AROUND 50% OF RAPE ACCUSATIONS ARE FALSE
“A review of 556 rape accusations filed against Air Force personnel found that 27% of women later recanted. Then 25 criteria were developed based on the profile of those women, and then submitted to three independent reviewers to review the remaining cases. If all three reviewers deemed the allegation was false, it was categorized as false. As a result, 60% of all allegations were found to be false. One of those women who later recanted, many didn’t admit the allegation was false until just before taking a polygraph test. Others admitted it was false only after having failed a polygraph test.”
In a nine-year study of 109 rapes reported to the police in a Midwestern city, Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin reported that in 41% of the cases the complainants eventually admitted that no rape had occurred.
In a follow-up study of rape claims filed over a three-year period at two large Midwestern universities, Kanin found that of 64 rape cases, 50% turned out to be false. Among the false charges, 53% of the women admitted they filed the false claim as an alibi.
According to a 1996 Department of Justice report, “in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI, …the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing.” It should be noted that rape involves a forcible and non-consensual act, and a DNA match alone does not prove that rape occurred. So the 25% figure substantially underestimates the true extent of false allegations.
According to former Colorado prosecutor Craig Silverman, “For 16 years, I was a kick-ass prosecutor who made most of my reputation vigorously prosecuting rapists. …I was amazed to see all the false rape allegations that were made to the Denver Police Department. …A command officer in the Denver Police sex assaults unit recently told me he placed the false rape numbers at approximately 45%.”
According to the FBI, about 95,000 forcible rapes were reported in 2004. Based on the statements and studies cited above, some 47,000 American men are falsely accused of rape each year.
Source: McDowell CP. False allegations. Forensic Science Digest, Vol. 11, No. 4, December 1985
Source: Kanin EJ. An alarming national trend: False rape allegations. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1994. https://www.aals.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Bowen-Kanin-False-Rape-Empirical.pdf
Source: Connors E, Lundregan T, Miller N, McEwen T. Convicted by juries, exonerated by science: Case studies in the use of DNA evidence to establish innocence after trial. June 1996. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/dnaevid.pdf
Source: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/violent_crime/forcible_rape.html
