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What I make of it is she felt like elements of it were non-consensual but didn't want to escalate it since it would just be making a big messy deal out of it and she just wanted to put it behind her and forget about it.
But instead word got out, and it started affecting her academic and social life and now that it's already in the toilet, there isn't much to lose by escalating it.
There should be. False rape accusations cause approximately equal harm as actual violent rape. Therefore, punishments for false rape accusations (if proven beyond a reasonable doubt) should be approximately equal to punishments for violent rape (if proven beyond a reasonable doubt). The fact that they are not is precisely why she feels safe escalating this way as a petty, vindictive, uncostly form of revenge in a social battle. Legal threats like this should not be casually thrown about against innocent people.
This wouldn’t do much in general, and also for this case in particular. There’s no way to prove Jane Doe made a false accusation beyond a reasonable doubt, and this likely also holds for 99% of all rape accusations.
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