False accusation of rape

A false accusation of rape is the reporting of a rape where no rape has occurred. It is difficult to assess the true prevalence of false rape allegations, but it is generally agreed that, for about 2% to 10% of rape allegations, a thorough investigation establishes that no crime was committed or attempted.

Estimates of prevalence

It is extremely difficult to assess the prevalence of false accusations. All jurisdictions have a distinct classification of false accusation, resulting in these cases being combined with other types of cases (e.g. where the accuser did not physically resist the suspect or sustain injuries) under headings such as "unfounded" or "unproved". There are many reasons other than falsity that can result in a rape case being closed as unfounded or unproven. DiCanio (1993) states that while researchers and prosecutors do not agree on the exact percentage of cases in which there was sufficient evidence to conclude that allegations were false, they generally agree on a range of 2% to 10%. Due to varying definitions of a "false accusation", the true percentage remains unknown.

Another complicating factor is that data regarding false allegations generally do not come from studies designed to estimate of the prevalence of false allegations, rather they come from reviews of data regarding investigations and prosecutions within criminal justice systems. The goal of such investigations is to determine whether or not there is sufficient evidence to prosecute, not to evaluate the cases for which there is not sufficient evidence to prosecute and classify such cases as "false" or "true".

Journal of Forensic Psychology (2017)

In March 2017 a new study on the prevalence of false rape allegations in the United States, for the period 2006–2010, was published on the Journal of Forensic Psychology. The goal of the research was to obtain recent figures of the prevalence of unfounded allegations of rape and compare to unfounded allegations of other crimes. According to the data provided by the FBI, between 4,400 and 5,100 allegations of rape every year were deemed false or baseless after investigation, out of a total of 87,000– 90,000, corresponding to an average of 5.55%. The figure was at least five times higher than for most other offence types. Cases of disputed consent were not included in the results as they were subject to judicial review in court.

Archives of Sexual Behavior (2016)

Claire E. Ferguson and John M. Malouff conducted a meta-analysis of confirmed false rape reporting rates in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2016, and found that 5.2% of cases were confirmed false rape reports. As the study only looked at confirmed instances, the authors noted that the "total false reporting rate... would be greater than the 5% rate found here".

Los Angeles Police Department (2014)

Researchers Cassia Spohn, Clair White and Katharine Tellis examined data provided by the Los Angeles Police Department in the US from 2008, and found that false reports among rape cases was about 4.5 percent.

Crown Prosecution Service report (2011–2012)

A report by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) examined rape allegations in England and Wales over a 17-month period between January 2011 and May 2012. It showed that in 35 cases authorities prosecuted a person for making a false allegation, while they brought 5,651 prosecutions for rape. Keir Starmer, the head of the CPS, said that the "mere fact that someone did not pursue a complaint or retracted it, is not of itself evidence that it was false" and that it is a "misplaced belief" that false accusations of rape are commonplace. He added that the report also showed that a significant number of false allegations of rape (and domestic violence) "involved young, often vulnerable people. About half of the cases involved people aged 21 years old and under, and some involved people with mental health difficulties. In some cases, the person alleged to have made the false report had undoubtedly been the victim of some kind of offence, even if not the one that he or she had reported."

Lisak (2010)

David Lisak's study, published in 2010 in Violence Against Women, classified as demonstrably false 8 out of the 136 (5.9%) reported rapes at an American university over a ten-year period.

Applying IACP guidelines, a case was classified as a false report if there was evidence that a thorough investigation was pursued and that the investigation had yielded evidence that the reported sexual assault had in fact not occurred. A thorough investigation would involve, potentially, multiple interviews of the alleged perpetrator, the victim, and other witnesses, and where applicable, the collection of other forensic evidence (e.g., medical records, security camera records). For example, if key elements of a victim's account of an assault were internally inconsistent and directly contradicted by multiple witnesses and if the victim then altered those key elements of his or her account, investigators might conclude that the report was false. That conclusion would have been based not on a single interview, or on intuitions about the credibility of the victim, but on a "preponderance" of evidence gathered over the course of a thorough investigation."

Burman, Lovett & Kelly (2009)

In a study of the first 100 rape reports after April 1, 2004 in Scotland, researchers found that about 4% of reports were designated by police to be false. In a separate report by the same researchers that year which studied primary data from several countries in Europe, including Austria, Belgium, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Scotland, Sweden, and Wales found the average proportion of reports designated by police as false was about 4%, and wasn't higher than 9% in any country they studied. They noted that cases where the police doubt the allegation may be "hidden in the ‘no evidence of sexual assault’ category" instead of designated false category and suggested more detailed research into explicating both categories.

