It is central tenet of the sexual grievance industry that women never, or hardly ever, lie about rape because the burden of subjecting themselves to the ordeal of the criminal justice system outweighs any conceivable benefit from such a lie.
This, of course, is nonsense. In one of the few serious studies ever conducted on the subject, see here, three principal motivations for false rape claims were identified: (1) to “serve[ ] the complainants’ need to provide a plausible explanation for some suddenly foreseen, unfortunate consequence of a consensual encounter, usually sexual, with a male acquaintance”; (2) to serve as “a means of retaliating against a rejecting male”; and (3) to serve as an “attention/sympathy-getting device.”
If significant numbers of women are willing to lie about rape because they crave attention or wish to exact revenge, is it not all the more plausible that some women will lie for the far more rational reason of obtaining a significant sum of money? The question scarcely survives its statement.
In the UK, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) furnishes a monetary incentive to lie about rape. Under the Compensation Scheme, Britain pays crime victims, including women who claim they’ve been raped, substantial sums of money as “compensation.” The alleged rapes need not have involved violence to trigger the payments.
The compensation system has been subjected to rampant fraud, and women have falsely cried rape in order to collect. In one well-publicized case, a false accuser was compensated a substantial sum of money for her lie.
In contrast, it was affirmed last year: Britain does not compensate men for the harm they suffer after being falsely accused, no matter how egregious. The double-standard is stark, and morally grotesque. It tells us much about how our society regards the victims of false rape claims – as flotsam, unfortunate but tolerable collateral damage in “the more important” war on rape.
Who Is Covered?
The CICA, funded by the Ministry of Justice, pays victims of “violent crimes” according to an established scheme of tariffs. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (2008) sets forth the standard amounts paid for each category of crime. The Scheme is found here. A payment will be made if the alleged violent crime was more likely than not to have occurred. (Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (2008) ¶20.) There is no necessity to prove the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the standard for conviction in UK criminal courts.
While the Compensation Scheme is designed to cover crimes of violence, an exception is made for non-forcible rape and other sexual crimes not involving violence. Payments are made for mental injury, including “temporary mental anxiety,” suffered by non-consenting victims of sexual offenses. (Criminal Injuries Compensation (2008) ¶9.) Under the compensation scheme, non-consensual penile penetration warrants UK £11,000. (Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (2008) Page 34.) Greater sums are allotted depending on the severity of the injury inflicted. A non-penetrative sexual physical act “over the clothing” warrants UK £1000. (Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (2008) Page 34.) This, presumably, includes a single instance of inappropriate touching.
In the UK during 2008-2009, 1,938 payments were made to “victims” of rape for a total of £30,197,619. See here.
Who Is Not Covered?
The UK does not compensate men who were falsely accused of rape, no matter how terrible their victimization. I previously wrote to the CICA and asked if a false rape claim would be covered, noting that such claims often have the effect of mentally (not to mention financially) destroying the falsely accused. I received a prompt and professional response that included the following: “Under the terms of our scheme unfortunately this would not be covered. Under the terms of our scheme for eligibility, applicants need to be the victim of a violent crime.”
This policy was affirmed in an important legal precedent handed down last year involving a falsely accused cab driver named Clive Bishop. After winning the right in court to apply for the same sort of monetary compensation as other crime victims receive, Mr. Bishop, who lost his taxi business and was shunned by the community as a result of the false rape claim that sent his false accuser to jail for ten months, was denied compensation for his ordeal by the CICA for the same reason the CICA had related to me: Mr. Bishop was not the victim of a violent crime.
“It’s just ripped the heart out of me and the last three-and-a-half years have been a total nightmare,” Mr. Bishop said. See the story here. Mr. Bishop told False Rape Society: “It is not about the money for me. It is a recognition of the horrific consequences it brings.” He added: “. . . sexual offences that are alleged are the only crime where innocent people are arrested locked up without any evidence to back up what someone has alleged. . . . Don’t forget while I was arrested for a crime that never occurred and locked up, my freedom and liberty denied, she was in a comfortable suite being befriended and pandered. My emotions were ignored and I was arrested, judged and convicted without any compassion or evidence. Believe me when I say that I am still suffering!”
It is important to underscore the terrible double-standard here: the victim of a single instance of a sexual act over the clothing is entitled to compensation, but a man falsely accused of rape who is arrested and jailed for weeks, months or even years, who is subjected to untold mental agonies, who loses his friends, the esteem of his community, his job, his business, and his good name, is entitled to nothing.
The victimization of men falsely accused of rape, no matter how egregious their injuries, is regarded as less worthy of society’s protection than the victimization of non-forcible rape victims, no matter how slight their injuries.
