False Rape Allegations

[Qhost]

This thread hopes to, in the light of the Edmonton 'Don't be that Girl' campaign to inform and correct some misconceptions about false rape allegations.

The first thing to address is how often? This is often cited as around 2% or 'No more than any other crime'. This in itself is a redundant statement as the false reporting of other crimes are rarely studied. The best report and meta-analysis of false rape allegations can be found here, by criminal justice professor called Philip Rumney published in the Cambridge Law Journal. As well as a fair knockdown of the 2% claim (conservative conclusions put it 4-5 times higher, and individual studies range from 2%-50% and higher), Rumney addresses the false proposition that false rape is as common as false X crime. I would argue the latter two points here are the most important, as it emphasizes a very popular misconception that is perpetuated in social and academic circles.

The next thing is, is it really a problem? It's amazing when someone considers false rape allegations not to be a problem. Tell that to Brian Banks, who spent 5 years in prison because a woman lied. Tell that to Stephen Lyne who was murdered because a woman lied. Tell that to Sumbo Owoiya, who was murdered because a woman lied. Tell that to Cory Headen, who was beaten to death with a baseball bat because a woman lied. Tell that to Darrell Roberson and Devin LaSalle (more here), Roberson came home to discover his wife in a bed with LaSalle, the wife then, to cover up her affair, claimed that LaSalle had raped her, Mr Roverson shot and killed Mr Laselle. Tell that to Cody Wightman (more here) who was beaten with a claw hammer because a woman lied about him raping her. Tell that to Nathan Ramirez (more and more) who was gunned down because a woman lied about him raping her to cover up her own cheating. Tell that to Michael Zenquis (more) who was beaten by a mob after a false rape accusation, the mob went onto later beat the actual rapist.. Regan Scott Derrick organized a gang to get some 'justice' after his girlfriend made a false rape claim, luckily no-one was seriously injured. In a turn of events, a father kills another protecting his son from a false rape claim. Renada Williams lied and caused a man to suffer a collapsed lung and broken ribs. John Chalmers almost died just because someone else inferred she had been raped. A gypsy camp was burned down by a mob because a girl lied about being raped to conceal her loss of virginity.

False rape claims don't ruin peoples lives my ***. Let's not mention people who lose jobs, friendships and relationships because of a false claim (I have seen this first-hand). What about the naming and shaming by the media? Those who claim that there is no reason for there to be anonymity for the alleged can see quite obviously there is good reason. Good men lose their lives because of their name being displayed for public trial and execution. I have never heard of a mob go after an alleged woman, have you? The truth is that men get the short straw when it comes to being accused of rape. As mentioned in the first link, rape is a convenient get out to explain a pregenacy, lost of virginity, cheating/affair, embarrassing situation, guilt, revenge or just plain attention seeking. It happens a lot.

This is one hell of a men's issue. I feel it may be the largest one men in 1st world societies have to deal with. It is also frustrating because the MRA voice is small at the moment.

it's no wonder many people have a knee-jerk reaction to this topic.
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If you want to help, the best thing, I imagine is not only to donate to existing Men's Shelters, but also correct false statistics and statements when you see it. Maybe put up a few posters of your own. Keep notified. The community of the wrongfully accused is an excellent resource for day after day new story about false rape claims.

 

[Me Myself]

I want to comment on this thread after looking around for the subject a bit more, but before so this are my contemplations:

I find it very hard to find which really are the amount of "false accusations" . I am not saying it is impossible at all, I just wonder how accurate would such a search be. Someone found inocent does not mean he was actually inocent, just that there was not enough evidence to find him guilty. Cases withdrawn are not necessarily false acussations aas there are various possible reasons from withdrawing an accusation.

I dont know if this false accusations are more common than with other cases, but if they were, one factor would be that it is far harder to evidence rape because the nature of the crime is one that makes it hard to show if the sex was consensual or not. It is very hard to go beyond reasonable doubt. This being, the accusation in itself would be the weapon and the feeling the guy "got away with it" .

I think e best thing that could be done in such a case would be to make the person to not be reported in news and etc until evidenced guilty.

A false allegation of this nature can without a question eff up someone's life really badly.

It sjust as I say, I find it hard to really determine e percentage, so I dont claim it being low or high. I currently just dont know.

 

[Qhost]

I want to comment on this thread after looking around for the subject a bit more, but before so this are my contemplations:

I find it very hard to find which really are the amount of "false accusations" . I am not saying it is impossible at all, I just wonder how accurate would such a search be. Someone found inocent does not mean he was actually inocent, just that there was not enough evidence to find him guilty. Cases withdrawn are not necessarily false acussations aas there are various possible reasons from withdrawing an accusation.