Ministry of Justice (2008–2009)

The UK Ministry of Justice in their Research Series published a report describing the analysis of 1,149 case files of violent crimes recorded April 2008 to March 2009. They noted that 12% of rape allegations fell into a broader definition of false accusations (victim was intoxicated, there was a delay in reporting the crime, victim retracted the complaint after the fact, or no evidence of bodily harm was recorded). Approximately 3% of the false rape allegations were identified as malicious (determined to be intentionally false). When it came to cases with grievous bodily harm (GBH), even the broader definition (no evidence, delayed report, retraction, or intoxicated victim) accounted for only 2% of crimes.

Rumney (2006)

A selection of findings on the prevalence of false rape allegations. Data from Rumney (2006).

	Number	False reporting rate (%)
Theilade and Thomsen (1986)	1 out of 56 4 out of 39	1.5% (minimum) 10% (maximum)
New York Rape Squad (1974)	n/a	2%
Hursch and Selkin (1974)	10 out of 545	2%
Kelly et al. (2005)	67 out of 2,643	3% ("possible" and "probable" false allegations) 22% (recorded by police as "no-crime")
Geis (1978)	n/a	3–31% (estimates given by police surgeons)
Smith (1989)	17 out of 447	3.8%
U.S. Department of Justice (1997)	n/a	8%
Clark and Lewis (1977)	12 out of 116	10.3%
Harris and Grace (1999)	53 out of 483 123 out of 483	10.9% ("false/malicious" claims) 25% (recorded by police as "no-crime")
Lea et al. (2003)	42 out of 379	11%
HMCPSI/HMIC (2002)	164 out of 1,379	11.8%
McCahill et al. (1979)	218 out of 1,198	18.2%
Philadelphia police study (1968)	74 out of 370	20%
Chambers and Millar (1983)	44 out of 196	22.4%
Grace et al. (1992)	80 out of 335	24%
Jordan (2004)	68 out of 164 62 out of 164	41% ("false" claims) 38% (viewed by police as "possibly true/possibly false")
Kanin (1994)	45 out of 109	41%
Gregory and Lees (1996)	49 out of 109	45%
Maclean (1979)	16 out of 34	47%
Stewart (1981)	16 out of 18	90%

A 2006 paper by Philip N.S. Rumney in the Cambridge Law Journal offers a review of studies of false reporting in the US, New Zealand and the UK. Rumney draws two conclusions from his review of literature. First, the police continue to misapply the "no-crime" or "unfounding" criteria. Studies by Kelly et al. (2005), Lea et al. (2003), HMCPSI/HMIC (2002), Harris and Grace (1999), Smith (1989), and others found that police decisions to no-crime were frequently dubious and based entirely on the officer's personal judgment. Rumney notes that some officers seem to "have fixed views and expectations about how genuine rape victims should react to their victimization". He adds that "qualitative research also suggests that some officers continue to exhibit an unjustified scepticism of rape complainants, while others interpret such things as lack of evidence or complaint withdrawal as 'proof' of a false allegation".

Rumney's second conclusion is that it is impossible to "discern with any degree of certainty the actual rate of false allegations" because many of the studies of false allegations have adopted unreliable or untested research methodologies. He argues, for instance, that in addition to their small sample size, the studies by Maclean (1979) and Stewart (1981) used questionable criteria to judge an allegation to be false. MacLean deemed reports "false" if, for instance, the victim did not appear "dishevelled" and Stewart, in one instance, considered a case disproved, stating that "it was totally impossible to have removed her extremely tight undergarments from her extremely large body against her will".

Criticism

American psychologist David Lisak criticized the collection of studies used in Rumney's 2006 paper, which estimated the rate of false allegations as between 1.5–90%. Lisak stated that many of the stats are misleading upon investigation and "when the sources of these estimates are examined carefully it is clear that only a fraction of the reports represent credible studies and that these credible studies indicate far less variability in false reporting rates." Lisak points out that even in the original paper Rumney concludes that many of the studies have inadequacies and should not be used to estimate the frequency of false rape reports.

Police in Victoria, Australia (2006)

A study of 850 rape accusations made to police in Victoria, Australia between 2000 and 2003 found that 2.1% were ultimately classified by police as false, with the complainants then charged or threatened with charges for filing a false police report.

Home Office study (2005)

The Home Office on UK rape crime in 2005 released a large and rigorous study that followed 2,643 sexual assault cases from initial reporting of a rape through to legal prosecutions. The study was based on 2,643 sexual assault cases, of these, police classified 8% as false reports based on police judgement, and the rate was 2.5% when determined using official criteria for false reports. The researchers concluded that "one cannot take all police designations at face value" and that "[t]here is an over-estimation of the scale of false allegations by both police officers and prosecutors."

