Let’s set the record straight on false accusations; what’s the deal? Should a man really be worried about this ?

Smeg-life · 2025-05-09T17:32:18+00:00

You're not addressing the cost of a defense and a tendency of prosecutors to overcharge and then make a deal.

You're also not addressing the reputation and employment impact of an accusation as the accused does not receive anonymity.

A conviction is not needed to make a negative impact.

jjj2576 · 2025-05-09T17:15:13+00:00

PFA’s (Protection From Abuse Orders) have the lowest burden of proof in all of US Law. This means that a judge only needs to believe in that it is more likely (51%) to have committed the crime.

I was falsely accused of DV by my ex-wife, after multiple beatings from her. I was literally arrested with a black eye that she gave me. She wanted that silver bullet divorce. With PFAs having such a low burden of proof and the powerful cultural paradigm shifts that followed fourth wave feminism, women can legally falsely accuse men using PFAs with little repercussions.

Vegetable_Ad1732 · 2025-05-09T17:24:31+00:00

In 1996 the FBI, using DNA testing, found 25% of men convicted of rape were innocent. And these were men CONVICTED of rape. (See the link below).

https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/dnaevid.pdf

Even scarier. "Our participants also rated the extent to which they could imagine a situation in which they would make a(nother) false claim in the future—101 (39.6%) of them rated this item positively to differing degrees."

Lies and imagined intent to lie: Personality, sexism beliefs and false claims of assault | Current Psychology

Toxicoman · 2025-05-09T18:27:20+00:00

Yes. It's real and damaging. I went through it. Cost was high. Hard on my mental health.

That being said, I've witnessed it on the other side where the man lied about things his partner was doing. I think men are more on the receiving end of this.

I think in general, we all need to make better assessments of future partners.

We should throw up a post on this sub of what red flags to heavily look out for.

I was young and thought with my penis. My dick cost me so much money and time.

Expensive-Plantain86 · 2025-05-09T18:22:53+00:00

If you are arrested, you will be put in jail until your case is heard.

VladTheGlarus · 2025-05-09T18:00:21+00:00

According to FBI 4-5% of all allegations are proven to be true in court and around 9-10% are proven to be false. The vast majority remain unsolved - never reach court, dismissed by investigators, charges dropped, accuser's word vs accused's word, dismissed by judge, settled out of court and some get away with it.

Another study in the Midwest reviewing cases and reports from many counties and their precincts found out over 60% of all accusations to be false. In order to be found false all 3 investigators with decades of experience had to unanimously concur that the accusations were false.

Combine those 2 researches and the conclusion is that false accusations are the majority and more likely for the accuser to be lying than telling the truth. Which is horrible, it makes it harder for the real victims to get justice and there could be many falsely accused people in jail right now. + The stain on the reputation of many falsely accused could never be restored.

It's overwhelmingly women who flasely accuse men and they fail to acknowledge it, take measures, educate and police each other. Women as a whole should be named and shamed for this, just like we men name, shame, police and enforce justice on the rapists among us. But as usual, women fail to do accept any responsibility.

HypnoWyzard · 2025-05-09T21:27:44+00:00

Without giving any details of either case, I have 2 friends who served actual time on a plea bargain. The accusations didn't hold water at all, but here's what prosecutors told them. "You can fight it, at a cost of roughly 100k, but if you lose you serve 15+ years. Or plead guilty. Serve less time with no option of parole and much less expense." There is no affordable innocent option.

One is still in 25 years later. One got lucky and only served 5. The second wasn't a rape accusation. Just a photo.

Huffers1010 · 2025-05-09T22:32:24+00:00

The problem is not that you are likely to be convicted. Even just as a matter of statistics, that is unlikely, because rape is so hard to prosecute in any event (and nobody likes that reality, much as it is a reality.)

The problem is what will happen to you anyway. You will be publicly pilloried as an accused rapist, and there is very little you can do about it. You will lose huge amounts of money, your home, your relationships, your career, access to your kids (again: access to your kids) and it will take at least years, if ever, to put it all back again. You will likely never be fully financially compensated for the experience and you will almost certainly never recover your reputation unless the woman confesses to the lie, which, obviously, is very rare.

