Fact Checking Feminist Claims About False Rape Accusations: Parts 1, 2 & 3

'Numerous high-profile cases showing how easily innocent men can be ruined, imprisoned, and killed based on a woman’s lie.'

By Toy Soldiers: I began blogging 14 years ago, and while I have not posted often in recent years, I think my posts serve as a time capsule of modern feminism. Specifically, one can go through my posts and see how feminists slowly change their arguments about men’s issues. Back in 2005, feminists resoundingly rejected the notion that 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused by the age of 18. Part of the reason I started a blog was due to feminists moderating or banning me for mentioning that statistic. Yet today one will find some feminists slinging that statistic around,quite conveniently forgetting, even denying, they ever rejected it. One might even find feminists presenting it as if it were discovered via feminist research (it was not).
A similar thing happens with domestic violence against men. Feminists rejected statistics showing that men represented more than 5% of the victims, yet now one will find some feminists citing the very studies they previously dismissed. In both cases, the most notable element is the feminist acceptance of the statistics appears to have little to do with feminists genuinely believing the statistics to be accurate. It appears they accept the statistics due to the general public accepting the numbers. However, when one follows their conversations, one will find feminists slipping back into dismissing male victimization rates.
The feminist narrative that “women have it worse” remains intact. It appears that feminists accept the new statistics on the condition that the rates for female victims are always higher. Should someone present research showing an equal rate of male versus female victimization, feminists will reject that notion. Should someone present evidence that males experience more abuse than females, feminists will reject that notion. Should someone present evidence of an equal rate of female versus male perpetration, feminists will reject that notion. The research will be dismissed as an outlier or a deliberate misrepresentation. Of course, feminists continue to deny any harboring bias against men or male victims, and will not accept any suggestion or evidence of feminists actively subverting efforts to help male victims.
This is precisely what feminists did when I started my blog. The only difference between 2005 and 2019 is the general public’s changing attitude towards male victimization and their rejection of the feminist narrative. Granted, all feminists do not adhere to this. Plenty of feminists still reject any suggestion that 16% of boys are sexually abused or 30% to 40% of domestic violence victims are male. It is simply that they are more likely to catch flack should they do it now.
However, one can see feminists go right back to their typical script once one mentions a topic they despise. For example, false rape accusations.
Many feminists reject the notion that false accusations are a legitimate concern, despite numerous high-profile cases showing how easily innocent men can be ruined, imprisoned, and killed based on a woman’s lie. This issue has become more prescient due to the MeToo movement and the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. These high-profile cases have caused many men to avoid women in fear of a potential allegation, particularly given how men like Aziz Anasari, Chris Hardwick, and Louis C.K. were brought down by what appear to be consensual acts. While some of the reports are of legitimate abuse, often the reports include instances of a man touching a woman’s shoulder, being too close, or saying the wrong thing. There are also examples of women lying about the incidents, simply making them up.
The reason so many men fear this is because the typical response in these cases is for the men to lose their jobs, have their names plastered over social media and the news, and a demand that they “take responsibility” for their actions. Protesting their innocence is seen as silencing women. One must also keep in mind that most of the accusations are never presented to the authorities. Many of them could not even be prosecuted because the acts do not violate the law. Worse, many of the accusations supposedly happens years, even decades ago, making it difficult, if not impossible, for men to defend themselves.
Wrapped around all of this is the contention that people must listen to and believe women who claim they were violated. Any questioning of the veracity of the claims is treated by feminists and the far left as rape apologism and misogyny. The attitude and policies currently in place make it far too easy for a woman to lie about sexual violence. Not only will they receive a swell of support for ‘breaking their silence’, but should it be discovered that they lied, they likely will not face any punishment for this. More so, feminists will continue to see those women as victims, regardless of the evidence showing otherwise.
Given such a scenario, one can understand why some men fear false accusations of rape. The reason I gave all that context is because feminists will not present that information. Rather, they will present men as being hyperbolic and insensitive, and claim that these attitude arise from misogyny, conservatism, and entitlement. That is precisely the same thing feminists said about men like me who talked about male victimization. Also similar is how feminists respond to concerns: by write misleading ‘debunkings’ of those concerns, complete with cherry-picked statistics, contradictory and hypocritical arguments, and a great deal of logical fallacies.
Case in point: Fact Checking False Rape Accusations and Why We Shouldn’t Fear a False Rape Epidemic.
This post comes from /r/MensLib, a male feminist subreddit. The author, LefthandedLunatic, wrote a lengthy post full of citations supposedly proving that false accusations simply never happen. They are so rare that there is no point even thinking about them. For the sake of brevity, I will use the author’s initials LhL. I will also split my response into several post for easier reading.
LhL opens with:

One of the main resistance to changes in how police and society handle Rape, Sexual Assault and even Harassment is the counter argument that men then would be plagued by False Rape accusations. The fear is always that we crossed some line that no longer allows reasonable doubt and that one man life can be sent to jail by one accusation.

