What do you think is the ratio between actual rapes and false rape claims?

IlleFacitFinem · 2013-12-25T16:15:25+00:00

It's impossible to tell. Most rapes or false rape accusations involve events that are only known to the two people involved. Without some collaborating evidence it is impossible to tell what exactly happened. Only a small percentage of actual rapes can be proven in court. Only a small percentage of false rape accusations can be proven as well.

Therefore, both rape and false rape accusation are crimes that are easy to get away with.

failbus · 2013-12-25T11:41:12+00:00

This is a thorny question. False claims can be broadly categorized into a few different situations. For example, there's the misidentification / mistake of fact that comes with stranger rape. There's situations where a man sleeps with a woman and the only issue is proving consent, which is super tricky. And then there's actual malicious reports.

One study (with an admittedly small sample size) is by David Lisak, published in the 2010 Violence Against Women report. Wikipedia link here. What I like about it is that it clarifies a false report as specifically found false, that is to say, there was not merely an absence of evidence, but evidence that the event never took place. That set he result at 5.9%, but it was restricted to an American University, which is a different demographic than the general population.

The US DOJ puts it at 8%, but I'm not sure what the criteria is.

This number might be higher. A woman who accused a man of rape but never files formal charges can ruin him socially, but that's not entered into the statistics. A woman who files an accusation with a university board (where the standard of evidence is much lower) can ruin a young student's life even more so. None of those are false accusations, nor are they convictions.

Of the actual false accusations, many will appear to be "no evidence." A big number will be unprovable either way, not enough evidence to convict, not enough to show she's lying. I doubt we'll ever know the truth there. Likewise, the innocence project has shown that convicted men, even men who have confessed to their crimes, may be innocent and merely bamboozled by the legal system.

If the number is as low as 2% though, that's still 3000 per year, give or take, which is high enough that we should be a.) aggressively charging people for filing false reports when its clear beyond a reasonable doubt they did so, and b.) offering services for those people to be able to recoup their legal and work-related costs.

Seriously on point b.) I mean, some states and some countries offer victims services for victims of rape, including financial compensation. (This might actually be part of the problem with false reports.) If you can do that, surely you can find the money to say "Whoops, our bad, sorry we put you through that" when a person is forced to defend themselves against the state, wielding its big old hammer of justice on a false report. And I'd be fine if that happens for every crime where an individual is arrested or spends time in jail because of a false report, not just rape.

Beyond legal compensation, even wiping out the meme that "women never lie about rape" is important. No matter what, people who go into a jurybox have preconceived notions, and if I'm ever before a jury, I want them to know that if its JUST her word against mine, that there's less than a 99% chance she's telling the truth. I want them to think that without corroborating evidence, the statistics indicate reasonable doubt.

As far as my personal definition of rape goes, it's forcing a person to, by physical force or threats of violence or incapacitation, to perform or receive any sexual act they don't want. It gets more complex when you start introducing alcohol into the equation, since incapacitation is not binary, but that's outside the scope of this post.

gnarlyhogie · 2013-12-25T13:43:39+00:00

[permanently deleted]

borizz · 2013-12-25T11:03:54+00:00

According to some feminists I recently asked, it was way lower than the amount of false reports for other crimes, implying it's not worth considering. When I asked for a source I got a Wikipedia link which claimed anywhere from 3% to 90%.

It seems nobody knows.

shadowbanned6 · 2013-12-25T10:29:30+00:00

We will never know the ratio. But it doesn't matter. We know that false accusations do happen. That's enough.

Funcuz · 2013-12-25T09:58:42+00:00

Depends on where you want to start counting false versus legitimate claims.

See , the impression I get is that women make the accusation pretty often but , when false , usually back down before the matter gets very far. Whether it's pointed out by the cops that the guy can prove he was at work while he was supposedly raping her or it's simply a question of tempers flaring and her realizing the gravity of her accusation and rescinding it.

Beyond that it's anybody's guess. I've heard anecdotes that it's probably the most often used accusation in the book but even then I have no way of verifying even those stories.

As for the definition of rape ... well , to me it's pretty straightforward : If one person says no then continuing after that pretty much constitutes rape. Having said that , if one person is participating in sex against their will then I take it for granted that more often than not there should be "damage" to the corresponding parts of the body.

One person's word alone should NEVER suffice as evidence.

