Today we’re going to examine one of the most prevalent and enduring rape myths: Rape survivors – and women especially – lie.
It’s easy to understand why this myth is so prevalent. If someone you know is accused of rape, that’s a really upsetting and confusing thing, especially if it’s someone you love or respect. You first thought might well be to think ‘but I know him, he’s lovely – he’d never do anything like that!’ You might feel that the accuser is trying to ruin his life.
So what are the statistics? How likely is it that an accusation is false? Lets focus on rape for now, as it’s an area where we have some really clear research.
In England and Wales each year there are roughly 85,000 rapes of adult women, and 12,000 of adult men*. That means one adult is raped every hour, just in England and Wales.
Of those, only around 15% are reported to the police. The main reasons survivors give for not reporting, or for not telling other people in their lives like friends and family, include:
- Fear of not being believed,
- Shame,
- Feelings of guilt, and
- Fear of being judged
Those are not unrealistic fears. Survivors are still routinely disbelieved by the police, other statutory bodies, their employers, and their friends and family.
False accusations do happen, but they are extremely rare. Around 4% ** of accusations are deemed to be ‘false’ – a similar rate as for other types of crime.
This brilliant graphic shows just how unlikely it is that someone would be falsely accused of rape.
(Source: Enliven Project https://sarahbeaulieu.me/the-truth-about-false-accusation)
So why do so many of us believe that false accusations are rampant? Some of the factors that contribute to this include:
Media reports: Looking at the media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that false accusations are commonplace. The truth is that the media reports things that are uncommon – so a false accusation is often considered newsworthy precisely because it is so rare. Rape on the other hand is common, so rapes don’t tend to get reported unless they are unusual in some way. That means that we end up with an imbalance in the way rape is reported, with the tiny number of false reports getting much more coverage.
Confusion about the justice system: For most people, a ‘not guilty’ verdict means the defendant is innocent, but that’s not always the case. If someone is found ‘not guilty’ that doesn’t mean the survivor is lying. It just means that the jury didn’t feel that there was enough evidence to find the defendant guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Rape cases are notoriously difficult to get convictions for, and only about a third of the cases that come to court result in a conviction.
Research shows that the majority of false accusations are made by young people – aged 21 or under. Around half of these young people had some kind of mental health difficulties, and often they had been the victim of a crime – just not the one they reported. There are a lot of reasons why someone might do this, including pressure from a perpetrator, or needing to get access to support services, but not feeling able to report the actual offence.
Survivors may also retract a true allegation, and claim that they had been lying when they made the report. This is often due to pressure from the perpetrator, or his friends and family.
So what about those few false accusations? It’s still going to ruin his life, right?
Being falsely accused of any crime is incredibly upsetting, and a person who has been falsely accused may need long term support to help them to deal with the impact.
That said, typically, false allegations are quickly discovered by police – usually well before anyone is arrested, or even questioned. More importantly though, as a society we tend to disbelieve rape survivors. Survivors who speak out about their rapes are often told that they are lying. This attitude means that if an allegation is made – whether true or false – the chances are that people will believe that the alleged rapist is the one telling the truth.
We only need to look at the careers of powerful men accused of rape, to know that an accusation of sexual violence rarely has a long term impact on a mans life. It may be deeply upsetting, but it is very unlikely to ruin his life.
False accusations are vanishingly rare. This means that while any accusation must be properly investigated, a position of believing victim/survivors is not only justifiable, but is the most appropriate and useful position to take. That doesn’t mean just accepting anything and everything a victim/survivor says; it mean not assuming that she is lying.
Want to know more about how to balance the needs of survivors and alleged perpetrators? I’ll talk about this in a later post.
* the stats don’t break down rapes of Non Binary people, because our current law doesn’t allow for Non Binary as a formal gender identity. It’s worth noting too that Transgender people, especially Trans women and Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Trans people, are at much greater risk of being raped that their Cis (non Trans) counterparts.
** This figure varies depending on which data is used. I’ve used 4% as what i feel is a reasonable average of the many different reports, however the true figure may be around 2%, or even lower.
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