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Unless you live in a cave, safeguarded against any stray digital signals, you have probably noticed a recent uptick of men and yes, even women, expressing grave concerns about women making false accusations of rape or assault against men. Let me be clear; I know that there exist a few women who, for various reasons, choose to intentionally and willfully fabricate a malicious lie about rape or assault against a man who is innocent. Contrary to the current circulating hype, those lies are far more damaging to genuine rape victims than they are likely to be, to any innocent man that they target.
In the past several days I have dug into the research and statistics of this issue. I found that exonerations have been recorded since 1989. Since then, only 52 now-exonerated men are known to have received convictions due to false rape or assault accusations. In comparison, for that same period, 790 people have been exonerated for murders they did not commit.
Now I believe that 52 men wrongfully convicted are absolutely 52 too many. I also know that 52 men convicted in almost 30 years lays waste to the misconception that we have a serious problem with too many women making intentionally false accusations. It utterly decimates the notion that most of the false accusations that do take place, ruin the lives of those they are levied against.
In what is believed to be the most detailed study ever conducted of sexual assault reports to police, out of 216 complaints deemed false, 126 made it to the stage where the accuser lodged a formal complaint, 39 of those complainants actually named a suspect, six of those cases led to an arrest, two led to charges being brought and even those two cases were ultimately dropped as being false. In this same study, it is also acknowledged that an unknown percentage of the 216 cases considered to be false, in fact, did involve real rapes. What NONE of the 216 cases resulted in were innocent men’s lives being ruined.
The police and the court officials are the ones reporting statistics on false accusations. They put the numbers of false accusations in a range of 2% to 10% of all reported rapes and assaults.
I repeat: that percentage is only from the total number of reported rapes and assaults.
There are ample sources that make it clear that the number of reported rapes and assaults make up the tiniest fraction of all rapes and assaults that occur. If we could know clearly the number of ALL rapes and assaults, reported or not; that 2%-10% range of false accusations would become a nearly-invisible fraction of a percentage point. But for now, let’s work with what we have.
Law enforcement has a very different definition of “false accusation” than you or I would have. By MY definition, a false accusation happens when someone (typically a female) maliciously and intentionally invents and fabricates a story, that another person (typically a male) has preyed upon her sexually. This is what most people would suggest when they are asked to describe what a “false accusation” looks like. It is important to understand the actual law enforcement definition, though. To law enforcement and court officials, a false accusation isn’t added to that 2%-10% statistical pool because a thorough investigation of allegations and statements was performed and it was found that the accuser was intentionally fabricating and inventing a lie, far from it.
What causes law enforcement to add ticks to the counter for false accusation cases are the cases that they deem to be “unfounded” or “unproven”. There are many factors that cause a rape case to be unfounded or unproven that have nothing to do with someone lying about a person raping or assaulting them.
The police and the courts do not distinguish cases as “false” or “true”. Rather they investigate to determine whether or not there is sufficient evidence to prosecute. The idea that a case may not have sufficient evidence to bring it to trial, or to successfully convict a rapist is NOT the same thing as a case where someone is found to have intentionally lied about being raped or assaulted.
Factors that contribute to reports being deemed as “false accusations” include cases where the victim did not physically fight off the suspect, where the suspect did not use a weapon, cases where the victim had a prior relationship to the suspect, where the victim did not appear to be disheveled, even cases where the victim’s behavior failed to fall within the police officers’ fixed views and expectations about how genuine rape victims should react to their victimization. Reviews of studies on false reporting have also noted that officers will exhibit unjustified skepticism of rape complainants, and may interpret such things as lack of evidence or complaint withdrawal as ‘proof’ of a false accusation.
It is worth noting here that a significant number of cases counted as false allegations of rape, involved minors and members of vulnerable populations, like those with mental health difficulties. Those populations also have a higher likelihood of withdrawing their complaints, even when those complaints are real. We can also take into consideration the practice of some officers and court officials to threaten women who report rape and sexual assault, with charges and prosecution against THEM, should the officers of the law, or the court decide that their report of rape or assault falls under the “false accusation” designation, even if the reasons for the finding of “false” are due more to prosecutorial difficulties than to a complainant recanting their report or exculpatory evidence being brought to light.
One man recently stated in a conversation with me, that it is just too easy for a woman to falsely charge a man with sexual assault or rape. I responded that if he believes that charging a man with rape or sexual assault was easy, he hasn’t been paying attention. Just today, reports are circulating that this president wishes that women be prosecuted as criminals if they are unable to prove that an accusation of rape or assault is real. Someone might, for reasons that truly escape me, choose to bring false accusations against an innocent man, but the damages and the price that one pays for such a thing does not make it easy.
Women who have come forward, particularly regarding men in powerful and wealthy positions, are risking their safety, their livelihoods, their families, their communities, their homes, their marriages, their freedom, their privacy, and of course they are shattering whatever sense of wholeness or healing they have been able to piece together, and far too often, are willingly walking into the fire of revictimization, while other people get to choose whether to validate their statement or openly and publicly reject it and them as lying. All of which is why many women who do report their assault or rape will never make it to the stage of lodging a formal complaint, some will withdraw their statement, some will choose not to go through with prosecution, and of course, nearly all who are raped or assaulted by a man will never even report. And that sad, sad truth in turn allows rapists and sexual predators to thrive and flourish unchecked, with almost zero risk of ever being held accountable for the devastation they cause to women, to all the loved ones of those women, and to the fabric of our society, being ripped to shreds by the mantra of “false accusations” that greases the gears to keep rape culture intact.
It is time that we realize that the damage of “false accusations” is NOT that they cause significant numbers of innocent men to be ruined. The real danger is the massive and ongoing harm done to real rape and assault victims due to the stoking and perpetuating of the false accusations rhetoric that both inhibits victims from reporting their rapes, and provides an ongoing shield under which real rapists can shelter.
George Carlin said it well: “Everyone appreciates your honesty until you’re honest with them. Then you’re an asshole.”
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The post True or False: A Clearer Perspective on the Dynamics of Sexual Assault and Rape Reporting appeared first on The Good Men Project.