I dont know if this false accusations are more common than with other cases, but if they were, one factor would be that it is far harder to evidence rape because the nature of the crime is one that makes it hard to show if the sex was consensual or not. It is very hard to go beyond reasonable doubt. This being, the accusation in itself would be the weapon and the feeling the guy "got away with it" .

I think e best thing that could be done in such a case would be to make the person to not be reported in news and etc until evidenced guilty.

A false allegation of this nature can without a question eff up someone's life really badly.

It sjust as I say, I find it hard to really determine e percentage, so I don't claim it being low or high. I currently just dont know.

My understanding personally, and that in the Cambridge Law Journal recognizes that a non-conviction due to withdrawal or lack of evidence does not equal a false allegation (willfully lying). I think its obvious that if we could magically know what happened in every case, that out of the number of withdrawals/lack of evidence cases, a number of them would be more false allegations, putting the actual percentage higher than the conservative 1 in 10. Of course, someone could argue that all withdrawals and lack-of-evidence cases are truthful allegations but very few people would buy that.

 

[Rakhel]

There was a case here, in NYC, not too long ago where the DA had to release 4 men because the girl lied. She admitted to lying about the rapes. But I know that is not always the case. Sometimes there is a lack of evidence. Sometimes it is the DNA evidence that is wrong.

 

[HiddenDjinn]

I wish I could add more, but Qhost already covered it.

 

[Me Myself]

I have always been suspicious about e 2% or any other percentage in calculating false allegations because I cant conceive how could they "know" how much allegations are false?

Blarg, I probably shouldnt make questions in my state of sleepiness as someone else might have answered it already, but how does anyone tries to arrive at a "percentage of false allegations " in the first place?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

I think that the OP is spam, but I was accused of raping an ex-girlfriend when I was in high school. I don't know why she did it, but fortunately she came clean and said it was a joke.

 

[Me Myself]

I think that the OP is spam, but I was accused of raping an ex-girlfriend when I was in high school. I don't know why she did it, but fortunately she came clean and said it was a joke.

Blarg, nice joke :areyoucra

 

[Curious George]

I think that the OP is spam, but I was accused of raping an ex-girlfriend when I was in high school. I don't know why she did it, but fortunately she came clean and said it was a joke.

Why spam? I definitely think false accusations are a problem. And if there was a way to address and investigate rape in a better way which was equally thorough but better preserved our notion of "innocent until proven guilty," then I will gladly hear it.

Rape in general often does not get enough critical analysis. let's face it, rape is not a happy topic. Many victims deal with shame and secrecy. I would suggest that our society likes to vilify rapists and pity victims (some even blame victims which is worse). But after our society does this, we quickly move on to happier conversations. That our society ignores or sweeps rape under a rug until the victim vocalizes, loud enough or frequent enough, their suffering and then we respond in a harsh and sometimes over reactive manner to quickly get rid of the issue so we can go back to sweeping it under the rug and focusing on happier topics creates an environment where false accusations are possible.

From my perspective, awareness that false rape accusations do occurs reinforces the idea that our society needs to better address the problem of rape. That our society has a hard time dealing with rape is not nearly surprising when we have such a hard time dealing with sex and sexuality. So, I think one way in which we can better diminish false rape accusations is by better talking about sex and our sexuality and not treating rape as such a taboo topic.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Spam= something copied and pasted from elsewhere online. Our friend didn't write this.

 

[Curious George]

Spam= something copied and pasted from elsewhere online. Our friend didn't write this.

Oh, I thought you were referring to spam = shameless promotion of websites in an effort to get hits.

 

[HiddenDjinn]

Spam= something copied and pasted from elsewhere online. Our friend didn't write this.

I have a feeling he may have, but rehashes it at each forum he comes across. Citing original post sources would go a long way towards countering a spam accusation.

EDIT: One reason I feel he may have written it: he has freely responded in context to replies. One who is just playing copypasta can't do that. Whether he posted it here first remains to be seen.

 

[InformedIgnorance]

I have only seen a handful of studies suggesting anything over 15% and those were markedly flawed; while a significant problem, the statistics used in the OP ranging from 2-50+% are so inconsistent as to be useless.

 

[Alceste]

Spam= something copied and pasted from elsewhere online. Our friend didn't write this.

Well spotted.

 

[Qhost]

Spam= something copied and pasted from elsewhere online. Our friend didn't write this.

I promise you this was the first time I wrote this out.

I actually intend to continue to expand and update the OP as I personally explore and neaten up my views.

Many of my links to the news stories were gathered from COTWA since it is an excellent resource for information like this.

Once again, I reiterate, this is the first time I wrote that out, it took me a good 2 hours. If you or an admin looks at the edit history of the post you'll see I was constantly adding a sentence here, correcting a typo there and one or two links were added.

