Rape Myth #1: She’s Probably Lying

ResearchBlogging.orgTawana Brawley. Duke University men’s lacrosse team.






The Rate of False Report




What Is A False Report?



Making the Numbers













A Note on Real False Reports







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    Fully acknowledging that I may be mistaken, I think you misunderstand why people point out that some women lie: the common assumption with rape charges is that the woman is telling the truth. It is significant, I think, that lynching was often connected to charges of rape. Feminists are especially fond of asserting that women don't lie–did you follow any of the #mooreandme tweetfest held by women who assumed Assange was guilty because he had been accused?This is compounded by the tendency of many people to assume that if someone is charged with any crime, they're guilty.Where did you find the claim that women lie 90% of the time? I don't think I've ever run into anyone who didn't assume that women were telling the truth most of the time.

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    That there are idiots on police forces, no one denies. But how representative are they? One of my frustrations with the internet is that it magnifies the opinions of tiny minorities.In lynching scenarios, the lynched were usually of the lower class, but not always. The Leo Frank case is fascinating–the word of a black man during Jim Crow was accepted against a Jew (and Jews in the South were definitely white–Judah P. Benjamin served as Jefferson Davis's Secretary of State).I'm pretty sure most middle and upper class folk live in a more rarefied atmosphere than I do. I know most academics live in a more rarefied atmosphere than I do. But if you mean I hang with a lot of weirdos, I'll grant that.#mooreandme was driven by Sady Doyle, who acknowledged that she thought Assange was guilty.Wikipedia came through on the 90% claim: Stewart, 1981. That seems so crazy that I'd kind of like to read the paper.

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    Becca, I know there are macho fools out there. But I ended up doing a lot of research on this after Sady Doyle announced that she believed Assange was guilty, and so far as I saw, no one on her side suggested her condemnation was premature. (I mostly saw people arguing that personal assumption and legal assumption are different. Which is true–legal assumption leads to sentences, and personal assumption leads to vigilanteism.)Do you really think most people, or even a large minority of people, believe women usually lie about rape?I did a very quick bit of googling, and came up with this example of "he's guilty because women must stand up for each other":http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101207145358AAEcoNvNote that the person got the winning votes.This also came up:http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/2010/12/rape-myths-and-julian-assange.htmlNote the first comment.

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    Becca, it's good to avoid straw men, so:1. Are you saying no one has said that Assange is guilty of rape?2. What % of men say specific women are probably lying about rape?3. What % of women say specific men are probably guilty of rape?4. The "data" I've been selling is that women are telling the truth at least 98% of the time. (See my 1/50 analogy.) If you think this makes me a promoter of useless information, fine.5. I've done a lot of reading about lynching and vigilanteism. Personal judgments matter. At the very least, falsely accused people suffer from character assassination, which may seem like a minor thing to you, but which can translate to losing friends, lovers, and jobs, getting anonymous death threats, getting property vandalized, etc.

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    Will, on the Yahoo link, did you bother to count up the guilty/not-guilty votes in the thread? On a quick count that's probably slightly wrong, I get 3-8, plus one abstention. And for every, "I believe the women" statement in the Assange case, I really can find you two of these: http://www.operationprotest.com/julian-assange-rape-allegations-story-behind-the-girls Note the qualitative differences in the statements.But now, I'm going to tell you it really is time to disengage. Why? You're being counterproductive. The way to protect the innocent accused is to delegitimize any and all kinds of vigilantism, not to argue for a silence that perpetuates abuse of the victims based on bogus statistics (including those death threats, etc. that you mention). The need for this kind of debunking article is demonstrated in the studies and documented in the comments. Arguing about that further doesn't get you any closer to your goals, which I happen to share.

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    For those who care to see it, the post I was talking about in an earlier comment: http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2010/12/assange-rape-duke-lacrosse-sweden.html I was wrong that it contained the higher stats itself. For the most part, it incorporated them by reference to this post: http://www.billoblog.com/?p=134Bonus posts suggesting that the only reason a guy would agree with me is because I'm sleeping with him: http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2010/12/will-charges-against-assange-split.html but that my relationship to him is subservient nonetheless: http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2010/12/scratch-greg-laden-from-critical.html

  18. Archivist says

    This article is incredibly deceptive. By sugguesting that "only" 2.1 to 10 percent of all rape claims were "false," you suggest that the remainder were actual rapes. I am certain you know very well that only a very small percent of the remainder can be definitively called "actual rapes." So if we only talk about those claims for which we have definitive proof about the outcome — false or actual rape — false claims are a very signficant percentage of that.I am certain you know this. I am troubled as to why you don't point it out.

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    Archivist, did you read this post? There's a detailed discussion of what is and isn't included in the numbers. And the point of all of this analysis is to make the rate of false report of rape reasonably comparable to the false report rate for any other crime–without the distortions added by the perception that women just lie about these things. Given that we don't look at any other crime the way you want us to look at rape, your suggestion adds what?

