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.
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.
Let's suppose that false rape accusations are a wide-spread problem. They aren't, they are far rarer then actual cases of rape, but let's suppose that they are.
How exactly do you propose to deal with them, without a chilling effect on reporting real rapes? It is a crime that is notoriously hard to convict, to the point where most victims keep silent.
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]
This is the most detailed and recent study, where they went through all rape cases in the UK with a fine comb. It puts the most likely figure of false accusations at 3%, within a range of 1% to 9%.
Other numbers:
- 7% (of all women) had been raped,
- Around 75% of those cases were reported to police
- only 14% of cases resulted in a trial
- less than half of trials resulted in conviction
- Police officers guess that 30% of reported rapes are false accusations when asked in general terms, even though these same officers came to such a conclusion in only 9% of specific cases they handled.
> 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.
I think they're saying that a massive percentage, about 98% of rape accusations will be true.
And even when rape accusations are false, they're primarily not what the fertile imaginations of HN imagine, which seems to be women who've taken a dislike to some nerdy colleague for no reason, or the willing partner who decides later that it was actually rape.
In reality, the majority of them are very young girls, or cheating wives, who need to come up with some alibi for their parents or husband and so invent a classic stranger with a knife rape scenario rather than point the finger at some innocent person. Often they don't even intend to go to the police but the parent who they lied to files on their behalf.
10% of false rape reports may be made by people in the hope of recieving medical care they need for other reasons, which is a tragic statistic in itself.
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.
Yes, rape and sexual harassment are serious problems, and false accusations of these crimes, in particular, where forensic evidence is rare, literally increases the number of rapes by allowing rapists to avoid jail.
Wikipedia suggests [0] at least 1 rape accusation in 50 is made baselessly and with malicious intent. Maybe a further 4 in 50 are likely to be mis-identified situations with no crime occurring.
On the one hand, those numbers aren't high. On the other hand, these numbers are high enough that the police should be diligent exploring all available avenues of evidence. They should be tactful, discreet and empathetic as they do so.
The number of fake rape complaint surely depends on how they're treated.
If an accusation only has effect if it's proven in court, there will be few of them.
If you can destroy someone's life by a mere accusation, false accusations will be very common. Also, just a threat of such an accusation will be very powerful.
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".
Complaints is the key here. Obviously, we can't say much about the incidents that don't go reported. If one looks at the conviction rate for rape complaints it's around 2%. So if we take the lower estimate for false complaints, it still means that only 4% of cases are provable one way or the other, and that those which are have a 50/50 chance of being true or false complaints. (I'm looking at '92 stats, at a glance it appears the the rates for both rape and false rape convictions have risen a fair bit since then).
Interestingly, a 2% conviction rate is on par with that of robbery.
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.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/09/false...
It varies by country but in the US, it's estimated that 8% of rape cases are false accusations.
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