There is a lot of conflicting research on this, but many reports show that false rape accusations are no more common than false accusations of any other kind of crime.
> They aren't, they are far rarer then actual cases of rape
This is not a statement of fact, that's an assumption you've made.
Actual studies of this are rare and usually bitterly disputed, but part of the reason they're rare is that they tend to reveal alarmingly high false reporting rates. I mean truly disturbingly high.
If you look at cases which are proven to be false, the rate is usually suggested to be somewhere between 5% and 10% of all claims depending on the study.
But this does not imply 90% of accusations have merit. The definition of "false claim" is extremely strict, such that a case that does not proceed because e.g. the alleged victim is caught lying about the events does not count as "false" on the grounds that they might just genuinely be confused. Virtually all claims of rape or sexual assault fail to proceed to actual charges.
The most famous study (by Kanin) examined every single allegation of rape reported to the police department of a small midwestern city. It defined a false accusation to be "any accusation in which the victim admitted it was false". It reported a rate of around 40% of all allegations being false.
> It is a crime that is notoriously hard to convict, to the point where most victims keep silent.
You can't know that. Given that false reporting definitely occurs, victims that keep silent may or may not be real victims. Only investigations can resolve that question. And one reason it's a hard crime to convict is the rate at which accusers recant their accusations or stop cooperating with investigations as they proceed.
Do we have a source for this claim - data on sexual violence is spotty, and data on false allegations of sexual violence is even spottier. The difference in estimated rates of false allegations often vary by 4-10x so I'm not sure how one can reliably make the claim that false allegations of rape are more likely to be protected.
There is such research actually. Look at the studies by Kanin, Jan, and their replications. The topic of what proportion of allegations are false is studied from time to time, but not often, because the studies that are done usually report eye-wateringly high figures.
In the UK, official government research put the figure at 10% of all (rape) accusations being false. But if you read the reports, you'll see that the true figure must be much higher, as the methodology reclassifies lots of data points to avoid them being considered false.
Consensus seems to be that somewhere between 2% and 10% of investigated rape claims prove to be false.
Stanford: Myths about false accusation [0]
BBC: The truth about false assault accusations by women [1]
CNN: Sexual assault false reporting: What the statistics say [2]
In 2016, about 90k instances of rape were reported to police [1]. The lowest figure I've seen for the % of accusations that are false is 2% the highest ones from well reputed sources are in the low 20s but let's go with the FBI's figure of 8% (this is for "provably false" accusations, so it's still only a lower bound). That would mean that of the 90k accusations, we have somewhere between 1.8k to 5.6k false accusations. 35 of which were prosecuted. This is a prosecution rate of roughly 2-0.5%, compared to 5% for rape (this is the figure I most commonly see when discussing the percentage of rapes that are prosecuted). I don't see much evidence to back up the claim that false accusations are prosecuted more frequently than rape.
Sure but the statistics, 1% of reported rapes lead to conviction and 2-8% are shown to be false, do not support the conclusion that false report of rape is not a big issue.
That take is grossly misleading. Around 15% of rape allegations are proven true. 2-10% are proven false (either a solid alibi or a later confession from the supposed victim).
The remaining 75% of cases are neither proved nor disproved. If you are accused, but don't have enough evidence of your innocence (or they don't have evidence of guilt), the case is not prosecuted or results in a hung jury.
The most you can accurately say is that for every 2 convictions there is one person falsely accused.
It might not be that every man is falsely accused of rape, but that the false positive rate might be high. Which would mean that the existence of an accusation provides little predictive power regarding the guilt of the accused.
If 90% of rape allegations resulted in convictions then the existence of an accusation would usually be meaningful. If only 10% of accusations result in convictions, the existence of an accusation would not be very meaningful statistically for the guilt or innocence of any one alleged perpetrator.
What makes the situation even more difficult is that there's often little hard evidence of a crime. There can be evidence of sexual contact, but that doesn't ipso facto make the accusation true, because statistically sexual contact in overwhelmingly consensual.
When police find a body that's been shot or stabbed that's generally hard evidence that a crime has taken place. There's often no question as to the existence of the crime (except when suicide is a possibility) and it's their job to figure out who did it and bring them to justice.
But many rape cases start with the identity of the perpetrator known, and the objective is to figure out who is telling the truth in a situation with no hard evidence to back up either party. It's very different from a murder, but with just as much import. And since prosecutors don't like to lose cases (their job is to win them, and they are judged on their conviction rate) they often don't prosecute unless they have a strong case.