Falsely accused men are not the only ones who aren’t covered. The vast majority of boys who are statutorily raped by adult women are not covered, either. This is because victims of sexual offenses are not covered if they “consented in fact.” (Criminal Injuries Compensation (2008) ¶9(c).) This effectively rules out virtually all claims involving the statutory rape of a teen boy by an adult woman because the boy is typically a willing participant. The fact that the law has determined that boys are incapable of giving valid, legally operative consent to engage in sexual acts with an adult is of no import to the CICA.
The Compensation Scheme Exacerbates the False Rape Epidemic
Remember Grant Bowers? He was just an ordinary teenager when a 20-year-old woman named Sarah-Jane Hillard decided his life didn’t mean as much as the £7,500 she would collect from the CICA if she claimed he raped her. She was caught, but Grant’s life was destroyed. “I don’t know why she did it but her lies have ruined my life,” he said. Grant had to move out of his hometown because of threats against him. People were kicking the door of his flat in and shouting “rapist” though the letterbox. Someone offered a reward to learn his whereabouts. He was chased through town with a knife. Is it surprising that for a time, he was physically sick with worry and was constantly teary? All because a woman wanted to collect money from the CICA. See here.
The problem of fraud in the Compensation Scheme has been evident for years. In 2001, the chief executive of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board blamed the growth in false criminal claims in general on a compensation culture. A CICA report published that year highlighted rampant fraud in the compensation system:
“Among the [fraudulent] cases is that of a woman who has been asked to repay £7,500 after falsely claiming she was raped by a tramp. Last year, a court found that Natalie Knighting, a 21-year-old with three children, had made up the story. She was jailed for six months. Ms. Knighting had won compensation from the CICA for the second time. She had been awarded the same amount of compensation for sexual assault as a child. So far, the authority has been unable to recover any money from her.” See here.
But, of course, the government denies that the Compensation Scheme breeds false rape claims even though the CICA itself has acknowledged rampant fraud as a result of this compensation culture, and even though we know significant numbers of women lie about rape for far less rational reasons.
In a 2007 debate in the House of Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours questioned the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State on this subject:
“My Lords, is it possible that one reason for high rates of false allegations and low rates of conviction for rape is that a minority—I stress that—of women make false allegations in order to win compensation which, in the case of rape, is £11,000? Why do we not move to the German system, where the state does not pay and where compensation follows civil action, as against the state paying? Surely the trauma of rape requires not state-funded windfalls but counseling services that really help victims.”
The Under-Secretary rejected the question out of hand:
“My Lords, a victim of rape should get both compensation and counseling and support. It is not either/or; it is both/and. As the noble Lord will know, it is very important that we make sure that where convictions are made, people can get some kind of recompense for the trauma and injury that they may have received. As for the reasons why people make false allegations, I do not agree that one of the primary objectives is to get £11,000. There may be very serious reasons why people do that, which we need to consider.”
See here. The Under-Secretary stuck her head in the sand and flatly refused to entertain the notion that women would lie about rape for anything as crass as money. It would have to be a more “serious” reason than that.
She would do well to review The False Rape Society website sometime. Among the motivations for false rape claims we’ve reported on in the recent past are following: the accuser’s boyfriend took too long to buy cigarettes; several women didn’t want to pay cab fares, so they accused innocent cab drivers of rape; a girl wanted to get back at her teen ex-boyfriend — her rape lie not only got him convicted, but two of his friends as well; a woman wanted to get back at her ex-boyfriend for breaking it off, so she falsely accused him of rape and candidly admitted: “I just wanted him to be hurt because of what he’d done”; a young woman wanted her young ex-boyfriend “to feel extreme pain”; a woman sent a man to prison for five years because she was bored; a woman was bent on revenge after a road rage incident; a man refused to give his false accuser a beer; a maid falsely accused her employer of rape because she didn’t like her workload; a girl falsely accused a man of rape for throwing a flower at her; a woman caused three men to be interrogated for rapes they didn’t commit because she wanted a day off from work; and an 18-year-year-old boy was hauled out of class, arrested, and jailed for a month on a random false rape claim by a girl he had never even met.
But, no, a sizable financial payment couldn’t possibly be a motivation for a false rape claim. How silly to think such a thing is possible.
If someone wanted to do a study of the false rape problem in the UK, he could use the CICA’s Compensation Scheme as a microcosm: the government enables women to lie about rape and then wonders why more rape claims can’t be proved. And no matter how terribly men suffer from false rape claims, the government thinks they deserve nothing.
