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.
In the discussion I raised the claim on the Men's Voices website that, in Ireland "at least nine per cent of rape cases are provably false" (since removed, emphasis in original). The claim was sourced to this snippet from the Irish Independent, which does not support the claim, and to which I could find no reference to online, despite an extensive search. In my experience with credible academic studies, it is unheard of not to have, at a minimum, their abstracts freely available online.
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 which seem to be designed to exaggerate the occurrence of false and vindictive rape accusations. 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).
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.