On False Accusations

Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

When it comes to discussions of rape the term “false accusation” can be misleading to those who hear it, even before we get to the fact that some men (and women) obviously prefer to imagine that women frequently LIE about rape.

Rarely, people do lie about rape but the term “false accusation” may variously also include cases where, for example, police misidentify a perpetrator, where a witness does so, where a third party accuses someone, where a victim picks the wrong stranger out of a line-up, where a victim withdraws a complaint and where there’s insufficient evidence.

This is because what counts as a false (or unfounded) allegation varies by place, context and the collection technique being used.

In some places it is incredibly broad and, everywhere, it is subject to human bias and error.

There are cases, too, where someone approaches the police fearing they may have been raped because they had been potentially drugged, or unconscious, for example. A subsequent investigation finds that no assault has occurred, to everyone’s relief.

Conflating any, and all, of this with malicious reporting in either official figures, or the public imagination, is dangerous.

Here, in the UK, there have been a couple of terms used by the police to officially designate cases where they say there is no evidence of a crime being committed, such as “no-crime” or “no-criming”.

Given there is evidence they used to “no-crime” cases of marital rape it is clear this way of dealing with offences has always involved an unquantifiable amount of human error.

In 1986, they were issued strict guidance which was meant to ensure they only no-crimed a rape allegation in cases where it was actually untrue.¹

However, a 1999 study looked at how the Metropolitan police had no-crimed its cases. They found that in the majority of the 123 rape allegations they had chosen to no-crime, they had done so for “reasons other than the complaint being false or malicious”.

Other research suggests a wider misuse of the no-crime criteria by UK police.

“Indeed, they found a no-crime label was being used in highly inappropriate circumstances such as when a complainant was unable to give evidence in court because of a heart condition or where the “victim obtained an injunction against the suspect and subsequently withdrew her allegation’’

Later, Home Office research noted that “The ‘no-crime’ category comprises a complex layering of different kinds of cases and circumstances, many of which are not ‘‘false’’ in the literal meaning”.

But false in its literal meaning is how people perceive the term.

Latterly, the term no-crime (although still in colloquial use) has officially been replaced by the term “cancelled records”. ²

This more ambiguous sounding term still means that the police have determined no crime took place.

The erroneous decisions they previously made when “no criming” have persisted, despite the name change, with an official report, in 2020, finding that police had “wrongly cancelled records of serious crimes, in many cases without informing victims”.

Not all of the crimes in question were rape but “At least 19 forces wrongly cancelled reports of rape and thirty-eight forces incorrectly cancelled at least one record of a sexual offence” ³

Further to this chaos has been the work done by, often male, researchers into false allegations over the years. The conclusions they have come to have frequently reflected their own assumptions, such as deciding accusations are false because the victim wasn’t “dishevelled” or not “upset” enough, or wasn’t injured, or because they delayed reporting.

Our culture is saturated, without evidence, in the story that women frequently lie about rape.

So, it is hardly a surprise that even those recording statistics on this, reporting on it, or researching it, can muddy the waters with their own confirmation bias.

This isn’t just a UK based problem. In America, and in Europe, when allegations are officially designated as “unfounded” or “false” it doesn’t automatically equate to malice either.

The criteria for finding an allegation false is often woolly, or based on suppositions about how victims should behave.

Sometimes, it’s just based on not wanting to do the work I.E

“For nearly two decades Philadelphia police deliberately mislabelled rape complaints and ‘‘dumped cases’’ by unfounding reports to reduce workload and create favourable crime statistics.” ⁴

Those who choose to yell about false accusations in order to discredit every woman who says she was raped don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t understand either the society we live in, or the spectres they are invoking.

Women so very rarely lie about being raped.

So very rarely isn’t never but it is highly dishonest to say, or imply, that it happens ALL THE TIME

It’s also true that there is a known general profile for the kind of person who does lie about rape, and the reasons they do so, which virtually none of the women being decried will ever fit in the slightest. ⁵

Yet, without any comprehension of this, some people will have you believe that a remarkable number of women would set fire to their own lives to ‘get’ men

Get them how, given the fervent way much of society defends men who have been accused of rape, I can’t imagine

Not only are so many people inflating the prevalence of false accusations to try and smear female victims but they don’t even know what “false allegations” as a category entails. Or how corrupted this kind of data is by so many factors.

Hanlon’s razor, perhaps, or smoke, mirrors and misogyny.

Either way, or both, it is callous in the extreme.

We can all agree that miscarriages of justice, where they happen, are awful.

I’m not sure I really believe the “women lie” people are most concerned about such tragedies, though, given they are usually disinterested in the miscarriages of justice happening to women everyday.

They are more than willing to accept the ongoing absence of justice for most rape victims, too.

They have decided to use the rare man who is accused, or even more rarely imprisoned, for something he didn’t do in order to attack the credibility of legions of women who have been violated.

Then they insist they are measured, and rational, and noble for doing so.

Perhaps they have yet to reckon with the fact that men really do commit such violence against women and that they do so everyday.

They do not comprehend, or try to grasp, that nearly all of the men who get accused of committing this kind of violence will have done exactly that.

Regardless of whether they are convicted, or not.

Of course, as so many online commenters wish to remind us, this mustn’t interfere with due process. I have yet to see to a woman who is defending women insinuate it should.

Reality must, however, be the basis of our collective understanding.

Until then, false rape accusations will loom large and women will continue to bear the immense burden of being both raped and disbelieved.

---

Q.E.D This widely shared channel 4 article offers perhaps the most useful data, in the UK, about truly false accusations. It looks at the number of people who are prosecuted for perverting the course of justice or wasting police time after making a rape claim.

A CPS estimate puts this number at 0.62% of all rape cases.

---

1. https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/preview/1040593/Download.pdf

2. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/notrecordedandnocrimedecisions2008to2023

3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54449321

4. https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/preview/1040593/Download.pdf

5. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45565684