We're constantly fed the narrative that false sexual violence allegations hurt men, but how common are they really?
As the United States’ athletes luge, lutz and lift their way through the Winter Olympics, back home the president is setting new world records in freestyle Trumpery. And yes, that’s an actual word, it means “useless nonsense” and it originates from the French word for “deceive”. How fucking fitting!
As the United States’ athletes luge, lutz and lift their way through the Winter Olympics, back home the president is setting new world records in freestyle Trumpery. And yes, that’s an actual word, it means “useless nonsense” and it originates from the French word for “deceive”. How fucking fitting!
This is coming from a man who somehow became president despite at least 24 women coming forward with sexual assault allegations against him. The only thing “shattered” in the wake of his election was the glass ceiling, as 63million “fuck you”s were dumped on it from above. We can only hope Trump didn’t warm up before his latest assault on logic because that kind of cognitive dissonance will eventually end in whiplash.
I could write for hours on Trump’s ridiculousness but instead, I want to focus on what he’s advocating for in his that tweet – more protection for men against women making false allegations.
This is not a new idea. I’ve heard iterations of it throughout my life, and, frankly, hearing it so often, from people I was supposed to look up to, deeply skewed my perception of sexual violence for a long time. So, I understand how pervasive this sentiment is.
Of course, you only have to look at the pop culture landscape to see how flawed this view is. Just off the top of my head, here’s a list of men who have managed to achieve huge success despite being accused, and in some cases convicted, of sexual violence: Donald Trump, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, James Franco, R Kelly, Mike Tyson, Casey Affleck, Mel Gibson.
But cherry-picking examples like this doesn’t prove much other than powerful men can get away with doing awful things. Obviously, a subject as weighty as this requires much more thought.
What Actually is a False Allegation?
Let’s clear one thing clear, I am not denying that false allegations of sexual violence occur. They absolutely do, just like false allegations of most crimes exist, and you don’t have to look far to find examples.
If you really want insight into how false allegations destroy lives you only have to look at the witch hunts, the tragedy of Emmet Till or the case of the Central Park Five. Of course, these probably aren’t what Trump was speaking out about, after all, he was handing out pitchforks during that example.
Instead, the focus of false allegations tends to be on the handful of much-publicised cases every year in which young men are released from jail after having their convictions for sexual violence overturned. Sadly, it’s too often overlooked that the decision is rarely made because allegations are deemed false, usually, it happens when new evidence surfaces.
Accusations of false allegations are also frequently thrown around after a defendant is found not guilty during a trial. This, of course, is a complete, and often wilful, misunderstanding of how trials work.
Just because somebody isn’t found guilty beyond reasonable doubt it doesn’t mean their alleged victim is lying – the vital phrase being “beyond a reasonable doubt”.
In fact, the number of documented false allegations are undoubtedly conflated with any kind of sexual violence complaint that is logged as “no crime”. Unfortunately, there’s often no way of separating false allegation from other incidents of “no crime”, which can include:
· Cases in which somebody has no memory of a period of time and subjects themselves to an extremely unpleasant rape check to put their mind at ease nothing happened
· Cases in which victims feel too threatened to go to court
· Cases in which evidence exists, but the CPS doesn’t feel there’s a high chance of conviction
· Cases in which a concerned third-party reports potential sexual violence to the police
· Cases in which an officer who receives a reported sexual violence allegation doesn’t deem the victim to be believable
How Prevalent are False Allegations?
Given the issues surrounding how you false allegations are defined, it’s not surprising there are no definitive statistics concerning falsely reported sexual violence. The issue is further obfuscated by different organisations, and even different police forces, recording crime data differently.
As shown before, false allegation statistics can be bumped up by looking at any reported incident which is logged as “no crime”. On the other hand, the CPS itself have been guilty of inflating figures by logging every conviction resulting in a rape trial as rape, even if the actual conviction was for a “lesser” offence.
Inevitably, this has resulted in many different organisations, including the Crown Prosecution Service, the Office for National Statistics, and the Home Office, drawing different conclusions from what is essentially the same data.
Ultimately, it’s widely agreed that false sexual violence allegations sit some between 2% and 10% of all incidents reported to the police. For the sake of not being called biased, I’ve decided to use the upper limit of 10%.
It’s important to note this rate of false allegations is no higher than what’s reported in other categories of crime. Yet, there is still widespread concern that false allegations of sexual violence are rife. This clearly shows victims of sexual violence are subject to much higher levels of suspicion than other victims of crime.
If 90% of sexual violence allegations aren’t considered to be false, why is there so much focus on finding ways to better protect men against that 10%?
What About Proven False Allegations?
The obvious method of judging the prevalence of false allegations of sexual violence against men is to look at cases in which women are charged with that crime. This seems fool-proof right?
Well, between 2009 and 2015, just 109 women were actually charged with lying about sexual violence in the UK. That’s a mere 0.04% of reported sexual abuses over that period. So, despite the accepted upper-limit of false sexual violence allegations being 10%, only 0.04% of sexual violence allegations are actually proven to be false.
98 of those women were eventually convicted, which, at a success rate of 89.9%, is one of the highest conviction rates for any crime. It’s worth noting too, that the vast majority of these cases were for charges of perverting the course of justice, rather than the lesser offence of wasting police time.
This, to me at least, suggests we take false allegations of sexual violence very seriously.
Too Long? Didn’t Read?
The constant calls for more protection for men against false rape allegations might make you think it’s a common problem. However, the reality is that less than 10% of all reported incidents of sexual violence are considered false. And when looking solely at cases in which accusations have been proven false, that figure drops to 0.04%.
So, the question is, why is there still so much focus on false reporting of sexual violence when statistics show it isn’t an issue nearly as prevalent as sexual violence itself.
Author’s note
I’ve linked to all my sources, but I am not in any way, shape, or form, a statistician and therefore would be than happy to be corrected on any statistics I’ve used. I also used the following reports as background reading for this post.
I’m aware there are a lot of different topics which intersect with this, for example what constitutes consent, why women often don’t report rape, and how rape differently affects women of colour, LBGTQ+ individuals and women with disabilities. These are all topics I do hope to write about in the future.
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