Women Tell The Truth: the evidence 4

[dreamer_easy]

Although it's a common belief that women frequently falsely report rape, there is no evidence that this is the case, and some evidence that women do not often make false reports. In 2007 I made a series of postings in which I outlined some of the research. I'd like to follow those up now with some more facts and figures specifically about false reports. To begin with:

• "The San Diego Police Department Sex Crimes Division routinely evaluated the rate of false reports over several years and found them to be around 4%. In a recent study of 2,643 sexual assault cases reported to British police, 8% were classified as false allegations. Yet when researchers applied the actual criteria for a false report, as opposed to an unsubstantiated or unfounded report, the figure dropped to 2%." (Raphael, J. The Duke Lacrosse Case: Exploiting the Issue of False Rape Accusations. Violence Against Women 14(3), March 2008. I'd like to track down the original sources of these figures.)
  
  
• Raphael also remarks: "Professor Lisak reminds us that not a single 'benchmark' study on false rape claims can be found in the social science literature". (Citing Lisak, D. (2007). False allegations of rape: A critique of Kanin. Sexual Assault Report 11, no. 1, 1-2, 6, and 9.) This is why I say there is "some" evidence that women don't often falsely report rape: no-one has ever specifically researched the prevalence of false reports.
  
  
• ETA: "False allegations are widely believed to be a common occurence in cases of sexual assault. However, to date, there is no evidence to support this view. I would therefore counsel caution when statements are made about behaviour, which might be prefaced 'everyone knows'. In such circumstances, it is more likely that nobody knows."
  Adshead, Gwen. Psychological trauma and its influence on genuine and false complaints of sexual assault. Medicine, Science, and the Law 36(2) 1996 pp 95-99.
  
  
• "To the best of the authors' knowledge, there are no statistics maintained on false allegations."
  Hazelwood, Robert R. and Ann Wolbert Burgess. "False allegations of rape". in Hazelwood, Robert R. and Ann Wolbert Burgess (eds). Practical Aspects of Rape Investigation: A Multidisciplinary Approach (4th ed). CRC Press (Taylor and Francis Group), Boca Raton FL, 2008.
  
  

Comments

[hnpcc]

Interesting - it seems like a study that someone would have done (difficult though I imagine it would be to do).

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

With a number of high-profile cases in the last few years where accusers have recanted their accusations when faced with evidence, or when put to a lie detector test, clearly there *are* false accusations. But if I follow you, you're not saying they don't happen; you're just questioning their frequency, right?

The distinction between "false" and "unfounded or unsubstantiated" confuses me. They amount to the same thing to the accused, and basically amount to a ruined reputation.

Is it that "false" means that there is evidence the woman lied, versus "unfounded" means there is no evidence a rape occurred? It strikes me that either way, the accusation is invalid legally, but it still exists as a stain on the man's reputation -- hence the fear.

People *do* lie about serious things, and both men and women tend to lie pretty often about sex-related stuff for all sorts of reasons, not all of them nefarious.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

As Raphael points out, trying to get a clear picture of the actual proportion of false reports is very difficult, precisely because the terminology is inconsistent or confusing. Here "false" means a police investigation found that the rape did not take place; "unsubstantiated" means their investigation was unable to prove that it took place; "unfounded" means that either the report was false, or that the report was genuine, but what took place did not meet the legal definition of rape. People tend to use these terms interchangeably, which inflates the number of "false" reports. (In many cases, terms like "unfounded" or "no crime" are used as an administrative catch-all, further confusing the picture and inflating that number.)

Raphael gives examples of the consequences of disbelieving rape victims: violent criminals go free, women are raped and/or murdered. Given those consequences, and given that there is no evidence that false reports are common, there's no reason for men to be especially afraid of false accusations, nor for the police or anyone else to treat rape reports with any more scepticism than they apply to reports of any other crime.

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

Okay, just hammering out these things...

Consequences of disbelieving women who have been sexually assaulted: violent criminals go free, women are raped/murdered. (I presume in this case you mean *more* women are assaulted because those criminals face no consequences.)

Consequences of believing women who have no proof of assault: violent criminals go free, women are raped/murdered, mens' lives are ruined, it becomes more difficult to take rape accusations seriously, police waste time on domestic squabbles instead of dealing with real offenders and real crimes.

Because rape happens, no matter how often it actually happens, women feel vulnerable and threatened. Because false accusations happen, men feel vulnerable and threatened. And because these things tend to be looked at and discussed primarily in the context of feminism, the focus is on the female victims of males. There is often a blind spot there, and years of hearing "all men are rapists" can make those of us with testes feel a bit left out of the discussion.

Your last sentence is telling -- they should apply the same standards of skepticism that they apply to other reports of a crime, because that is fairest to both parties.

The thing is, the police waste a LOT of time on "domestic disturbance" crimes (at least anecdotally; I'm betting you've got a quicker way to find out how much time), and almost universally they *hate* dealing with it. Both parties are usually lying or telling half-truths about what happened, and it rarely gets resolved to anyone's satisfaction. (And cops tend to be skeptical in general, because they spend so much time being lied to.) Now throw in the fact that something like 50% of rape cases involve heavy drinking in one or both parties, and you've added another thing cops just LOVE dealing with, and that's drunks.

So add "reluctance to get involved in what frequently turns out to be messy domestic or drunk situations" to the list of complicating factors in this discussion.

So the woman who HAS been assaulted faces plenty of obstacles -- starting with the idea that this may be someone she actually knows; sorting through a zillion conflicting emotions and the chemical cocktail brought about by trauma; fear that she'll be perceived as inviting it because she's wearing sexy clothing... it's rough stuff, and no argument there. But then, having summoned the courage to make the accusation, she's facing skepticism from the cops, and possible repercussions at home or work for having reported it.

Ideally, cop training covers both the "not making an alleged victim feel worse if you can help it" and "asking the right delicate questions to find out what actually happened". When in doubt, most people in uniform are going to follow their training, and I'd argue that's the best answer to BOTH of those issues -- ask the right questions and avoid making assumptions. It shouldn't be harder than it already is to punish rapists, but the answer is not to assume that false reporting doesn't play a significant role.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Since there's no evidence that false reporting plays a significant role, so there's reason for police (or anyone else) to act as if it does.

Knowing that false reports are rare should be reassuring to men worried about their reputations. Further reassurance: although any false report is harmful and dangerous, not all false reports are malicious allegations against a specific man.

Men worried about false reports should insist that all rape reports be properly investigated by the police, so that liars will be caught!

Raphael's article touches on a lot of these points - it's well worth a read.

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

I did give it a quick read through (once it finally downloaded -- for some reason I had trouble getting it to open the first time) but much of it seemed to be referring to other things that, sadly, I don't have the patience to look up right now.

I'm with you on insisting that all rape reports be properly investigated -- but we need to be careful that in our urge to be thorough, we don't inadvertently create a second tier of victims.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Judging from the info at the Innocence Project, police bungling is a much greater danger to innocent men than the tiny chance of being wrongly charged with rape.

[hnpcc]

Washington City Paper - false rape accusations article.

Thought you might be interested.