In the end this is not something that happens every day. Most men are not having this happen to them. It is not a good idea to succumb to hysteria. But we know it does happen. We don't accurately know how much it happens, because, again, women tend not to confess to doing it. Still, the best way to sum it up is that the process is the punishment. The accuser and the legal system can ruin your life without needing to convict you, and that's the real issue.

MastermindX · 2025-05-09T22:36:47+00:00

In Spain, in rape cases the accusation has "supposition of veracity" (which means that whatever she says is accepted as truth by default even in the absence of proof), as long as her declaration fulfills three requirements:

1) She has not been proved to be crazy or to have a specific motivation to lie.

2) Her story is objectively believable and doesn't contradict the laws of the universe.

3) She doesn't contradict herself or change her story.

If a woman makes up a story that accomplishes these three requirements (a very low bar), the man will be found guilty even with absolutely zero proof. And this happens in fact all the time, there's many many cases.

There's no other crime in Spain that has this special treatment, where the burden of proof is reversed.

Many countries in the west have similar laws. It's scary out there, be careful.

whatafoolishsquid · 2025-05-09T18:47:05+00:00

I know more men in my life who have been falsely accused of rape than I know women who have been raped.

50% of people say that all a woman has to do is say she was raped, and that’s all it takes to get a man sentenced to 20+ years. The other 50% say it’s not so easy and that actual rapists don’t ever see jail time

Neither of these is true. The burden of proof is increasingly low for rape cases but there still must be something there. However, I would argue that all a woman has to is say she was raped to ruin your life.

On the other end of the spectrum, rapists wind up in jail all the time but I'm sure some also go free due to what I mentioned before.

wonderboyobe · 2025-05-09T17:40:57+00:00

I think this has come up before: https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/s/mBQUmYai4c

The above link has a lot of references but it is long

danielm316 · 2025-05-09T20:16:09+00:00

Society does not value men as much as it values women, therefore if men have a problem unique to us, then society does not care. That is the big danger of false accusations, indifference.

wumbo-inator · 2025-05-09T20:45:47+00:00

If you’re referring EXCLUSIVELY AND ONLY to being convicted and put in prison for rape, the chances are low.

But also, anyone saying false accusations are rare and aren’t that dangerous by pointing to people who are falsely imprisoned are being dishonest. They are intentionally taking a narrow slice of false accusations and using that narrow slice to quantify the issue as a whole.

It would be like saying cancer is rare and then only pointing to some rare form of brain cancer while ignoring all other types of cancer.

The reality is that if you consider all times a man was accused of rape by a woman when it didn’t really happen, the prevalence increases drastically to a point where it is a real concern. What are the numbers? Well it’s impossible to know since we are now expanding it to outside of criminal data. But many men say it happened to them and many men say they know someone that it happened to, which leads me to believe it’s pretty common.

Similar to being a victim of sexual violence. Most of it isn’t caught by the law, and we really have to go off of people’s experiences. Some of them are lying and weren’t victimized. Some of them were victimized but don’t speak up about it. Some of them had something happen to them but they see it as being in some gray area and they don’t know if they were victimized or not.

Quantifying things that are hard to quantify is going to lead to numbers we don’t have much confidence in. But similar to sexual violence, we know it’s a lot and that’s enough to care.

Stunning-Yoghurt369 · 2025-05-09T19:34:35+00:00

The only way for a man to protect himself, is simply not to participate. If you get involved with a woman, on any level, there is always a real risk she can change. Women are Apex predators, and the laws enable them to be such.

World-Three · 2025-05-09T22:09:01+00:00

I guess a question should be reputational even if you're dismissing civil situations.

But if you were looking to be undefeated in a sport, would it matter how you lose if you're still considered to have lost?

That's a HUGE thing. I genuinely don't even like having any shame on my back, but to say you'd naively conduct your life without considering the possibility someone could condemn you for that... I would rather not.

I know someone who said their own family sold some of their stuff even when they were just in holding. He was innocent. So imagine the surprise when other innocent things are in question. Lose your job, partner, residence, car, custody? Yeah I'd always be worried. More than if I were guilty honestly. They don't put your life back together if you are innocent... They never do.

No-Knowledge-8867 · 2025-05-10T00:18:08+00:00

While I think some men have some level of concern with false imprisonment, I think most men worry about the social and financial impacts that an allegation can have well before any legal consequences arrive.

