Youtube video of unclear origin. During the discussion, I referred to the large volume of Youtube videos (not produced by James or MCI) which seem to be designed to exaggerate the occurrence of false and vindictive rape accusations. ***Update*** James has been in touch to point out that he is not the webmaster and personally distances himself from the statistics on this page.
The statistics that I sourced come from the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service. In an extensive study, the CPS identified 35 prosecutions for false allegations of rape in a period when there were 5,651 prosecutions for rape and 111,891 for domestic violence, (0.6 per cent of the rape prosecutions).
In the US, the FBI reports that the number of unfounded reports of rape runs at eight per cent of the total number of rape reports (a figure close to the one originally on the Men’s Voices website), however this is the proportion of reports judged to be unfounded, not to accusations against supposed perpetrators. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that only 36 percent of rapes, 34 percent of attempted rapes, and 26 percent of sexual assaults were reported, meaning that the ratio of false reports (not accusations) to actual rapes is between two and 2.5 per cent.
I cited the case of the rapist Danny Foley, of Meen, Listowel, Co Kerry who was convicted of raping a 24-year old woman; his denial was rebutted by CCTV recordings, amongst other evidence. The Irish Examiner reported that after his conviction, while he was sitting in the dock awaiting sentencing, a
…group of 50 people, mainly men and said to be neighbours and friends, trooped into the courtroom and marched up to the accused, in single file. Each man shook his hand – some hugged him warmly, with tears in their eyes. It was witnessed by the 24-year-old victim who cut a lonely figure in the front seat of the public gallery…
Parish priest, Fr Seán Sheehy, one of his supporters in court, said later that he had no regrets whatsoever about the display, said that Foley didn’t have an abusive bone in his body, called the five-year prison sentence he received ‘extremely harsh‘ and the conviction a ‘miscarriage of justice‘. Foley did not appeal either the conviction or the sentence.