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    Nice to see you begin to address this crime.But in all honesty: the centerpiece of your argument is 'proving' that women lie–might as well go hunt the holy grail now…Then there is always that data problem about who is collecting it. Hmmm: citing women with feminist agenda's and ideological biases, interpreting truth, based on gate keeping and conflation…hmmm.Oh, that and police state collusion–women's groups, the cops, and other robbers get paid to minimize the official story in the collection of data.I will read your full post later, and maybe even reply in one of my own.Meantime, since reporting rape is on your agenda, have you read up on the rape of men in the Congo? 22% of men reported being raped–some of them for years at a stretch as prisoners of war.And we KNOW how hard it is to get men to report.http://pornalysis.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/289/

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    Stephanie @ "However, citations can be found for rates as low as 1.5% and as high as 90%. In other words, huh? How do we deal with a range that big?"Big IS scary, isn’t it? Well, like any target, Steph, you aim for the center. Which would be 44.25% of the time. Big Duh there, especially for egalitarians–and even they are infected these days with rape hysteria, and 'men are way scarier, 'because patriarchy is everywhere (except there at home when mommy dearest is opening the bathroom door just as little Rebbeca begins to masturbate…) divisiveness, ala radfems.Even the feeble and feminist pandering FBI knows that–their own lackadaisical reports state that some 40% of reports are ‘unsubstantiated’. And because gander(ooops…I meant gender…) feminists are so particular(big huge fucking laugh there based on their sloppy research, and their questionable methods, ala the recent Schapiro study, or Janet Swim's laughable treatise on sexism)about words , which definition do you choose to describe "false"? I choose the Sage Dictionary, and definition #9–"not in accordance with the fact, or the reality, or the actuality". But definitions 1-8 certainly are germane, and when false is used as an adverb, it takes on whole new meanings of “ man them white bitches just don’t have any sense of what it is that could have and likely should have been their reality( instead of men and women in the Congo)—if it weren’t for FBI definitions based in privileged, ‘normative’ status quo pandering, and sexual totems of white female privilege.”Seems simple enough, right-a definition is a definition, right? I mean, they still don't have a definition of specifically female initiated rape–like thermometers inserted into little boys butts by medical mommies, or Vagina Monologues style rape of thirteen year olds by lesbians ( even though everyone else in the child abuse industry seems to be aware of such profiles), or condom breaking skanks looking for 18 year paychecks, etc.–so who cares what the cowardly FBI says–unless you specifically have foregone the truth of the issue in favor of pandering to the police state: they are a historic collaborator not only with child prostitution and pornography, prison rape, drug running, gun running, and prostitute-using and gay bashing, but now, you, their stats, and just one more FBI pander to popular smokescreens and political trends. But here are some stats for you–hope they don't shut your server down, or choke your 'spam filter' because they contain non-gender feminist data about false rape reporting that I remember, no matter how hard rape positive gender fems tried to negate them:“About Half of Rape Allegations are False, Research Shows”False allegations of rape are believed to be more common than many persons realize. These are the findings of four research studies:A review of 556 rape accusations filed against Air Force personnel found that 27% of women later recanted. Then 25 criteria were developed based on the profile of those women, and then submitted to three independent reviewers to review the remaining cases. If all three reviewers deemed the allegation was false, it was categorized as false. As a result, 60% of all allegations were found to be false.1 Of those women who later recanted, many didn't admit the allegation was false until just before taking a polygraph test. Others admitted it was false only after having failed a polygraph test.2In a nine-year study of 109 rapes reported to the police in a Midwestern city, Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin reported that in 41% of the cases the complainants eventually admitted that no rape had occurred.3

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    In a follow-up study of rape claims filed over a three-year period at two large Midwestern universities, Kanin found that of 64 rape cases, 50% turned out to be false.4 Among the false charges, 53% of the women admitted they filed the false claim as an alibi.5 According to a 1996 Department of Justice report, “in about 25% of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI, … the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing.6 It should be noted that rape involves a forcible and non-consensual act, and a DNA match alone does not prove that rape occurred. So the 25% figure substantially underestimates the true extent of false allegations.And according to former Colorado prosecutor Craig Silverman, “For 16 years, I was a kick-ass prosecutor who made most of my reputation vigorously prosecuting rapists. … I was amazed to see all the false rape allegations that were made to the Denver Police Department. … A command officer in the Denver Police sex assaults unit recently told me he placed the false rape numbers at approximately 45%.”7According to the FBI, about 95,000 forcible rapes were reported in 2004.8 Based on the statements and studies cited above, some 47,000 American men are falsely accused of rape each year. These men are disproportionately African-American.9Some of these men are wrongly convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned. Even if there is no conviction, a false allegation of rape can “emotionally, socially, and economically destroy a person.”101 McDowell CP. False allegations. Forensic Science Digest, Vol. 11, No. 4, December 19852 Ibid.3 Kanin EJ. An alarming national trend: False rape allegations. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1994 http://www.sexcriminals.com/library/doc-1002-1.pdf4 Ibid., p. 2, Kanin reports that in the city studied, "for a declaration of false charge to be made, the complainant must admit that no rape had occurred. … The police department will not declare a rape charge as false when the complainant, for whatever reason, fails to pursue the charge or cooperate on the case, regardless how much doubt the police may have regarding the validity of the charge. In short, these cases are declared false only because the complainant admitted they are false. … Thus, the rape complainants referred to in this paper are for completed forcible rapes only. The foregoing leaves us with a certain confidence that cases declared false by this police agency are indeed a reasonable — if not a minimal — reflection of false rape allegations made to this agency, especially when one considers that a finding of false allegation is totally dependent upon the recantation of the rape charge."5 Ibid., Addenda.6 Connors E, Lundregan T, Miller N, McEwen T. Convicted by juries, exonerated by science: Case studies in the use of DNA evidence to establish innocence after trial. June 1996 http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/dnaevid.txt7http://web.archive.org/web/20050404230831/http://www.thedenverchannel.com/kobebryanttrial/2812198/detail.html8 Federal Bureau of Investigation. Forcible rape. February 17, 2006. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/violent_crime/forcible_rape.html9 Innocence Project: Facts on post-conviction DNA exonerations. http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/351.php10 Angelucci M, Sacks G. Research shows false allegations of rape common. Los Angeles Daily Journal, Sept. 15, 2004. http://www.glennsacks.com/research_shows_false.htm

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    Gee, Steph, I was checking back to see if my comment full of statistics about false rape accusations mad it here yet–is it still stuck in cue, or did the feminist censors devour it?

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