TIL Four different research studies have found that more than 40% of rape accusations are false

[–]antilopes 30 points31 points32 points 7 years ago (28 children) | Copy Link

[–]Fuckoff555 8 points9 points10 points 7 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]antilopes 13 points14 points15 points 7 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]Standard_Rules_Apply 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]antilopes 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Jonmad17 3 points4 points5 points 7 years ago (10 children) | Copy Link

[–]antilopes 5 points6 points7 points 7 years ago* (8 children) | Copy Link

the problem with many of the lower estimates is that they tend to only consider prosecuted rape charges, as opposed to accusations in themselves.

No. Estimates of false accusations always referer to the number of complaints recorded by police, because it is a relatively precisely defined and undisputed number.
I did see a survey intended to gauge false complaints, I don't recall the result. There is no good data on unreported false complaints that I'm aware of.

The US has a prosecution to conviction rate of about 3/4 due to plea bargaining and concurrent sentencing. Other western countries prosecutors typically are given a 50% conviction rate target when deciding which cases to prosecute.
The UK famously dropped their target to 45% or 40% in recent years, with bad stuff happening because the prosecutors were overloaded and police were pressured. So they quietly went back to 50%.

Prosecution behavior and targets have not been altered by MeToo so far as I know. It is a social movement not a police or court thing.

the vast majority of #metoo accusations aren't brought to court.

Yes. Almost none are taken to police, let alone court. The vast majority of ordinary complaints made to police are not brought to court either, 4% in the US are referred to prosecutors, quite a few are dropped without going to court, and 2% are convicted of a felony.
Less than half of reports involve even interviewing an accused let alone an arrest.

BJS statistics presented by RAINN:
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system

Despite this sub talking about MeToo so much, people here generally are unaware of its significance except to accused people especially public figures.

In fact it is very rare for MeToo declarations to involve a public figure. There are only 200 of them on the NY Times list after a year, and those cases are spread over 30 years or so.

It is also very rare for MeToo statements to involve any named person. Nearly always it is not about the person who did it, and they will seldom even know the statement was made.

[–]Jonmad17 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago (7 children) | Copy Link

How do you estimate the number of false rape accusations when the only data are number of accusations, number of charges, and number of sentences? There's no real way to determine what parentage of the gap between the accusations and the charges end up being false unless you extrapolate from the objective sentencing numbers, which means pre-selecting for instances where the evidence was convincing enough for prosecutors to bring charges (i.e. instances where the rape most likely occurred).

Estimates of false accusations always referer to the number of complaints recorded by police

An accusation in the 21st century doesn't consist of going the police. How many rape accusations are levied on social media or in HR departments across the country? It's a flawed methodology.

In fact it is very rare for MeToo declarations to involve a public figure.

Do you have data on this, because in my anecdotal experience I've seen sexual impropriety accusations against men shoot up significantly since 2017. #metoo trickled down to my job and my circle of friends and family.

[–]antilopes 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago* (6 children) | Copy Link

The NY Times keep a list of [edit: MeToo accusations they have mentioned in the last year], there are just over 200 after a year, going back up to 30 years or so. Say 20 years, that is 10 per year.
500 people are hit by lightning in the US every year. You are 50x more likely to be hit by lightning than end up in the quality press on a MeToo allegation. Odds are worse in the gutter press, I saw a claim there is a list with 400 cases.

Depending on the measurement of "rape" used, only 10% - 33% of rapes are reported to police. 33% is an outlier, the US BJS statistics based on NCVS. Most other surveys find more like 15% - 20%.

There has been hardly any work done on measuring unreported false accusations. They are significant. I have no clue whether there is a higher or lower proportion of them than in reports of rape to police.

FA can be studied relatively cheaply by analysing old case files (e.g. Kanin '94) but it is much better to get a police department to run a project on it such as the MAD project using police in eight US cities which found 7-8% FA. Police, prosecutors and support organisations are trained to do the extra analysis required to try to identify FA rather than just drop cases with dodgy evidence. This is not cheap but it has been done a few times. The Victoria, Australia study is another one. It found 2% provable FA, and 6% or more false or probably false. General cops estimated more like 10% false, specialist sexual offences detectives estimated lower.