MensHour · 2025-05-09T22:01:12+00:00

This is a reality in Britain. I’m not sure it’s much better in the USA. I saw one US case where a guy spent 6 years in jail and then she said she made it up. No punishment for perjury. I’ve seen figures as high as 33% are mistakes and 33% are deliberately false. Naturally feminists dispute high figures. Even David Lisak 2010 couldn’t get the figures lower than 6% being false and he only got them that low by ignoring cases where they could have just done it. For example, if the alleged perpetrator was in jail at the time it’s false but if the suspect was capable of say long distance driving all night and then committing the offence it didn’t count as false.

Let’s give a well known UK case, link below. A man walked past a woman at a busy London train station. She claimed he with his fingers “digitally raped her”. They’re both on CCTV and nothing is seen. Nevertheless the case, such as it is, is proceeded with. After. 2 years he’s found not guilty of this baseless charge. He is named. She gets anonymity. Some have published her name and are in danger of prosecution. This is the kind of case that is taken seriously.

A couple of other things. You cannot be sent to jail for a civil accusation. It’s a feminist way of getting two bites of the cherry. Can’t get you in criminal court then they get you in civil court where you can be found liable (for money) because of the weak grounds of “balance of probability”. In other words she might be telling the truth. Not he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Indeed some women are told not to co-operate with a criminal prosecution because that might undermine the civil case if he’s found not guilty. In the UK no woman can be charged with rape as feminists had the law changed so women who rape men are charged with the lesser offence of “Causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent”.

It other words it often only takes the word of a woman even when there’s contrary evidence.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/man-falsely-accused-of-sexually-assault-on-actress-wants-apology-from-cps-over-bemusing-case-a6877036.html

genkernels · 2025-05-10T00:59:06+00:00

So this is something that people really need to make a more in-depth writeup about with research.

Firstly, it is absolutely the case that actual rapists rarely see jail time. Those that do typically have multiple victims prior to being convicted. In Canada especially, as with all crimes, rapists rarely get long sentences. Proving sexual assault is extremely difficult because of the private nature of the crime. Victims are typically more vulnerable than the average person and less capable of making a credible accusation.

In the extreme case you can look at the situation in the UK which is simultaneously suffering from a massive coverup of systemic rape, and also some of the most insane proposals for female perpetration of crime. These things are in no way contradictory. There is no reasonable argument that actual rapists are typically imprisoned in the UK.

--

When it comes to false accusations, the first thing you need to understand is that most false allegations are allegations of domestic violence. The reason for this is that Temporary Restraining Orders or as jjj2576 said PFA's (same thing different jurisdiction) are useful in divorce and custody proceedings. The second thing that you need to understand is that the process is the punishment. The third thing you should understand is that when people lie, they lie for the same reasons about serious things as they might lie about less serious things.

As far as actually being falsely convicted of rape, odds are innocent people don't end up convicted, even when prosecuted. That being said, a the proportion of those who are convicted despite being innocent is higher for sexual assault than for other crimes. As Vegetable_ad1732 noted, this is a worryingly large proportion of those who are convicted. Yeah, it's pretty nasty. However it isn't the main issue, for most jurisdictions the rules of evidence do actually function to keep innocent people out of jail more or less if they don't plea (which the system greatly incentivizes, particularly in the US). This is not the case with all false accusations, particularly under Indias 498A (DV related), but it is largely true of allegations of sexual assault.

That being said, feminists are working on that. You may have heard of the Gomeshi trial in Canada, where a man was exonerated from a particularly nasty case of witness collusion on the basis of some text messages. Shortly thereafter, Canada changed the law to make evidence of a sexual nature that might otherwise disprove a witness' testimony available to the prosecutors and likely complaining witness(es).

A much more dangerous thing is an allegation of sexual assault that is designed not for the purpose of obtaining a false conviction.

--

But of course I'm responding to a malicious person who claimed:

False accusations of sexual assault account for about 2-10% of all sexual assault cases

Which at this point is so well known to be ridiculous that it isn't worth going into here, the response in the link is good enough.

gReAKfrEaK111 · 2025-05-10T14:12:18+00:00

It's a pretty big problem. It may be unlikely to happen to you but if it does it's very bad because the current narrative gives the benefit of the doubt to the woman

tarmacc · 2025-05-09T19:59:36+00:00

There's a lot of in-between, not all consequences are legal.