FBI statistics (1995–1997)

In the US, FBI reports from 1995, 1996, and 1997 consistently put the number of "unfounded" forcible rape accusations around 8%. In contrast, the average rate of unfounded reports for all "index crimes" (murder, aggravated assault, forcible rape, robbery, arson, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft) tracked by the FBI is 2%. This estimate, however, does not appear in subsequent FBI reports. This estimate was criticised by academic Bruce Gross as almost meaningless as many jurisdictions from which FBI collects data use different definition of "unfounded", which, he wrote, includes cases where the victim did not physically fight off the suspect or the suspect did not use a weapon, and cases where the victim had a prior relationship to the suspect.

Kanin (1994)

In 1994, Eugene J. Kanin of Purdue University investigated the incidences of false rape allegations made to the police in one small urban community in the Midwest United States (population 70,000) between 1978 and 1987. He states that unlike in many larger jurisdictions, this police department had the resources to "seriously record and pursue to closure all rape complaints, regardless of their merits". He further states each investigation "always involves a serious offer to polygraph the complainants and the suspects" and "the complainant must admit that no rape had occurred. She is the sole agent who can say that the rape charge is false".

The number of false rape allegations in the studied period was 45; this was 41% of the 109 total complaints filed in this period. The researchers verified, whenever possible, for all of the complainants who recanted their allegations, that their new account of the events matched the accused's version of events.

After reviewing the police files, Kanin categorized the false accusations into three broad motivations: alibis, revenge, and attention-seeking. These motivations were assigned prevalence of roughly 50%, 30%, and 20% respectively. This categorization was supported by the details of complainant recantations and other documentation of their cases.

Kanin also investigated the combined police records of two large Midwestern universities over a three-year period (1986–1988), and found that 50% of the reported forcible rapes were determined to be false accusations (32 of the total 64). No polygraphs were used, the investigations were the sole responsibility of a ranking female officer, and a rape charge was only counted as false under complainant recantation. In this sample, the motivations mentioned above were roughly evenly split between alibi and revenge, with only one case characterized as attention-seeking.

Criticism

Critics of Kanin's report include David Lisak, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Men's Sexual Trauma Research Project at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He states, "Kanin's 1994 article on false allegations is a provocative opinion piece, but it is not a scientific study of the issue of false reporting of rape. It certainly should never be used to assert a scientific foundation for the frequency of false allegations."

According to Lisak, Kanin's study lacked any kind of systematic methodology and did not independently define a false report, instead recording as false any report which the police department classified as false, whereas Kanin stated that the women filing the false allegations of rape had recanted. The department classified reports as false which the complainant later said were false, but Lisak points out that Kanin's study did not scrutinize the police's processes or employ independent checkers to protect results from bias.

Kanin, Lisak writes, took his data from a police department which used investigation procedures (polygraphs) that are discouraged by the U.S. Justice Department and denounced by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. These procedures include the "serious offer", in this department, of polygraph testing of complainants, which is viewed as a tactic of intimidation that leads victims to avoid the justice process and which, Lisak says, is "based on the misperception that a significant percentage of sexual assault reports are false". The police department's "biases...were then echoed in Kanin's unchallenged reporting of their findings". While also noting some of the same criticisms of Kanin, Rumney's 2006 metastudy of US and UK false rape allegation studies adds that "if, indeed, officers did abide by this policy then the 41% could, in fact, be an underestimate given the restrictive definition of false complaints offered by the police in this study. The reliability of these findings may be somewhat bolstered by the fact that the police appeared to record the details and circumstances of the fabrications."

Bruce Gross writes in the Forensic Examiner that Kanin's study is an example of the limitations of existing studies on false rape accusations. "Small sample sizes and non-representative samples preclude generalizability." Philip N.S. Rumney questions the reliability of Kanin's study stating that it "must be approached with caution". He argues that the study's most significant problem is Kanin's assumption "that police officers abided by departmental policy in only labeling as false those cases where the complainant admitted to fabrication. He does not consider that actual police practice, as other studies have shown, might have departed from guidelines."

Police on false rape

Surveys of police and prosecutors find that many in law enforcement consistently over-estimate the prevalence of false accusations, leading to what some researchers have characterized as a culture of skepticism toward accusers in sexual assault cases.