It isn't surprising if more people are speaking up now. That was one of the goals of the movement. Obviously there will be a backlash, and I'd guess some extra opportunistic false claims.

[–]Jonmad17 2 points3 points4 points 7 years ago (5 children) | Copy Link

The NY Times keep a list of accusations, there are just over 200 after a year, going back up to 30 years or so. Say 20 years, that is 10 per year.

This is a profoundly stupid point. The only reason the number is that small is because it consists primarily of famous men, who are pretty rare among the general population. Do you honestly perceive the #metoo movement as being isolated to instances of powerful media moguls pressuring young interns to have sex with them? The movement has had a profound effect on the sexual mores of average people all across the western world. I know more people who have been fired in the past two years for sexual harassment than in every other previous year of my life combined. I'm not sure if there have been any studies around this, but i'd be flabbergasted to find out that charges of sexual assault an harassment haven't gone up since #metoo became a thing.

There has been hardly any work done on measuring unreported false accusations. They are significant. I have no clue whether there is a higher or lower proportion of them than in reports of rape to police.

This is a really important point. If instances of sexual assault were always dealt with by procedures with a presumption of innocence, no one would be complaining. Once you move it to bureaucracies with a lower burden of proof (HR and Title 9 complaints), or to social media with literally no burden of proof, then the higher number of accusations could just be accounted for by the fact that women are allowed to make false claims without any potential repercussion. The police statistic is almost completely irrelevant to the question of false accusations in a world where most accusations and consequences for these sorts of crimes are not dealt with by police at all. Very few #metoo complaints were ever brought to court, yet most of them ended up costing the accused quite a bit.

[–]antilopes 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago* (4 children) | Copy Link

There is plenty of repercussion for a false claim. It can be and is sued under libel and slander laws, with huge financial penalties. If the case has merit it would usually be settled secretly out of court. The accused gets privacy and the accuser avoids legal costs and being made a dick of in public. I don't know how you could measure secret libel / slander settlements for false accusation except for asking for anecdotal impressions from lawyers who would get those cases.

I have heard libel & slander are harder to sue for in the US because of free speech. The UK has strict laws though and it still is unusual to sue for false accusation. I bet imagine there are a lot more out of court settlements though.

There has been time for the effect of MeToo on HR and police accusation statistics to show up, I don't know if they are published yet. I would expect a rise for HR at least since they are responsive to social attitudes. Much less so for police.

[–]Jonmad17 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

In the US the prosecution has to not only demonstrate that the defendant lied, but the burden is on the plaintiff to prove that it was a deliberate lie, which isn't possible in many sexual assault cases. There are also no federal defamation laws, and fewer than half of all states have criminal defamation laws in their books (which are rarely enforced). So in a #BelieveAllWomen America there's literally no social or legal recourse for a man that was falsely accused unless he can actually demonstrate that his accuser lied. And even in instances where proof of a maliciously false accusation is there (the guy who was accused by mattress girl and the Canadian radio host who was accused of rape), those men are still considered social pariahs and their accusations are still taken seriously be feminists on social media despite their exonerations. It's a legal quagmire, and a pretty indefensible moral panic.

[–]antilopes 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

There is no winner in an accusation war, usually both sides lose significantly. There is often collateral damage too.

That is why most raped men and women STFU. They often eventually tell one or two of their closest friends if they have friends who can keep their mouth shut, after a few days or months. But that does not affect the reputation of the man unless they leak.

US sources often quote the BJS estimate that a third of rapes are reported to police but other sources usually give 10% - 20% which is more in line with what I have seen.

I wouldn't call it an indefensible moral panic, more a long-overdue cleanout. Consider Larry Nassar, the gymnastics doctor. Don't consider the individual person, consider the system that let him get away with that for so long, and which continued to protect him after multiple allegations came in, and then appointed someone from the law firm who had obstructed his removal to head the organisation.

Weinstein is spectacularly gross and abusive but look how long he was untouchable, despite accusations being made in the press in some cases.
Any number of people have described a severely abusive culture in Hollywood which is now getting some attention at last. The same is happening in other abusive cultures such as classical music. Ballet is just starting now. Careers are being destroyed, reputations ruined.

