John Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:

> Eric wrote:
>
> > Why would a woman falsely claiming abuse take the man to a police
> > officer to be identified herself and go through with the false arrest
> > and trial, which would be about the worst thing a false accuser could do?
>
> I don't know, but there is at least one well-documented case where the man
> accused insisted he was innocent and refused to pay the fine that would
> allow him just to walk away. The man's wife stuck through him through thick
> and thin (including a prison sentence) and finally (somehow) it was proved
> that the assault could not have taken place in the way the accuser had
> claimed. (This was the subject of a TV documentary which I didn't watch, but
> my wife recounted to me.)

I can remember two acquittals offhand: one in which it was concluded that the
man and woman's height difference would not have allowed him to put his hand
onto her crotch while standing up straight, and another in which a man allowed
a physician to inject his penis with a drug to create an erection in an effort
to disprove the woman's claims that she felt the warmth of his erect penis
through his trousers while leaned against her.

But it was still the presiding judges' decision whom to side with. This month I
was able to talk to a local lawyer who had been, among other judicial posts
around the country, a judge of the Tokyo High Court. He told me about
overturning rulings. That the process may seem so arbitrary is not heartening
for the innocent or the guilty.

> But that is not what I was talking about. I was talking about women who use
> accusations of groping in order to blackmail men into going to the nearest
> ATM and part with largeish sums of money. I have no idea of the scale on
> which this happens, but it is persistently reported as something that does
> happen.

Yes, I know, and this has been talked about before. The way to prevent false
accusation is the same way to catch more criminals, in whatever form you want
that to take: more patrols, more monitoring, segregated cars, etc.

> > Why do you (among others) insist on casting doubts on women
> > claiming abuse or on figures reporting abuse? Your assertion
> > girls would do it to enhance their claims of being attractive
> > or establish cred was particularly offensive.
>
> Again, you misunderstand what I was talking about. I was not talking about
> girls going to the police with false claims. That would be the act of a
> highly psychologically-disturbed person and while there are highly
> psychologically-disturbed people in the world one assumes they are very much
> the minority.
>
> What I was talking about is something much more plausible, even for fairly
> well-adjusted people. I have clear memories of kids of about fourteen to
> sixteen boasting of their sexual exploits when I was a schoolboy, and have
> no doubt that there was peer pressure to claim experience of that kind
> whether one really did or not. That was what I was talking about, the way in
> which it is - in some schools and in some teenage circles - cool to be able
> to tell one's classmates, "Had to fend off another groper on the train
> today".

Considering the stereotype (not necessarily reality) of who gropers are, and
the kind of women they are said to (sometimes by gropers themselves) target,
where is the glory in being found "attractive" by them, or being able to shake
them off?

> So let's get it clear that I am not casting doubt on women claiming abuse or
> figures reporting abuse. I cast no doubts, for example, on Aljazeera's
> report that:
>
> "Last week, figures released by the Metropolitan Police Department showed a
> leap from 96 reported cases of molesting incidents on trains in 1996 to 2201
> cases in 2004."
> (http://tinyurl.com/58h32)
>
> If they report it, I'm sure it's true.

Neither would I go that far. On the other hand, even MPD officials are willing
to admit that reported figures are only the tip of the iceberg.

http://tinyurl.com/5h742

> By and large, I have difficulty
> accepting that "women claiming abuse or figures reporting abuse" are pretty
> accurate and - even though there may be the occasional false accusation in
> there - they still fall far short of the total number of abuse cases.
>
> You are twisting the issue, Eric, and twisting my words, because you say I
> am "insisting" on casting doubt on these things, and yet I do not doubt them
> in the slightest.
>
> The issue is not "women claiming abuse or figures reporting abuse" (both of
> which involve the police). The issue is questionnaires and surveys leading
> to claims that most women have been abused (which involve the media, but not
> the police). Stick to the point, will you?
>
> As far as such questionnaires and surveys are concerned, I have little
> difficulty accepting statistics indicating that "at least 17%" of women have
> suffered some form of abuse, but you keep on insisting that the person who
> believes the most inflated statistic is somehow the more politically correct
> or has the more highly-developed social conscience. That's just silly.

Do you see a problem with the sample size and demographics of surveys you
quoted? If I went to the over 100 women who had reported to the local railway
police that they had been molested on a certain train line (perhaps by two or
three individuals), I could have had a 100% claim figure.

It is you who insist on the lowest printed figure you can find, thinking it
must be the most correct.

Why am I forced to disagree with you, indeed.

> As for your quotations from my posts of a couple of years ago, I don't see
> what point you are trying to prove.

What you yourself say: you lead a sheltered existence. And I don't care what
YOU believe about the males YOU know and how decent they are. Local railway
police only had about a hundred reports on their books, with a regional
population of about 500,000. (Oh, on second thought, that is per capita,
similar to Osaka and Tokyo figures, with about 900 and 2,000 reports,
respectively.) But other things happen elsewhere.

> I will repeat the following, as it is really the final word I have to say on
> the subject of statistics of chikan abuse:
>
> >>Think about it like this. Suppose there are 500,000 chikan active
> >>in Japan, with an average of one molestation per month and
> >>active over an average period of 25 years. That would total
> >>150,000,000 abuses (more than the total population - male and
> >>female - of Japan), and would comfortably provide the statistic
> >>that "over three quarters" of Japanese women have been abused
> >>by chikan, but it would still leave the majority of Japanese men
> >>completely guiltless.
> >>
> >>I repeat:
> >>
> >>>In japan, chikan is the rule for men, not the exception
> >>
> >>was an ill-considered and racist statement and I think you
> >>were wrong to defend it.

I will repeat: I am not commenting on Ernest's statement, I am commenting on
your disbelief.