‘Crying rape’, you say? Drop me out, too. It’s gross, and rare, but is frequently used by supposed men’s rights activists and anti-feminists and misogynists (kind of the same people, to be fair), to suggest, or sometime simply state that women frequently lie about being raped or sexually assaulted. To these sorts, and to many more who enable these sorts, crying rape proves that women misinterpret their own intentions, dressing or acting in a way that they are too idiotic to realise actually suggested they were ‘asking for it', or 'up for it'.
However, we have to address crying rape, because in a case that’s made some front pages - hopefully because of its rarity, but sadly likely due to it playing on a fear that many misunderstood people will hold - a woman has cried rape. A lot.
Jemma Beale, 25, has been sentenced to ten years in prison for lying about being attacked. Over a period of years, Beale had falsely accused nine men of rape, including gang rape, and sexual assault.
Investigations and trials to bring the supposed culprits to 'justice' cost the taxpayer almost half a million pounds, and one man, Mahad Cassim, was jailed in 2010 for raping Beale. He spent two years and nine months in prison before the seven-year sentence was overturned.
Though CCTV was shown to prove that Beale hadn’t been raped on numerous occasions, and had even self-harmed to fake injuries, Beale stands by all her allegations. Her lawyer has implied she will appeal. She had told the court, reports CourtNews, ‘I aint’ a bisexual at all’, insisting she is and always has been a lesbian, and therefore had no sexual interest in any of the men she falsely accused. But Southwark Crown Court heard that Beale had made up the assaults and rapes in order to gain sympathy from her girlfriend.
The jury found Beale guilty of four counts of perjury and four counts of perverting the course of justice, reports The Guardian.
Now, so many 'vile' and 'vitriolic' comments have been made online about Beale that her defence lawyer said so during the trial. But the comments aren’t about to dry up.
Apparent justification for these comments are, well, apart from it being the wild west of the internet where anonymity allows transient web users to say whatever they like without fear of reproach: here is a woman who cried rape.
Here’s a subjectively unattractive woman, a working class, overweight, butch woman, who tried to make out that men were offering her sex that she wasn’t interested in, when really, she should have been grateful for anything. Maybe, perhaps, all lesbians should? And not only was she dropping men in it as a way of attention seeking from another woman who presumably didn’t return her affections, but she took £11,000 in victim compensation from the taxpayer’s purse. As well as the court and police costs. Indeed, in the witness stand, Detective Sergeant Kevin Lynott said, reports Sky News: ‘Beale has been exposed as a serial liar. I can only think that she was motivated partly by financial reward.’
Now, while there is no defence for Beale’s actions: she harmed the lives of almost a dozen men and their families, and she's wasted police and court resources, the comments that have been and will be made about her aren’t only directed at her, but at other people like her. Butch women, overweight women, working class women, subjectively unattractive women, women.
And these are the people who really don't need the insults right now. Because, as the judge pointed out in his sentencing remarks, the largest demographic she's hurt are the untold amount of women who now feel they can't come forward about their sexual assaults and rapes.
In his sentencing remarks, Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said: 'These false allegations of rape, false allegations which will inevitably be widely publicised, are likely to have the perverse impact of increasing the likelihood of guilty men going free.'
‘Cases such as this bring a real risk that a woman who has been raped or sexually assaulted may not complain to the police for fear of not being believed.’
It would be easy - far too easy - to extrapolate Beale’s lying to apply it to all women who seem as if they were too attractive to not be up for it, or too unattractive to ever turn a shag down, and therefore write off the very real and criminally underreported incidences of rape as just more lies. It is understandable that men are very afraid of being falsely accused of rape; it’s historically the only power women have over men. But where women have words, men have, all too often, the tools of power. Rape is only such a heinous thing to falsely accuse someone of because the crime itself is such a horrific one, and the minimum sentences reflect that.
A ridiculous proportion of women have had to face the injustice of not being believed by police or in the courts. A larger proportion of women don’t talk about their rape and sexual assault for fear of not being believed. And then, because of this, certain men take it as carte blanche to rape and assault. Just this week, it was reported that 24-year-old Rhys Roser, who raped a woman, told her in a phone recording later used as evidence against him in court ‘Don't tell anyone please. You don't want to do the whole court thing. You're not going to stand up in court and tell everyone you were raped, way too embarrassing’. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Men like Roser know that a broader worry of women ‘crying rape’, internalised by women, keeps them safe. Miss Beale has certainly reinforced this, and it’s infuriating. Not just because she's let the supposed sisterhood down by not playing to an apparent script, but because while some will be tempted to frame her sentencing around the impending victimhood placed upon any man who consensually sleeps with a supposedly oversensitive, hysterical women, it’s so obvious where the Sword of Damocles hangs. Women may have words, but men have so much more in their armory.
Put this way: if rape simply didn’t happen, then crying rape would never happen either. To stop false accusations of rape, we don’t need women to keep quiet, as Roser pleaded. Instead, we need to make rape such a far-off possibility, such a ridiculous notion, such an alien and strange and unheard of thing, a relic of the past, like drinking mead or slopping toilet waste out onto the street, or drying clothes with a mangle, that the accusation would never hold any weight. The accusation of rape needs to be laughed out of court, but for all the right reasons. That will only start happening when rape stops, which in turn will only happen when rapists stop raping. The solution to women like Beale isn't for women to shut up, it's for rapists to disappear.
You might also be interested in:
'My Penis Was Too Big' Says Man Explaining Tears Of Alleged Rape Victim
Rape Accused Must Prove Victim Consented, Say New Guidelines
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Photo: Andrew Parsons/REX/Shutterstock
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.