Good riddance. Careers were always been destroyed, reputations were always being ruined, lives wrecked sometimes. The only difference it used to be a larger number of powerless young people who didn't register. Now it is a tiny number of powerful older men and some parts of society are losing their minds. Organisations are learning they can no longer protect the golden goose by sacrificing everybody the goose shits on. This is a good thing.

Of course there will be abuses of the MeToo mood. There were abuses of the culture of silence too, I don't have a problem with making more of a balance.

[–]Jonmad17 2 points3 points4 points 7 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

The fact that most rape accusers don't speak up has little to do with the percentage of rape accusations that end up being false. People always bring up the two as if they're connected, but they're really not. A decent percentage of rape accusations can end up being false and most rape victims can remain silent. Those two facts can coexist.

Good riddance. Careers were always been destroyed, reputations were always being ruined, lives wrecked sometimes.

The last major American movement where people lost their jobs and ended up being blacklisted by an entire industry even when evidence ended up exonerating them was the McCarthy hearings. If it's a long overdue movement for some sort of justice, why doesn't Jian Ghomeshi have his job back after being exonerated? Why doesn't Garrison Keillor have his job back? Why is John Lasseter still in the process of being fired? I have a very difficult time perceiving this as anything other than a political tool used by gender theorists who are upset the people in those positions of power tended to be disproportionately male. It's not a conspiracy theory if people flat-out claim that that's what they're doing.

Of course there will be abuses of the MeToo mood. There were abuses of the culture of silence too, I don't have a problem with making more of a balance.

Why are you posting here if you feel this way? Redressing a past wrong by inflicting new ones isn't justice, it's the ethics of revenge. Applying the concept of "balance" to justice is really, really ridiculous. It's eye-for-an-eye thinking.

[–]antilopes1 point 7 years ago [recovered] | Copy Link

A decent percentage of rape accusations can end up being false and most rape victims can remain silent.

Agreed.

Redressing a past wrong by inflicting new ones isn't justice, it's the ethics of revenge.

It isn't a past wrong, it is ongoing.

"Balance" does not mean avenging someone else's injury by falsely attacking a new person.

For that tiny portion of MeToo statements which identify an individual in a position of power, it gives employers more to think about when deciding cases of SH than the traditional "the company is too small for both these people, so which one will cost us less to lose?"

They can decide to ignore any sexual complaint that is not backed up by a court conviction. No wait, that has not been an option for decades in most countries.

Attitudes have slowly changed over the last 50 years, with changes in employment law making a difference. Sexual harrassment did not even exist as a legal concept previously.
If you didn't touch you could do as you like, and far too many people did.

When sexual harrasment employment legislation was introduced there was the kind of weeping and wailing we now see again with MeToo, with pronouncements the balance of power had been tipped to far and crazy women were now goiing to take over the world.

Of course there were abuses. There are abuses of everything significant yet humanity carries on somehow. Tax laws for example. Billions and zillions of dollars skimmed off by the 1%, but do you spend your day enraged about it? Climate change will fuck you up far worse than MeToo will, but how much work do you put into fighting it?

Externally, MeToo is nothing more than a social change in what is considered acceptable behavior. No laws were harmed in the making of this movement. Police, prosecutors and courts have not been asked to do anything differently, let alone use different internal rules or work under different law.

I don't see a calamity approaching. Kav's accuser Ford got a hearing. Trump and many others thought her plausible but it was decided to ignore her evidence, for better or worse.
The other accusers were not given consideration, one for insignificance and two for lack of plausibility.
The anonymous letter seems plausible but it was correctly given zero weight, as was Munro's anonymous email. The system worked.

It is just part of growing up for the public to understand politicians do not always tell the truth, and neither do women.

[–]DavidByron2 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[+]1488Mansplainer1 points 7 years ago* [recovered] (12 children) | Copy Link

Ignoring that 90% outlier, his estimates are on the high end of reasonable. Unfounded accusations of rape amount to about 2%. These are accusations which never get taken seriously and include things like "aliens raped me" and cases that are immediately and obviously false.

Then there's about another 6% of allegations deemed false during the police investigation because either the bitch recants or it becomes provably false in some way. That takes us to the widely publicized FBI estimate of 8%. This can be thought of as the lower bound.

About 50% of allegations do not end in conviction for one reason or another. This would be the upper bound. Obviously not all allegations that fail to get convictions are false, but likewise not every allegation that isn't an obvious fabrication is really true. Fair-minded statisticians have suggested the real number is likely somewhere in the 30-40% range.