Setting aside the spelling and grammatical errors, the author does a poor job of representing the actual complaint. It is not merely that people fear that reasonable doubt will no longer apply in criminal court. It is that people fear that feminists and other left-leaning activists have created policies and laws that circumvent men’s right to due process.
That is a valid concern given some of the recent cases. For example, Brian Banks was falsely accused of rape by a classmate named Wanetta Gibson. She claimed that he assaulted her in a stairwell. He faced a potential 41-years to life sentence, and took plea deal which resulted five years in jail and five on parole. Gibson sued the school for inadequate security, and the school settled the case for $1.5 million.
Banks served the full sentence and parole and had to register as sex offender. In 2011, Gibson sent Banks a friend request on Facebook, which Banks refused. However, he did ask to meet Gibson in person, which she agreed to, and he secretly recorded the conversation in which Gibson admitted she had lied. The California Innocence Project petitioned for Banks’ sentence to be vacated, which eventually happened.
The school sued Gibson for $2.6 million, which it won by default. For the decade of living with a false accusation, the state of California awarded Banks $142,000 in compensation.
I brought up this case several reasons. One, like many rape accusation cases, there was no physical evidence showing that Banks raped Gibson. No DNA, no wounds, and no witnesses. The state only had Gibson’s claim as evidence, and this was enough to convince the prosecutor to charge then 16-year-old Banks. The absence of any corroborating evidence should present a problem in this case given the nature of the act described, yet the court allowed the case to proceed, and later denied Banks’ petition for a state writ of habeas corpus.
Two, contrary to what one might expect, Gibson did not lie out of malice. Rather, she lied because she did not want her mother to find out she was sexually active. During her conversation with Banks, she further admitted that she had not recanted sooner because she thought her family might have to give back the money from the lawsuit. She also stated that she informed the lawyer handling the suit that no rape occurred, and lawyer told her to keep that to herself.
Three, the only reason why Banks was able to clear his name is because Gibson reached out to him. Had he not recorded the conversation, which was inadmissible because Gibson did not consent to being recorded, Banks and The California Innocence Project would not have been able to use that information to find evidence supporting her recantation.
All of these demonstrate one thing: it is relatively easy for a false accusation to result in a jail sentence. All it takes is someone believing the claim. As I mentioned before, many rape accusations lack any corroborating physical evidence. How many of the men and boys in those cases are innocent? How would they prove their innocence? If the accuser does not recant, what options remain for those innocent men and boys?
We have no way of knowing how many cases that lack physical evidence are false accusations because there is no way for the innocent to exonerate themselves. Then consider cases where there is physical evidence, but the accused claims the sex was consensual. Again, we are stuck with the same problem: it is entirely possible and probable that innocent men and boys will be convicted or take plea deals for a crime that never happened simply because people believe the accuser’s story, and we have no way of knowing how often this occurs.
I keep mentioning the frequency because LhL will argue that there are studies showing that false accusations are rare. However, the studies do not show that at all. They cannot because the researchers only police reports. They do not count court cases, yet even if they did, the researchers can only count dismissed or overturned cases. They could not count cases in which the men simply protest their innocence because those cases have not been ruled invalid.
This is the core problem with attempting to research false accusations. There is no means for any researcher to determine which accusations are actually true or false. More so, many of the reports only include cases reported to the police. However, plenty of false rape accusations are never reported to the authorities, so the researcher would miss that data.
So when LhL writes:

We of course have seen stories of such things in the news and everytime we question wither [sic] these are isolated stories or a sign of a larger epidemic we don’t get to see.

The answer is that we do not know. All the research will show is that there are a certain number of these cases that are caught before they result in arrest and convictions and a certain number of cases that are later overturned. That does not prove that false accusations are isolated (or an epidemic). All we know is that they occur
The author goes on:

When does the drive of combating rape go to far? Is it an issue to fear?

