First, here's the article on Huffington Post, in which a blogger questions the legitimacy of a rape conviction against star athlete Darrell Williams: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-protess/darrell-williams-case_b_1818054.html

Here's my response, which Huffpost moderators declined to publish:

I'm writing this comment because for 15 years I've been a specialist in sexual assault prevention, education, and treatment, have written a curriculum for sexual assault victim response that's used nationwide, won a national award for excellence from the National Sexual Violence Resource Council, and have been a staff director for a state Sexual Assault Coalition. I only say this so people won't think I'm just "Joe public" with a pile of opinions.

I'm sorry, but this article is replete with rape myths. Starting with the notion that because the accused proclaims his innocence (and the penalty for sex offenses is severe), we ought to heed that. Well, don't ALL accused rapists proclaim their innocence? The old chestnut that "these alleged victims could ruin his life with their accusations" is one of the most pathetic (and predictable) reactions to rape. The author is calling for sympathy for the convicted rapist as the real victim here because those women "ruined his life." That is the worst swill of anti-victim rhetoric I can imagine in a rape case, and I can't believe HuffPo would publish such a classic example of it. How many rape victims have to put up with that same venom--"Why would you accuse him? You'll ruin HIS life!"

Next, we have the myth that if the victims aren't physically brutalized, there's grounds for skepticism about the crime itself. Such a comment does nothing to exonerate Williams, and instead is a typical tactic of questioning the veracity of the victims' allegations entirely: their rape claims are phony. It's the classic belief that "she might not have actually been raped, because she's not obviously injured and her clothing isn't torn." Again, this is a pathetic response that MANY rape victims face by people who don't have the slightest education about sexual assault dynamics (yet decide to mouth off about it anyway), and it's unfortunate when these biases make in into the media like this. For the record, a majority of sexual assaults do not result in obvious external wounding, and the nature of the assaults being alleged in this case wouldn't. So to call out the victims on this basis reveals nothing about the case, and everything about the author's maintenance of trite, longstanding rape myths. In an article titled "Sexual Assault: What Juries Don't Know" (dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/articles/freydjury2008.pdf) this very myth is exposed as a classic prejudice by the misinformed and ignorant.

Third, the "he's such a good boy" defense is another failure. So what if the accused has a perfect GPA? So what if he doesn't have a prior record? Neither of those has anything to do with the case. Sadly, many rape victims have to face this kind of nonsense all the time--"Oh, he would never do what you're claiming! He's been such a nice boy! He goes to church and gets good grades! why would you say such a thing?" Again, the author is promoting the classic arguments used to disparage victims claims: "They ruined his life." This is coupled with the snide remark that "the victims had been drinking." The reference to a victim's consumption of alcohol is a typical method of invoking latent prejudices against women who are raped. It's meant to bring up the skepticism that a woman who has been drinking is at fault herself, that she forfeits the right to allege rape (indeed, forfeits the right to withhold consent or complain about the violation of that consent in any case), and is the classic "she put herself in that position" chestnut. A writer who had bothered to become educated about sexual assault would know that victim intoxication fortifies a legal case against a perpetrator, it doesn't erode it. But nevermind, it's much easier for a writer to fall back on the age-old anti-victim myths about alcohol making it her fault (or at least, not his fault).

Next, there's the "nobody heard any screaming" thing. This is based on the myth that sexual assaults are raucous, loud, chaotic crimes, because that's how people imagine them to be. In reality, a majority of sexual assaults last less than three minutes, and the most common response by victims is "tonic immobility"--becoming rigid and silent. To fall back on the belief that someone has to be screaming, fighting, beaten, and have her clothes torn up in order to be a "legitimate rape victim" shows no better understanding of sexual assault than the bizarre claims of the man whose phrase I'm invoking to make this point.

Last, the article's link to support the claim of 80% misidentification in rape cases actually supports no such claim whatsoever. That link presents 945 cases of exoneration. That's 945 cases SINCE 1989. Given the 125,000+ incidents of rape every year (BJS, Crime Victimization Report), there's not a shred of a basis for the author to make the claim he ascribes to his source. What he CAN say (and I'll correct the record here since the author did just an awful job of understanding his own source), is that 80% of those exonerations were on the basis of misidentification. That's 80% of all 945 exonerations since 1996, or a tiny fraction of a percent of ALL rape convictions in 16 years. What a careless mistake by a lousy, lousy article.

I won't even get into the author's nasty point that having two women pick out the same suspect from a group picture is invalid because all black players look too alike for this to be meaningful. Seriously?