 

[Qhost]

I have only seen a handful of studies suggesting anything over 15% and those were markedly flawed; while a significant problem, the statistics used in the OP ranging from 2-50+% are so inconsistent as to be useless.

Which was why I used the conservative estimate of approx 10%. And was I used the reputable meta analysis instead of individual studies.

 

[InformedIgnorance]

Which is why I said those over 15%; I have seen figures of 2-8% consistently and as high as 12% (from memory) from studies I found reputable.

It is a significant issue, however it certainly is not 50+% which is why I commented on the statistic, as it is such a significant overstating of the frequency of occurrence that it provides a substantive detraction from the perceived accuracy of claims.

There are only two significant problems I have with the OP, one is the use of this rather dubious figure, sure it may be from a study, but given the vast disparity with other data one would suggest that it is a statistical outlier (if not simply a malformed study - certainly studies that have reported in this range most notably Kanin (1994), have been roundly critiqued even by other male researchers into false rape allegations due to significant methodological errors), the second being the phrasing of the last section beginning with Karen Smith's comments, this section seems to attempt to make it sound as if this was applicable to 'feminists' in general, which is a vast oversimplification.

I would however note that the fundamental issues are sound; in addition many of the contributing factors that studies have identified as commonalities in those who make these false allegations such as previous abuse (not necessarily by the alleged) and most notably mental health issues are significant contributors, however it is worth noting that in both of these cases, these are factors that would seem to suggest that the alleged victim is suffering from her own conditions and as such these allegations if discovered fraudulent are more likely to be seen as symptomatic of those underlying problems, rather than suggesting that she is accountable for the repercussions of her actions.

 

[Apex]

Spam= something copied and pasted from elsewhere online. Our friend didn't write this.

It would probably be best if you actually supported this, instead of just claiming it. Especially since this is a DIR. I tried searching to see if he had copied it from somewhere else and the only results I got came right back to this very thread.

 

[Alceste]

So, Qhost, do you think if alleged perpetrators of sexual assault are granted anonymity until convicted, that will actually reduce false rape accusations, or the consequences? How? In the first several examples you gave, I don't see how it could have made any difference.

Also, when you say you think this is the biggest men's issue, does that mean you think false rape allegations are a more serious issue than prison rape? Ten percent or more of the male prisoners in custody are sexually assaulted by other men, and that statistic only includes anal rape. Forced oral sex or other unwanted sexual contact are not generally studied. To me, that seems like a much bigger issue. 50,000 men are raped in prison every year, by conservative estimates. Apologies for not being able to write a post that gives every victim a name and a link to his story.

If you think false rape accusations are a more serious problem, can you explain your reasoning?

 

[Qhost]

So, Qhost, do you think if alleged perpetrators of sexual assault are granted anonymity until convicted, that will actually reduce false rape accusations, or the consequences? How? In the first several examples you gave, I don't see how it could have made any difference.

Also, when you say you think this is the biggest men's issue, does that mean you think false rape allegations are a more serious issue than prison rape? Ten percent or more of the male prisoners in custody are sexually assaulted by other men, and that statistic only includes anal rape. Forced oral sex or other unwanted sexual contact are not generally studied. To me, that seems like a much bigger issue. 50,000 men are raped in prison every year, by conservative estimates. Apologies for not being able to write a post that gives every victim a name and a link to his story.

If you think false rape accusations are a more serious problem, can you explain your reasoning?

Absolutely it would prevent consequences. I've had a friend who was accused of rape, and as a result was scared to go out of his flat, since everyone knew his name and face from the media. He became depressed and a shell of who he was. And his name and face comes up if you google his name, not exactly something you want on your back.

When I was in college (UK college) I had a friend who was accused about a year before he even came to the college. And the a girl found out from the news article and made it her mission to try and turn as many people against him as she could. Luckily most people saw through her bias.

I've had another friend followed by a small gang shouting 'rapist' down the high-street because of a girls accusation in the news. Luckily the guy had a lot of integrity and it didn't bother him that much.

Not to mention losing of jobs from just being accused, and the losing of friends and relationships. I remember posts in /r/mensrights about men who observed how all the woman instantly sided with the accuser and only one or two close male friends stayed on his side.

I mentioned earlier in this thread I will continue to update the OP with more stories for more scenarios, and that will happen. Just wait and see

As for me saying it's the worst problem, perhaps I should have preffix'd that with 'For me, personally,'. As skepticism is central to my ideology (esp concerning statistics), and considering the widespread and false 2% stat, I find myself leaning towards things like false allegations. And considering I have personally seen it happen to several man (as opposed to other male issues such as child custody) I also have a more passionate leaning. I think also my fear of it happening to me, concerning how easy it can happen is another driving factor.

From an objective stand-point it would not be the worst, even factoring in the lives lost - but subjectively, for me it is.

Apologies for allowing a meant-to-be subjective statement mislead you.