We could start with people using an allegation about a rape that occurred 30 years ago to block a man from becoming a Supreme Court justice. The absurdity of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings will be a stain on the process for quite some time. Christine Blasey Ford, Judy Munri-Leighton, and Julie Swetnick all accused Kavanaugh of raping them or other girls decades ago, with each accusation lacking any corroborating evidence, yet all three were heralded by the media and activists even as their claims fell apart.
Blasey Ford spoke at the hearings, which continues to baffle me as I cannot think of any other example of someone using a rape accusation to prevent a person from getting a job. Yet, this was one of the many ridiculous validations for the spectacle, again, despite that Blasey Ford could not find anyone, including the people she claimed were at the alleged party 30 years ago, to corroborate her claims. This included her then and now best friend.
So consider what occurred: Kavanaugh faced questions about an event that happened three decades ago. His memory of the details of that day would be vague at best. Any evidence to exonerate him would be long gone. Any witnesses could easily have forgotten important details about that day. Perhaps worst of all, Kavanaugh was treated as if he were guilty. Numerous feminists and left-leaning activists argued he did not have the right to due process and the presumption of innocence because it was not a trial but a job interview. Now to add that Blasey Ford’s lawyer recently admitting that part of the reason for leveling the accusations against Kavanaugh was to tarnish his decisions on abortion.
Does that not strike one as going too far? How about asking him about things he wrote in his high school year book? We judged the man based on his behavior as a teenager, sans any evidence be committed any crime, and defended this by arguing that we were not trying him in a criminal court, so we can treat him as guilty.
We can further look at the MeToo movement, which has resulted in numerous men losing their jobs and reputations based on unsubstantiated accusations, most of which are not even legally investigated. There have been instances of men committing suicide after facing accusations, and men suing their accusers for defamation. As a result of this, some men avoid interacting with women.
Given the circumstances, it is not a question of whether this is an issue to fear, but whether we are willing to understand why so many men are fearful. It appears that it takes little to ruin a man’s life reputation, while the false accuser faces little, if any, punishment for making the accusation. More so, the men have little means of proving their innocence.
In the next post, I will tackle LhL’s list of statistics.

Source

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Fact Checking Feminist Claims About False Rape Accusations: Part 2

By Toy Soldiers: In the first part of this series, I discussed the reason for the feminist backlash against discussing false rape accusations, and tackled LefthandedLunatic’s (LhL) opening arguments regarding false rape accusations.
This brings me to the author’s list of statistics, which prove to be rather misleading, and given the repeated nature of the inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and omissions, I am inclined to believe this was deliberate. For example, the first citation is a 2012 report from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. LhL cites this section about false reporting:

• A multi-site study of eight U.S. communities including 2,059 cases of sexual assault found a 7.1 percent rate of false reports (Lonsway, Archambault, & Lisak, 2009).
• A study of 136 sexual assault cases in Boston from 1998-2007 found a 5.9 percent rate of false reports (Lisak et al., 2010).
• Using qualitative and quantitative analysis, researchers studied 812 reports of sexual assault from 2000-2003 and found a 2.1 percent rate of false reports (Heenan & Murray 2006).

What the author fails to also cite is the context:

To date, much of the research conducted on the prevalence of false allegations of sexual assaults is unreliable because of inconsistencies with definitions and methods employed to evaluate data (Archambault, n.d.). A review of research finds that the prevalence of false report is between 2 percent and 10 percent. The following studies support these findings[…]

In other words, the studies the report cites are admittedly inaccurate, which in turns means that neither the researchers nor the police have any real idea how frequently false accusations occur. They merely have data on the instances they caught, which they inexplicably combine with cases that lacked enough evidence to prosecute.
None of these studies can tell us how many reported cases are actually false, how many make it through to trial, or how many result in conviction, which makes this claim from the report rather presumptuous:

Research shows that rates of false reporting are frequently inflated, in part because of inconsistent definitions and protocols, or a weak understanding of sexual assault. Misconceptions about false reporting rates have direct, negative consequences and can contribute to why many victims don’t report sexual assaults (Lisak et al., 2010). To improve the response to victims of sexual violence, law enforcement and service providers need a thorough understanding of sexual violence and consistency in their definitions, policies and procedures.

That is not at all what the research shows, however, it does fit with the feminist narrative that false accusations rarely occur, which is the purpose of the report. It is meant to dismiss the concern about false accusations, not investigate the actual frequency of false accusations.
LhL goes on to state:

Now I know that 2-10% is alot and enough to give anyone pause considering how epidemic sexual assault is.