So what happens is that it's very difficult to tell if most accusations are false, or merely not provable-enough to win in court. And because there are conflicting motivations by a number of parties in the legal process it's very difficult to suss out the actual truth and then measure the error from the actual truth that the legal system achieves, and then use that to reform the process.
Because of all this, it's entirely possible that people who are accused are "often" the victims of trumped up charges while at the same time, only a very few people are accused.
Hell, studies have said anywhere between 2% to 90%[0] of rape reports are false, but telling that a rape is false / true is _incredibly_ hard due to it basically being "he says" vs. "she says".
False allegations are far from being fantastically rare.
You also have to acknowledge that when you have a rape accusation, there isn't a boolean result(either the allegation is false, or it's true and this results in some penalty). It's a broad spectrum, with only around a third of the cases resulting in conviction.[1]
Of the 136 cases of sexual assault 8 (5.9%) were coded as false reports, 61 (44.9%) did not proceed to any prosecution or disciplinary action, 48 (35.3%) were referred for prosecution or disciplinary action, and 19 (13.9%) contained insufficient information to be coded (see Table 2).
False reports/accusations of crime in general tend to be low, in the 2-8% range reported here. By this logic, we can dispense with this whole silly and expensive criminal justice system and just convict everyone based on simple accusation. We used to call this sort of thing "lynching", and it is generally considered a good thing that it's become rare.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"[1]
Also note that the "low rate" for false accusations is for cases were the false accusation is proven:
"The determination that a report of sexual assault is false can be made only if the evidence establishes that no crime was committed or attempted. This determination can be made only after a thorough investigation. This should not be confused with an investigation that fails to prove a sexual assault occurred.
In that case the investigation would be labeled unsubstantiated. The determination that a report is false must be supported by evidence that the assault did not happen."[2][3]
By this standard, cases of rape that are actually proven are also low, depending on where you look in the 7% range of reported[3]. So the "we just don't know" figure is very, very high, we simply do not have strong evidence either way[4]. Other studies have found false report rates much higher [5][6].
The Air Force study[6]
is interesting in that admissions of false accusations increased dramatically when it became known that
a Polygraph would be administered (though AFAIK, the Polygraph information itself was not used as indication of a false report, only an actual admission). The raw data of admitted false cases was then combined with other characteristics of those cases to develop a model for "likely" false accusations (things like "does the rape cause problems or solve problems for the accuser", "does the report follow widely assumed patterns of rape vs. real patterns", "do the injuries show patterns that are typical of self-infliction" etc.) With that model, applied conservatively, the false report rate was above 50%.
There is
also an interesting investigation showing that the 2% figure that pops up in many "studies" books and
papers on the subject can all be traced to a single off-the-cuff, non-researched remark.[7]
So the reference figures are at best flawed and way too uncertain to base a model on.
Additionally, the statistics are incorrectly applied to a single event ("How likely is someone ..."). The statistics only work for a sufficiently large population.
Finally, as many others have pointed out, the events are not uncorrelated, and the assumption that they are and that "lots of reports must mean there is something there" is a well-documented fallacy of human cognition. The McMartin case is an obvious one, but there is also the famous case of the French city of Orleans, where an entire city was convinced that girls were being drugged and abducted in fashion stores, which turned out to be completely unfounded.[8][9][10]
So please pack up this model, or let's all just abandon our legal system, due process and meet for a happy lynching.
You also have to acknowledge that when you have a rape accusation, there isn't a boolean result(either the allegation is false, or it's true, meaning there was rape). It's a broad spectrum, with only around a third of the cases resulting in conviction.[1]
As far as I understand, only if there wasn't a sexual contact will the allegation be considered false. In other cases, there will be some sort of investigation. So, it's possible to have basis for allegation and NOT have rape.
Correct me if I am wrong though.
---
Of the 136 cases of sexual assault 8 (5.9%) were coded as false reports, 61 (44.9%) did not proceed to any prosecution or disciplinary action, 48 (35.3%) were referred for prosecution or disciplinary action, and 19 (13.9%) contained insufficient information to be coded (see Table 2).
False allegations of rape are fantastically rare and the people who make those false allegations are almost always prosecuted, and convicted, for it. Everyone recognises that false allegations are immensely harmful - to the man who has been libled; to other women making allegations; to other women who do not make allegations because they fear not being believed.
It's a very difficult topic to study.
reply