C0CKPUNCHER · 2013-12-25T17:39:17+00:00

We can't count actual rapes, we can't count false rapes. Neither leaves a smoking gun or a corpse, it's simply not empirical. And then there is the problem of the ever shifting definition of rape. Even for a simple crime like theft you can't count the victims because many don't report, many aren't believed and many fail to prove it in court, you can't count the occurrence of false reports of theft for the same reason.

I believe you are only asking us to be shocked at our reply, but this is clearly disingenuous, if you were to give your stance it would be equally easy to criticise it. Detraction is not argument it's just a broken link.

If you asked women 'have you been raped' you would not get a very high ratio of 'yes' answers. But if you asked 'have you ever had sex with your partner when you didn't want to' you would get nearly 100% saying yes. The same would apply to men. Unfortunately even 'have you been raped' has become meaningless because of how abused the term 'rape' has become. You would really have to be more specific saying 'have you ever been threatened with credible violence for sex which then occurred against your will and credible communication, or received unbidden sex in a state whereby you couldn't say yes.' And many of the terms here could be argued to stretch the definition in either direction (what is unbidden for example).

I understand why the definition of rape has expanded, because many engage in a sort of nebulous stalking, ie a low level but constant threat that is hard to police - but that was the wrong approach that only plays into the hands of those who do create a climate of abuse.

avantvernacular · 2013-12-27T15:21:24+00:00

Based entirely on wildly made up numbers i would say about 247:1.

Also, rape as any non consensual sexual intercourse.

rightsbot · 2013-12-25T09:48:16+00:00

Post text automatically copied here. (Why?) (Report a problem.)

Jesus_marley · 2013-12-25T12:11:42+00:00

It is also important to keep in mind the supposed "90%" of rapes that don't get reported to police. False rape accusation is a form of relational aggression. As such, the goal is create social ostracism and proxy violence against the accused. "justice" is never the goal, as in a FRA, there is no actual crime committed by the accused. The accuser, however, is still able to create havoc in the life of the accused without ever having to escalate into an official investigation. The kneejerk reactions to the accusation by those within the social circle, ensures that the accuser achieves their goal, whether that goal be social ostracism by friends, expulsion from an establishment, club or place of learning, and/or the instigation of violence against the accused.

Number357 · 2013-12-25T18:44:53+00:00

Feminists are quick to point out that only about 2-3% of rape accusations have enough evidence to be proven false. They incorrectly assume this means 97-98% of rape accusations are actual rapes. The thing is, 2-3% of rape accusations have enough evidence to be proven false... but only about 11% have enough evidence to be proven true (conviction rate). These numbers aren't even solid ("proven" is used loosely), but assuming the errors on each side cancel each other, we get: 2-3% of rape accusations are false, 11% are true... and 86-87% are unknown. If you just extrapolate from the ones that are proven false or true, then we get around 15-20% are false. I don't know if extrapolating is the right way to do it, but, even giving a margin of error I think we can be pretty confident the number of false accusations is between 10-25%. Certainly nowhere near a majority, but also a large enough number that we can't keep ignoring it.

newmobsforall · 2013-12-25T15:32:43+00:00

Rape, as far as I'm concerned, is when someone is forced to have sex (oral, anal, or vaginal) against their will by the use of threats or violence, or is forced to have sex in a situation where their consent could not possibly be obtained. Men and women can be both perpetrators and victims, and it may be heterosexual or homosexual.

As for false claims versus actual rapes, that would be impossible to know. I would think rapes would be slightly less frequent than rape claims, if only because false rape claims are a lesser crime, but that's completely a guess. It's really impossible to document; the best we can do is to keep the possibility in mind while keeping claims serious business.

NiceIce · 2013-12-25T19:17:18+00:00

For every actual rape, there are dozens of false rape claims.

Pecanpig · 2013-12-25T16:39:40+00:00

Based off of purely anecdotal evidence I'm going to say between 50/50 and 90/10, depending on location.

ENTP · 2013-12-25T18:30:50+00:00

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1o74n7/facts_and_statistics_about_false_rape_claims_a/

Title	What do you think is the ratio between actual rapes and false rape claims?
Author	bingbingboing
Upvotes	4
Comments	53
Date	December 25, 2013 9:46 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1tnzs7/what_do_you_think_is_the_ratio_between_actual/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/what-do-you-think-is-the-ratio-between-actual.1155212 https://theredarchive.com/post/1155212

Comments