I did get blacklisted from my industry because a coworker was blackout drunk(didn't seem like it to me), and pulled town her pants and told me to fuck her. She doesn't remember that part, only coming to.

The_one_who-repents · 2025-05-10T04:26:06+00:00

In the military a woman that has consensual sex after one drink can claim rape, if they do desire afterwards,

Heavy_Consequence441 · 2025-05-10T17:18:04+00:00

I think it's fine to be worried, but don't let that worry consume you. Ie don't be afraid to talk to women, touch them when the vibe is right, etc etc

Lets_Remain_Logical · 2025-05-11T11:28:16+00:00

My ex gf was so jealous, that after I broke up "abandoned her", she couldn't bare seeing me with other women. I have been accused of everything and anything. The kicker? Everybody believed her and went in protective mode. I had 0 chance to be heard. I went from a beloved, desired and respected man in a community to a pariah. Wome'nin that community kept communicating between them that I was an "abusive dick".

Now.... After reading this, please tell me, how much per cent do you think I am innocent and how much per cent you think I am a real abuser?

Once the allegations are made, there will ALWAYS be a doubt. And that's the problem' you don't have to call the police if you killed someone socially. Actually the risk is that they would commit suicide.

Do you know how many good guys got destroyed like that? Their biggest mistake was trusting the wrong person.

Now.... They are all nice at the beginning! I can trust no-one!

And the other women, instead of understanding how the mistrust is affecting their own world and begin to call out..... They are blinded!

KhadgarIsaDreadlord · 2025-05-09T18:53:13+00:00

Extreme opinions are never relyable. Very few rape accusations lead to court let alone convictions. It is very unlikely to happen but totally possible and has happened numerous times. False accusations ( of anything, not just rape) need a huge crackdown and the standard of evidence needs to be raised. My philosophy is that while far from ideal, a criminal potentionally running free for a time is preferable to an innocent person potentionally being punished for a crime they didn't do.

DaJosuave · 2025-05-09T19:25:09+00:00

babno · 2025-05-10T02:32:32+00:00

In truth, both are right to an extent.

On the one hand, ~90% of alleged rapes do not end in a conviction, and obviously there is a mix with significant numbers of both innocent and guilty accused in there.

On the other hand, of the ~10%, some of them are convicted on word alone. And even if you're part of "lucky" group of innocent people not convicted, you're still out thousands in lawyers fees, probably fired from your job and unemployable for 6 months-2 years while your case in ongoing, you were potentially jailed for a period of time after an initial arrest, and more. And all that is very likely to happen based on nothing but the accusers word.

Should you be worried? I would say probably worry about it about as much as a car crash. They happen not too rarely, but most are quite minor, but you still want to wear your seatbelt and practice careful driving because their is a risk of death. Personally I believe that 90% of false accusers you should be able to see coming a mile away, and just stay the fuck away from them. But maybe that's not possible for whatever reason (crazy family member, blind roommate situation, etc) and in such situations take precautions of recording when you can, having witnesses to your interactions, and making a record of irrational behavior.

OmNamoShivaya44 · 2025-05-11T13:23:55+00:00

YES!!! He needs to be very wary and careful. Women are EVIL VILE creatures!!!!!!!!

tilldeathdoiparty · 2025-05-09T18:02:22+00:00

Be cautious about who you are getting close to, many men are too eager to chase the attention but not asking critical questions to see what their intentions are.

It’s not a foregone conclusion that you will be accused, so remember it is a small percentage of the population.

This sub will convince you that there is risk in even saying hi to a lady, but it’s all blown way out of proportion on this sub and there isn’t much that can be done about it.

There’s a risk with everything, but if you live in fear of the risks you’ll be like Chuck off Better Call Saul living in the dark avoiding people for the rest of your life and that sounds terrible to me.

Title	Let’s set the record straight on false accusations; what’s the deal? Should a man really be worried about this ?
Author	Necessary-Decision-2
Upvotes	107
Comments	88
Date	May 9, 2025 5:10 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1kinrwv/lets_set_the_record_straight_on_false_accusations/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/lets-set-the-record-straight-on-false-accusations.1551807 https://theredarchive.com/post/1551807

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