Finland

A 2008 internal review by the Helsinki Police Violent Crimes Department stated that, in 2008, more than 20% of reports of sexual assault led to "no crime" decision. Chief Inspector Juha Rautaheimo voiced frustration at investigating what he believed were non-crimes. Sergeant Marja Vuento stated that many reports were made by people who were drunk and inconsiderate, and that the number of baseless rape reports had risen hand in hand with the increase of women's alcohol consumption. According to police the most usual reasons for baseless reports were memory breaks due to excessive alcohol consumption and creating an alibi against a cheated partner.

In 2014 The Helsinki Police posted a Facebook message discouraging people from filing false reports of rape or sexual assault after a drunken night.

Possible effects of media representation

There are studies about the extent which the media affects the public perception of false rape accusations. Incorrect assumptions about false rape allegations increases the likelihood that a person who reports rape will be blamed or disbelieved. Megan Sacks in Deviant Behavior says that the media perpetuates rape myths when reporting on sexual assaults. Rapes that are reported in news media are typically sensational and don't often correspond with the reality of most rapes, for example, the majority of sexual assaults are committed by someone the person knows as opposed to a stranger. Sacks says, the media also normalizes sexual violence in general, often blames the person who reported the assault, and commonly expresses sympathy for the alleged perpetrators instead of the victim. Laura Niemi, a postdoctoral psychology associate at Harvard University, speculated that mythologizing of rape could contribute to the idea that "no normal person" could rape. As a result, the people commonly had a difficult time believing someone they know or like is a rapist, and this could contribute to the idea that the person who reported the rape is at fault.

In the European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, André De Zutter and a team described how false rape allegations often resemble stories of rape portrayed in the media, which are not typical of most true incidents of rape. False stories tend to be quick and straightforward with few details or complex interactions, and usually involve only vaginal intercourse. Some behaviors associated with lying by juries is actually typical of true rapes, including kissing or a previous relationship with the rapist. True rape reports often include many details rarely seen in media or false rape reports, for example pseudo-intimate actions, detailed verbal interactions and an otherwise wide range of behaviors besides simply face-to-face vaginal intercourse.

Pam Vogel of Media Matters for America in the Spring 2017 issue of AMASS released the results of a study which found that ESPN networks discussed sexual assault or domestic violence about 30 hours and 40 minutes of airtime out of more than 8,600 total hours in the first quarter of 2017. The speakers were 74% male, and about 1/3 of that time was spent discussing an ESPN documentary about false rape accusations against a lacrosse team at Duke University. Vogel concludes that the high focus on false allegations could contribute to the myth that rapes are rare and false reports are common, when the facts don't back up those perceptions.

Consequences of false accusations of rape in the UK

Consequences to accuser

Prosecution

Individuals suspected of making a false accusation of rape may be charged with the civil crime of "wasting police time" or the criminal charge of "Perverting the Course of Justice".

Over a five-year period ending in 2014, a total of 109 women were prosecuted for crimes related to making false accusations of rape. The report did not indicate the verdicts following prosecution. Another report identified 121 charging decisions involving allegations of false accusations of rape and an additional 11 false allegations of both domestic violence and rape between January 2011 and May 2012 and found of these cases, 35 were prosecuted based upon false accusations of rape. A further 3 were prosecuted based upon charges of false accusations of both rape and domestic abuse. The report did not indicate the verdicts following prosecution.

See also

• "A Rape on Campus" – a fabricated story about an alleged rape near the campus of the University of Virginia
• Brian Banks – an example from 2002
• Centurion Ministries – advocacy
• Duke lacrosse case – an example from 2006
• False allegation of child sexual abuse
• Families Advocating for Campus Equality (FACE)
• Hofstra University rape case
• Innocence Project – advocacy
• Joseph (Genesis)
• Recovered memory therapy
• Runaway bride case
• Scottsboro Boys – an example from 1931
• Tawana Brawley rape allegations – an example from 1987
• Treva Throneberry

Further reading

• Lisak, David; Gardinier, Lori; Nicksa, Sarah C.; Cote, Ashley M. (2010). "False Allegations of Sexual Assualt [sic]: An Analysis of Ten Years of Reported Cases". Violence Against Women. 16 (12): 1318–34. doi:10.1177/1077801210387747. PMID 21164210.
• Belknap, Joanne (December 2010). "Rape: Too Hard to Report and Too Easy to Discredit Victims". Violence Against Women. 16 (12): 1335–1344. doi:10.1177/1077801210387749. PMID 21164211.
• Miller, T. Christian (2018). A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America. ISBN 978-1524759933.

External links

• Dr. Carol Tavris' presentation at TAM 2014 Who's Lying, Who's Self-Justifying? Origins of the He Said/She Said Gap in Sexual Allegations (online video)