It's a bit of an understatement to say that the recent handling of high-profile rape and sexual molestation charges against Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was badly done (see WVoN stories here and here).
Rumour and counter-rumour abound. Assange himself has implied on Twitter that the allegations were payback for his part in publishing tens of thousands of classified Afghan documents recently on his Wikileaks site.
The two women, however, who both say they had a consensual sexual relationship with Assange, has each reported a non-consensual incident, according to the Guardian. It reports that Swedish prosecutors may decide today whether to pursue the claims.
But Tracy Clark-Flory makes the most important point of all in this article for Salon.com. She says that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, "high-profile prosecutorial reversals and fumbles like this are a disservice to victims of sexual assault".
She continues: "They help perpetuate a distorted sense of the frequency of false accusations and contribute to the view of rape claims as a tool used to manipulate and destroy men. Ultimately, cases like this discourage victims from coming forward and only make it harder for women with legitimate claims of sexual assault to be taken seriously by police, prosecutors and the general public".
I couldn't agree more, particularly after reading this article in the New York Times which should be called "Article in favour of Julian Assange and against disgrunted women who make false rape allegations".