Of course everything I wrote above is concerning allegations reported to police. While we have no data from which to make good estimates, it's safe to assume that media-only allegations are significantly less likely to be true than ones reported to police.

It should go without saying, any propaganda on (((wikipedia))) can be safely ignored.

[–]antilopes 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago* (11 children) | Copy Link

[+]1488Mansplainer1 points 7 years ago* [recovered] (5 children) | Copy Link

You're confused. What you're referencing is the 2% of rape cases that go to verdict end in acquittal. That's something very different than what I'm talking about.

Approximately 50% of rape allegations made to police fail to end in conviction, for whatever reason (cops never took it seriously, woman recanted, DA declined to file charges, case was dropped at some point for any number of reasons, acquittal, etc.) This is a useful stat because it's the upper bound for false allegations, since virtually all allegations that end in conviction are probably true.

[–]antilopes 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago* (4 children) | Copy Link

Sorry I swapped do/do not. It is corrected now.
Apart from that I am very familiar with these numbers.

What is your source? It is overstating the conviction rate of police complaints by a factor of 25. That will cause you mental problems, if you are living in what you think is a world where any random false complaint has a good chance of getting you jailed.

RAINN uses Bureau of Justice Statistics as a source where possible, they give sources for each figure. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system

In the US 4% of rape complaints to police are forwarded to prosecutors. They are not all taken to court but 2% end up as felony convictions.

BTW The Wikipedia entry has 43 references and five recommended books or studies for background reading.
I haven't noticed anything too egregious in the entry, and I have read several studies in this field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape

[+]1488Mansplainer1 points 7 years ago* [recovered] (3 children) | Copy Link

Well if you're saying up to 98% of allegations are false, I'm happy to just believe your numbers and stop arguing. That's a lot more than I previously thought!

[–]antilopes 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago* (2 children) | Copy Link

They are not my numbers, they are the numbers anyone with experience in this field knows. Possibly the most widely known set of numbers on this subject that has ever existed on the face of the Earth, and they have not changed much in the last decade or two so far as I know.

False rape estimates have room for disagreement but there are also objective facts with very little room for disagreement - the numbers of complaints, arrests, forwarding to prosecutors, prosecutions, felony convictions, prison sentences.

The thing you should be paying close attention to is not the numbers nor what they mean.

The much more important thing for you personally is to try to work out by what process you arrived at your earlier opinion. What was your information source, and what other information did you get from there?

But most importantly how did you choose to believe that source, and what other sources were chosen by similar means?

[+][deleted] 7 years ago* (1 child) | Copy Link

[permanently deleted]

[–]antilopes 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]DavidByron2 -1 points0 points1 point 7 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–]antilopes 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago* (3 children) | Copy Link

All judgments about the use of "unfounded" are made by police.
The FBI makes non-binding recommendations about the use of "unfounded" in closing cases.
The variation in "unfounded" % below shows how independent police are:

Philadelphia 18%
Chicago 17%
San Antonio 14%
Dallas 11%
New York 8%
Los Angeles 6%
San Diego 6%
Detroit 4%
Phoenix 2%
Houston 0.5%

The % of reports to police which do not end in conviction is 2% in the US, not 50%. That is after subtracting 8% for unfounded complaints

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

... unfounded complaints, which include various things including false allegation against an unidentified person or an identified person, and incidents which may have been awful but did not breach any law.

Source: FBI UCR definitions.

Also allegations withdrawn.

Some of those should go in "unfounded" after verification. Others are false retractions, but if it is clear no prosecution is possible there is little incentive to pursue it so they can end up in unfounded too.

allegations withdrawn, which is more common the closer the rapist is to the victim.

[–]DavidByron2 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]antilopes 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

If they did then they would be bringing prosecutions against those people.

That is not true in any jurisdiction I am aware of. Police have discretion under the law on which complaints to investigate, arrest, charge, and prosecute. Typically discretion is allowed on the grounds of public interest and efficient use of police resources. There may be other reasons. You can look up the law for any jurisdiction.

Police have internal rules for their use of exceptions e.g. they may be required to seek approval from a given level of seniority.

