False Accusations and Rape Myths: Part Two of Our Prevention Article

To continue assaulting and abusing people, a serial predator needs for his community/workplace to not believe the victim, to blame her, and/or to do nothing. Given that multiple studies show serial predators commit 90 percent of sexual assaults, and the average repeat predator self-reports an average of 5.8 rapes and ten violent crimes [9], believing credible accusations and stopping serial predators is one of the best ways to preventing sexual assault. When a victim takes the brave step of making herself vulnerable and reliving a deep trauma by coming forward about an assault, her community or workplace should listen, and should have the tools and knowledge to accurately vet the accusation. This is the most kind action for all involved: to compel the perpetrator to take responsibility and stop engaging in self-destructive behavior, protect the community or workplace from reoccurring sexual assault by him, to send a message that the community or workplace is safe, equitable, and does not condone sexual violence.

To do that, we need to create a society – communities and workplaces – in which victims feel safe and supported in coming forward when a sexual assault occurs. Victims who speak up are often blamed for tearing apart “the community”, suing the workplace, and/or bringing reputational damage to the community/group. This is a case of shooting the messenger. It’s important to note that the harm began with the predators. We lose sight of this: if the predator refuses to take responsibility, it is their crimes, as well their continued fight to silence their victims and stay in their community – divides and damages that community, and exposes the community/workplace to legal liability. For a workplace, unreported assault/harassment affects employee productivity, retention, and diversity. If you think you can “fix” the unrepentant predator: there are people in this society who have dedicated their lives to this problem, and they have yet to come up with a satisfactory answer. Psychiatrists, other therapists, and advocates tell me that predators are sociopaths - but they may also be narcissists or merely entitled or desire control - and the mental health field hasn’t come up with an easy fix for predators. The narrative of predators becoming such because of their past trauma or abuse is not per se: none of the predators I’ve personally dealt with have been abused in their past (that I know of) - and while some abused people become abusive, not everyone who is abused does or will. If you cannot control these predators, why take the risk of harming your community or workplace about by continuing to support them? Consider what keeping a predator has cost large communities and workplaces such as Fox News (over $110M in nine months), Southern Baptist Convention, tech companies who’ve paid out millions to those accused, Ford Motors, Hollywood, university, or political scandals: the predator assaulted someone or multiple people, and rather than quietly take responsibility – the predator and/or his community/workplace silenced or did not believe the victim(s). This allowed the predator(s) continued their behavior. When the scandal was finally exposed, the financial and legal liability, and damage to everyone involved reputations are far worse. Communities, workplaces, and institutions lose employees and prospective employees, lose business, clients, members, and relationships, trust erodes, productivity deteriorates, and individuals in the communities, workplaces, and institutions suffer mentally and emotionally. The victim suffers most of all - she loses opportunities available to her, her relationships suffer, her education/career may be impacted for the rest of her life, and she suffers mental and emotional distress. A victim’s sexual assault may prevent her from living her best life, and making her greatest contribution to society. The victims aren’t the only ones who pay - we as a society do too. It is imperative that we work to prevent sexual assault.

When listening to a victim tell her story, keep in mind that false accusations are extremely rare. Consider this: a man only has a 0.025 percent chance of being falsely accused (about 1 in 4000) [10]– a man is more likely to be struck by lightning than to be falsely accused of rape. Twenty-five percent of women have experiencing an attempted or completed rape. Academic studies in both the US and the UK [11] report two to four percent of sexual assault accusations are false. The UK Home Office study showed that none of the false accusations resulted in a legal conviction. In the US, five times as many people are falsely accused of murder as they are of rape [12]. Only 0.005% of rapes reported to the police are false, and no false accusations led to a conviction [13]. False accusations come about in extreme circumstances: from people who are very psychologically or emotionally distressed, have some ulterior reason to fear the accuser, or through anonymous accusations. British police and FBI report more than double the rate (about ten percent) of false forcible rape claims [14]. This is because police officers are susceptible to rape myths [15]– myths such as women cry rape when they regret consensual sex, want to appear less promiscuous, because they have been scorned, and women are vengeful and jealous. When interviewed, police officers often admit their biases [16] –they don’t believe victims who report rape in cases where the victim knew the perpetrator, and officers are less likely to believe a woman who isn’t white, educated, and middle class.  In some cases, women have punished for defamation or filing a false police report – and later evidence proved they were telling the truth [17]. Communities, workplaces, bystanders, and juries are equally susceptible to rape myths. The stronger a person’s belief in rape myths, the more likely the believer is to find victims less credible and more blame-worthy [18].  In many communities and workplaces, individuals with strong beliefs in rape myths will defend the rapist and call to ostracize the victim. Such individuals will often question the victim’s character (eg, her sexual history, drug/alcohol use, past relationships) in attempt to cast blame. Rape victims are described as manipulative, vindictive, vengeful, scorned – ask yourself how frequently you’ve heard those adjectives applied to men.