That would not appear to be the case. The author cites a study that showed:

[…] that between 2006 to 2010 the Average number of false rape accusations or baseless accusations was 5.55%, and robbery had a higher false and baseless accusation rate of 5.76%

It appears LhL thinks a 0.21% difference is evidence of the rarity of false rape accusations, so it would be fair to conclude that the author does not 2-10% is “a lot”.
The author continues:

But consider a few things.
1. 1 in 6 of women report they have been sexually assaulted.

How is that relevant to the discussion? The frequency of sexual violence against women has no bearing on the frequency of false accusations of rape. They are wholly unrelated. This marks the first of many emotional appeals LhL makes throughout the post. None of them are relevant to the issue at hand. Rather, they serve only show “women have it worse” and dismiss any genuine concerns about the experiences of the falsely accused.

2. Only a 1/3rd of sexual assaults are reported to police. So at its 2-10% of 33%

I could not find any of those numbers on the link to RAINN’s statistics page, which incidentally uses outdated and selective data, making the information quite misleading. However, even if the statistics were on the page, the author’s conclusion is wrong.
One third of 33% is exactly 11%, and this too is irrelevant to frequency of false accusations. It does not matter how few female victims report their abuse. The issue is how many people make false rape accusations.

3. This statistic covers if or not an accusation is false, wither or not a specific suspect is named which I will show below is a more interesting stat.

This is a phenomenal achievement. Perhaps instead of writing a post on reddit, LhL should contact various district attorneys’ offices and inform them of which inmates need to be released because they are innocent. If that is not the author’s claim, then there is no way the author could possibly find any statistic that could accurately determine whether an accusation is true or false. It is intellectually dishonest to make such a claim.

The majority of false rape accusations are made against non existent strangers the victims claim they don’t know.

Again, there is no way for any researcher to determine this because the researcher does not and cannot know which accusations are true and which are false. It is possible that false accusations get through the system because the accuser named a person. It is possible that the non-existent stranger scenario is caught more frequently due to its ridiculous nature. There is no way to know what is true without a clear understanding of how often false accusations actually occur.
The author then goes on to claim :

How many people Falsely Accused of Rape actually go to Jail? Thankfully we found that the answer is very low.
National Registry of Exoneration who keeps track of how many innocent people have been… well… exonerated found that since 1989 in the US 52 people have been exonerated for sexual assault that they didn’t do. People exonerated on false accusations of Murder was 790 people.

That is not the information presented on the site. The site provides an infographic showing that between 1989 and 2018, 592 people were exonerated for sexual violence, 324 for sexual assault and 268 for child sex abuse. It also shows that 950 people were exonerated for homicide. Another report provided on the site states compares the findings from the 2003 and 2012 reports, and shows that people convicted of sexual violence represented 35% and 36% of exonerations respectively.
The report further shows that 80% of the exonerations for sexual assault involved misidentification, either with the accuser naming the wrong person or being presented with the wrong person, while 23% were false accusations. The numbers flip, however, with child sex abuse: 26% resulted from misidentification, but 74% resulted from false accusations. The report also states:

An additional 11% of the exonerations involve fabricated crimes: cases in which someone claimed to have witnessed the exoneree commit a crime that in fact never occurred (96/873). The typical case in this group is a false claim of child sex abuse against a defendant who was well known to the complaining witness – a relative, a friend or a teacher. These false complaints are usually produced by pressure on the children from relatives, police officers or therapists; they generally unravel when the witnesses recant. Occasionally we see an exoneration in a case in which a total stranger was accused of a crime that never happened.

What these numbers show is that of the people exonerated of sex crimes, 48.5% were convicted for crimes that never happened. The remaining 51.5% were misidentified, often do to racial bias, as most of the men who experienced this were black men accused of raping white women.
Most of the sex crime cases involved DNA evidence as the means for proving someone’s innocence. However, as I mentioned before, many rape cases do not have any physical evidence, so cases like Brian Banks’ could easily slip through, leaving the man without any method of clearly his name short of the accuser recanting.
LhL then goes on to cite a British report on false accusations:

British Home Office did a detailed study and report on the issues of false rape accusations in 2005 and found that out of the 216 cases of rape that was false in the UK, 126 of them have a formal complain filed by the accuser, 39 of them had a named suspect and only 6 of them were arrested. Out of the 6 arrested only 2 have charges and 0 of them had a conviction.

That is not exactly what the report states. This is what it states:

Exploring the grounds on which cases were deemed to be false allegations is revealing and 120 pro formas contained explanations: in 53 cases the police stated that the complainant admitted the complaint was false, most commonly within days of the initial accusation; 28 cases involved retractions; three non co-operation and in 56 cases the decision was made by the police on evidential grounds. Interestingly, the majority of cases in which the complainant themselves admitted the allegation was false could be categorised as the often quoted motives of ‘revenge’ (n=8) and ‘cover-up’ (n=25). Although, as the explanations provided on the police pro formas which are summarised in Box A, reveals, the terms ‘revenge’ and ‘cover up’ do not do justice to the complexity of the circumstances involved.