Prosecutions for false accusation that are posted in this sub usually are for perjury or perverting the course of justice I imagine. Perjury and I imagine perverting the course of justice requires proving intention, which is hard.
The minor charge of wasting police time is often used since it is much easier to prove, and still has the outcome of officially marking the complainant as an unreliable witness, and recording the facts of that case for the enlightenment of future investigators.

Police prosecute a tiny minority of rapists (4% of complaints in the US, a bit more in the UK), and a tiny minority of false complainants.

One obvious major reason for the similarity is difficulty reaching the standard of proof required. There are others.

Police do not make a judgement on whether an accusation was false.

Obviously they do make a judgment when they prosecute.
Also obviously, for every prosecution there is a much greater number of complaints they judged false and tried but failed to build an adequate case to prosecute, all things considered.

The extent to which suspected false complaints are pursued with the aim of making a prosecution for false complaint varies by jurisdiction, as do the recording classifications available and the actual recording practices of local police. Certainly it is common for suspected FR and FA to not be investigated further once it is clear the complaint will not be substantiated.

In the Victoria, Australia study police judged 2.1% of complaints to be false with enough evidence to either prosecute or to threaten prosecution if the complaint was not withdrawn.
(Their total false or probably false ratio estimate was much higher, 6% by SA specialists and 10% by ordinary cops).

My understanding is the threat of prosecution is commonly used to limit the damage caused by a complainant who has dug themselves in too deep over a lie. Nobody gets prosecuted but it saves the accused from arrest or court.

The UK CPS did a study on FA. 8.2% of reports had been judged by police at the time to be false reports (not false accusations). Reviewing the files of 1200 closed cases from a 1 year period they found 2.5% met a high standard of falsehood. I don't recall the wording, it was not provable beyond doubt though.

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/false-allegations-rape-andor-domestic-abuse-see-guidance-charging-perverting-course

[–]DavidByron2 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]clickerzeros 7 points8 points9 points 7 years ago* (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]antilopes 2 points3 points4 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Historybuffman 2 points3 points4 points 7 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

Research and studies on the same subject can vary wildly due to many factors, such as: evaluating data that was gathered in different ways, selective picking of data that suits their bias (cherry picking), using different criteria for terms, etc.

For example, many of the very low (1%-10% false) researches only consider a "false report" as one that went to court and the accused was found not guilty. However, they tend to ignore reports that are thrown out by police due to no proof, reports that are declined to be picked up by the AG due to lack of evidence, etc. That is how they can say something like "out of 1000 reports of rape, only about 10 will be proven false", AND "only 50 out of 1000 rapists will face jail time for their crime".

Both of these bother me, and possibly a lot of people here, due to how the data is presented. The first due to the explanation above, and the second because it presumes all reported rapes are true.

[–]antilopes 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

many of the very low (1%-10% false) researches only consider a "false report" as one that went to court and the accused was found not guilty.

No, and it is disturbing you have been upvoted. I imagine you just garbled that accidentally rather than being so wrong but I'll take it literally. Being found not guilty happens in about half of court cases in English speaking countries outside the US.

Acquittal has very little relation to false accusations. Some acquittals must be FA but I'd think the police are better placed to detect FA than courts. If the accused can disprove a claim they would normally do that to police so the case is dropped rather than paying for a defence in court.

The vast bulk of detected FA are detected before an arrest has been made, in fact most of them are detected without even interviewing an accused.

In the US, after subtracting 8% for variously unfounded complaints only 4% of complaints are sent to prosecution, and 2% are convicted.

2% is also the % of individually provable false reports found in a few studies - UK CPS 2010, Victoria police 2008. They are not all prosecuted though, it depends on the policy of the country. The total FA rate is usually estimated at at least 6%, and 8% is more common in modern studies. There must be undetected FA too, but nobody has an estimate for those and there is no evidence they are a significant factor.

[–]20cansofSpam 1 point2 points3 points 7 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]DavidByron2 0 points1 point2 points 7 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

Title	TIL Four different research studies have found that more than 40% of rape accusations are false
Author	swiet
Upvotes	22
Comments	35
Date	November 11, 2018 9:53 PM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/9w7va3/til_four_different_research_studies_have_found/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/til-four-different-research-studies-have-found.890319 https://theredarchive.com/post/890319

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