(Open Letter to the Minister of Police)

 

Dear Judith Collins,

According to the Victoria University of Wellington webpage http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sacs/staff/jordan.aspx Jan Jordan "regularly participates in training sessions for police officers." Although she masquerades as an academic, she is first and foremost a committed anti-male activist, and is temperamentally unable to bring objectivity to her role with the police. Indeeed, her PhD thesis makes it clear that she does not even believe in objectivity.

I am writing to suggest that she be removed from any official role with the New Zealand Police. She should be sent back to the Uranium Tower -- the toxic, Feminist, university environment where lecturers present as educators and act like politicians.

I have previously defended your colleague Tony Ryall from misguided attacks made on him by Jan Jordan -- see my article: Universities Pass Off Left-Wing Prejudice as Intelligent Thought. However, I recommend that you also take a look at her 2001 Victoria University thesis True "Lies" and False "Truths": Women, Rape and the Police in order to see what kind of a person she is. She does raise some serious issues with respect to how Police determine whether a rape complaint is false, but she is not the person to propose solutions for any problems in that area, since her extreme bias is revealed by the following facts:

1. Out of the over 400 pages of her thesis on Police attitudes to false allegations of rape, she only devotes ONE (1) page (i.e. half of page 89 and half of page 90) to a discussion of actual research into how frequently complaints of rape are actually false. In that one page, she cites only TWO (2) items of primary research into this issues, along with four publications by mere commentators. Rumney's 2006 literature survey1, by contrast, lists TWENTY (20) items of primary research on this topic, of which SIXTEEN (16) were published prior to the date of Jan Jordan's thesis, and were therefore available for her to read. Jan Jordan does mention Kanin's research, which found 41% of rape complaints to be false, but she says that his results "have not been replicated elsewhere." This is misleading, in the absence of any indication that anyone has ever even tried to repeat his research format. The various studies which Rumney surveyed found false allegation rates ranging from a low of 1.5%- to a high of 90%. It was highly unprofessional of Jordan to treat this central issue so casually, and highly incompetent of Victoria University of Wellington to give her a PhD on the basis of such shoddy work on her part.
2. She shows no sign that I can see of having read anything on the central topic of the theory and practice of police discretion not to charge someone for an offence.
3. She commences her thesis with a totally unevidenced theory that certain unnamed societies (which are clearly meant to include our own) have/had "the gender class 'men' equated with rightness and the 'truth' and the gender class 'women' regarded as wrong and full of lies" (p.1). On the basis of this section of her thesis, one would have to say that Jan Jordan is a good example that anyone could bring up in support of the notion that at least some women tell lies -- which they do, as do some men.
4. She rejects the notion of objectivity, which makes it impossible to take her thesis seriously. Feminist research theory (which Jordan discusses on pp. 4 ff.) does not say anything new when it claims that total objectivity is impossible. That has probably always been known to be the case. However, one can approach objectivity by making an effort to do so. If one rejects objectivity totally, the reader can place no trust in what one writes, and the writing itself is therefore a waste of time.
5. In keeping with her rejection of objectivity, Jordan treats the fact that police officers think that some women tell lies as a mere psychological state that these police officers are in. On one level, that is obviously true, but it is also obvious that Jordan means that they are in a deluded mental state, when they think that some women tell lies about rape. In order to prove that, she would have to come up with some objective evidence -- which she fails to do.
6. Jordan completely and utterly ignores the needs of innocent men who are falsely accused, and ignores the legal principle that the accused are innocent until proven guilty.
7. Jordan claims (on page 12) that societies believe in myths about women, and that these beliefs have shaped the law of rape. She provides no evidence of this, apart from a few highly selective quotes from the Bible, etc.. She ignores the fact that most people live much of their lives in the company of women -- starting with their own mother -- and that they are perfectly capable of drawing their own conclusions about the truthfulness or otherwise of women, based on their own experiences. They have no need to be taught societal myths on the subject. Moreover, there is no need to assume that women are less truthful than men, in order to come to the conclusion that allegations of rape are easily made and hard to defend against. That is a fact that is inherent in the situation of private sexual intercourse.
8. It is hard for a jury to be convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that one person raped another person on a particular occasion. Jordan seems to be keen to increase the conviction rate. She makes a good case that some police officers might use their discretion not to prosecute for inadequate reasons. However, she provides no evidence that this is a greater problem in the case of rape than of other offences.
9. There are a lot of aspects of the law on rape that are inadequate from the point of view of a pro-male activist. To have an anti-male activist indoctrinating the Police, as if she was some kind of "expert", weakens the neutrality and perceived neutrality of the Police and undermines the Rule of Law.

1. Rumney, Philip N.S. (2006): False Allegations of Rape. Cambridge Law Journal 65(1), pp.128-158.

 

Last Update: 30 April 2009