 The justice system cannot be the only arbitrator of whether or not a rape has taken place; realistically, it is not. Of the hundred victims I’ve worked with (at the time of writing this), only one person has filed a police report, and none have initiated a rape kit. Filing a police report after being sexually assaulted is so fraught that 80% goes unreported [19] (some of reasons are listed in preceding paragraph, other reasons for underreporting provided in footnote 19). Sexual assault is near impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Physical evidence seldom exists, and sexual violence can be written off as “rough sex”. Even in the few cases where a rape kit has been obtained, many cities and states have a backlog of untested rape kits [20]. Thus, a rape trial usually comes down to “he said, she said”, and juries also believe rape myths, disregard evidence and make decisions based on the victim’s perceived character and lifestyle [21].  White women are more likely to be believed than black women, but black women are more likely to be raped [22]. This results in prosecutors being more likely to take a rape case to trial if a woman is white, wealthy, and sympathetic to a jury. Past incidents of sexual assault by the same predator would be considered heresy unless they’d already been proved, creating a chicken-and-egg problem in the courtroom. Many victims don’t even try to pursue legal action because of a lack of physical evidence, and because they intuitively realize what data proves: pursuing action against one’s rapist, or even speaking about rape is increases the likelihood of PTSD as the victim must relive their original trauma. Most of the women I know say they’d rather move on than spend years on a trial. Most of the women I’ve spoken to are traumatized, self-doubting, and already have had other people say horribly victim-blaming, cruel things to them. And although rules exist to protect accusers against having their characters, lifestyle, or clothing choice scrutinized, defense lawyers will often find ways to work around them. All of this makes taking legal action against a predator untenable. The US State Judiciary Committee found only 2% of rapists are convicted [23], only twenty-five out of every 1,000 rapists spends any time in jail [24].

 Perhaps you’re thinking about due process now – but keep in mind due process depends on the stakes – and only applies in cases where the government is trying to establish the right to hold a person’s body in a criminal trial, or to take their property in a civil suit. A community/workplace cannot legally hold a person’s body in the way our government can, and thus, the standard of due process and standard of evidence we use in protecting our community should not be the same as that used by our government. In a criminal trial, the evidence must prove that the rape happened and sexual activity was non-consensual beyond a reasonable doubt. However, that high burden of proof is impossible without overcoming false myths about rape and accusations, without having a predator’s history of repeat assault (which could be heresy), with the biases and myths that police officers and members of juries commonly believe, and with the biases toward men that judges and lawyers show [25]. As members of a community or workplace, we do not have the constraints of our government’s system of justice. We regularly take action for the betterment of our communities and workplaces regularly – we set boundaries, fire employees, quit jobs, walk away from friends - all without a jury trial. People regularly break off relationships with spouses suspected of cheating or a friend who steals without needing enough evidence for criminal conviction. Similarly, we can use information about rape culture and past sexual assaults to make our personal judgments about whom to keep in our communities, or whose behavior needs to be policed. We already have standards of fairness and justice in our lives outside of the legal system [26], and we should extend those standards to sexual assault and harassment within our communities and workplaces. 

