If there’s a false accusation, there’s an addict. Unfortunately, such accusations in the area of sexual assaults are not rare.
“False reports of sexual assault are extremely rare… [According to the U.S. Department of Justice] only 2.5 percent of reports turn out to be false.”
So claimed Beth Hassett, executive director of Women Escaping a Violent Environment, in commenting on Laurie Ann Martinez’s arrest for staging a rape, reported in the “under watch” section above. With due respect to women who have been sexually assaulted, of which possibly 75% go unreported (some sources claim 95%), false accusations are one of the most effective means by which addicts wield power. This is especially true of those who cannot easily physically overpower others, including women.
I have written at least twice about such accusations. The Top Story in the first issue of TAR involved a likely false accusation of rape concerning NBA star Kobe Bryant. The Top Story in issue # 20 discussed what turned out to be a false accusation of rape of then 27-year-old stripper Crystal Gayle Mangum by several members of the Duke University lacrosse team. (In a classic case of prosecutorial misconduct for which he was later disbarred, District Attorney Mike Nifong was not only complicit in the false accusations, but also hid evidence that would have quickly exonerated the players.)
Hard statistics are exceedingly difficult to come by. Often, addict is pitted against addict, which can make it impossible for anyone other than those directly involved to ever ascertain the truth. That said I suspected at least a quarter of such accusations are false when I found an article written by libertarian feminist Wendy McElroy supporting my estimate.
In a piece entitled “False Rape Accusations May Be More Common Than Thought” published by the Independent Institute in May 2006, McElroy argues that false accusations of rape are common. She points out that the crime of “bearing false witness,” i.e. making a false accusation, is rarely tracked or punished. While “politically correct feminists” make unsubstantiated claims that such false accusations comprise only 2 percent of all reports, men’s rights websites point to research suggesting a rate as high as 41 percent. Arguing for the idea that the truth is somewhere in the middle (but 10 times the figure Hassett claims), McElroy quotes a 1996 FBI study reporting that “out of roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases since 1989, about 2,000 tests have been inconclusive, about 2,000 tests have excluded the primary suspect, and about 6,000 have ‘matched’ or included the primary suspect.” She adds that the authors reporting the FBI study, Peter Neufeld and Barry C. Scheck, co-founders of the Innocence Project (which seeks to exonerate those falsely imprisoned for allegedly committing all manner of felonious crimes), pointed out the percentages remained constant over the seven years ending in 1996 and “the National Institute of Justice’s informal survey of private laboratories reveals a strikingly similar 26 percent exclusion rate.”
Then where does the 2 percent figure come from? McElroy found it in Susan Brownmiller’s 1975 book on sexual assault, Against Our Will and elsewhere, but never with a citation or “with only a vague attribution to ‘FBI’ sources.” To the contrary, she quotes a leading scholar on rape law, Professor of Law Michelle Anderson of Villanova University Law School (now Dean of City University of New York): “No study has ever been published which sets forth an evidentiary basis for the two percent false rape complaint thesis.”
McElroy cites a few small studies, one from an unnamed small Midwestern city and two from major universities, concluding that 45-50 percent of rape accusations were false. McElroy concludes that while the 50 percent figure seems high, “False accusations are not rare. They are common.” Any addictionologist, who grasps the fundamental idea of alcoholic egomania and the consequential need to wield capricious power over others, would agree. Beth Hassett and other “politically correct” feminists, please take note.