Footnotes

[9] Lisak & Miller, 2002 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11991158/ ; Abbey et al., 2012; Thompson et al., 2013 Researchers asked men surveyed if they had non-consensual sex without using the terms rape or sexual assault also see https://jimhopper.com/topics/sexual-assault-and-the-brain/repeat-rape-by-college-men/ Retrieved July 14, 2022.

[10]  This number is based on the FBI UCR study (see footnote 5 for full citation): 93,000 reported rapes yearly X (.97 X .03 X .2 chance of falsely naming a man) X 75 years / 160000000 men = 0.025% or 1 in 4000 chance of being falsely accused of rape

[11] UK Home Office Study shows 4% (Kelly, Liz & Lovett, Jo & Regan, Linda. “Home Office Research Study 293 A Gap or a Chase? Attrition in Reported Rape Cases” UK Home Office. January 2005. Accessed July 22, 2022. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238713283_Home_Office_Research_Study_293_A_gap_or_a_chasm_Attrition_in_reported_rape_cases Another study cited by the US Department of Justice shows 2.1% (Heenan, Melanie & Murray, Suellen. Study of Reported Rapes in Victoria 2000 – 2003. US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. July 2006. Accessed July 24, 2022 https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/study-reported-rapes-victoria-2000-2003-summary-research-report ).

[12] Srinvasan, Amia. The Right to Sex. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2021. p 4. This statistic was originally derived from The National Registry of Exonerations.

[13] Belknap, J. “Rape: Too hard to report and too easy to discredit victims.” Violence Against Women. 2010. 16, 1335-1344.

[14} Srinvasan, Amia. Ibid. p 2 – 3..

[15] Ibid. p 2.

[16] Ibid. p 2

[17] Miller, Christian T. and Armstrong, Ken. “An Unbelievable Story of Rape.” The Marshall Project. December 15, 2006. Accessed July 23, 2022. https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story

[18] Schuller, Regina A and Hastings, Patricia A. “Complainant Sexual History Evidence: Its Impact on Mock Juror’s Decisions”. Psychology of Women Quarterly. September 1, 2002. Accessed July 24, 2022. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/1471-6402.00064

[19] Morgan, Rachel E. and Kena, Grace. “Criminal Victimization, 2016: Revised.” U.S. Department of Justice. October 2018. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv16.pdf. Twenty percent of victims do not file in fear of retaliation from perpetrator and/or from society/community/workplace, thirteen percent do not trust the police to help, and thirty percent did not provide reason. Also see: Belknap, J. (for full citation of this source, see footnote 13).

[20] San Francisco only cleared 12% of theirs - https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clearance-rates-dashboard. Per End the Backlog, New York had 1,981 untested rape kits in 2017, and the current number of untested kits is unknown; California has 13,939 as of 2020, Texas has over 20,000. A few states, such as Michigan, have cleared their backlog. For more statistics, please see the data on https://www.endthebacklog.org/.

[21] LaFree, PhD, Gary. “Rape and Criminal Justice: the Social Construction of Sexual Assault.” Wadsworth Pub. Co,1989.

[22] U.S. DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Female Victims of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010,” 2013. Accessed on July 24, 2022 from Rainn https://www.rainn.org/news/many-black-survivors-reporting-raises-complicated-issues.

[23] U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee: Conviction & Imprisonment Statistics, 1993

[24] “Scope of the Problem: Statistics.” RAINN https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem. Accessed July 14, 2022

[25] Two cases in which a judge showed strong biases towards not punishing a convicted rapist are the Brock Turner “Stanford Rape” and Drew Clinton. For more information on Drew Clinton, I read the following New York Times article. Cramer, Maria and Paz, Isabella Grullon. “Judge Tosses Teen’s Sexual Assault Conviction, Drawing Outrage.” The New York Times. January 13, 2002. Accessed July 24, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/us/drew-clinton-released-sexual-assault.html?action=click&algo=identity&block=more_in_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=85128375&impression_id=4be989b0-74e2-11ec-b842-6d2ed4894cf0&index=1&pgtype=Article&pool=more_in_pools%2Fus&region=footer&req_id=708074337&surface=eos-more-in&variant=holdout_more-in).

[26] Brodsky, p. 204.