One of the issues with the report is that it only looks at cases that were deemed false by the police. As mentioned before, all false accusations are not report to the police, nor are they caught at police stations. We have enough evidence to safely state that some false accusations result in a trial and some result in convictions. So the report’s claim that:

There are false allegations, and possibly slightly more than some researchers and support agencies have suggested. However, at maximum they constitute nine per cent and probably closer to three per cent of all reported cases.

is unjustified. At best, one could say that up to 9% of the rape cases police encounter are determined to be false. It is possible and probable that some false accusations are never reported to the police. It is possible and probable that some go to trial and result in acquittal. Likewise, some of them result in convictions or plea deals, and this report did not factor those in, so there are three aspects of potential false accusations these numbers cannot address.
LhLgoes on:

Fact is that the majority of false rape accusations don’t even name a suspect.

That is not a fact; it is an assumption, and an unfounded one. There is not enough evidence from any of these studies and reports to determine whether most false accusers name a suspect, however, let us say there is. That still leaves a number of instances in which women falsely accuse a specific person of committing a sex crime, which carries the potential for arrest, trial, and conviction. Should we conclude that this acceptable because it is not the majority? It is acceptable to imprison someone for a crime that did not happen merely because it does not occur that often?
This appears to be the author’s argument:

And throwing this into the picture of the total of the numbers of rape really proves how rare false rape Convictions are. Vast majority of false rape accusers always accuse a non existent stranger who raped them and usually not someone specifically. Which means that beyond wasting time and resources majority of false rape accusations are harmless to the general public because no one person is accused.

This is not the first time I have seen a feminist make this argument. This is the same argument feminist made about male rape victims until it became politically untenable for them claim that sexual violence against men and boys is so rare as to be negligible.
It is an indefensible position because it is immoral and unethical to imprison a person for a crime they did not commit, let alone one that never happened. To deprive someone of his freedom is a very serious decision, and as a society we argue that it is better to let 100 guilty men go free than to imprison one innocent man. Yet the author appears to argue that one innocent man is negligible because false accusations do not occur often, which the author fails to prove.
LhL then states:

When you take these studies and add them to what we already know about rape a more complete picture forms:

• • 1/6 women claim to have experience sexual assault, follow by a 1/3 reporting the assault to police, then worst case scenario 1/10 are false. Out of those false rape accusations 9/50 name a suspect, out of false rape accusations that accuse someone 15/100 get an arrest and, out of those who are arrested for a rape they didn’t do only 1/3 have charges placed against them.

  • So 1/6 x 1/3 x 1/10 x 9/50 x 15/100 x 1/3 = 0.00005

  • Which mean out of all the women you meet you have a 0.005% chance of being falsely charged of Rape.

Perhaps the most shocking element of the author’s ridiculous math is that it never occurred to LhL that the women who falsely claim they were raped… were not raped, and therefore would not be represented by the 1 in 6 number. Obviously there is the potential for some overlap, however, it seems more likely that women who falsely claim they were raped likely never raped.
The proper question to ask then would be how many women in make false accusations? Also, how many of the women who falsely claim they were raped report it to the police? What if the woman merely wants to tarnish someone’s reputation, but not get him arrested? How would any of these studies track those situations? For example, take Kavanaugh’s accusers. Those women made false claims, yet none of them filed charges, so their claims would never make it to police reports or exoneration registry.
How would we count them? Or should we not include them at all?
The author continues:

Compare this to the fact that 6.4% of men openly admitted of committing the strictest possible definition of rape and 23% of that 6.4% admitted of multiple rapes.

The link to study was broken, and the same could be said of LhL’s argument. It is not only irrelevant to the issue of false accusations, but there is no similar study asking women whether they would commit sexual violence or make false accusations. This is nothing more than a piece of feminist trivia used to tarnish men.
This too is another common feminist tactic when it comes to men’s issues. It is not enough to dismiss the concerns. Feminists must take the extra step and accuse men of being the wrongdoers. The underlying argument is that okay for women to violate men because some men may want to violate women. It is a nonsensical position, yet one feminists routinely use.
LhL then asks:

Why False Rape Accusations happen?
Many people who fear False Rape Accusations claim that women in the work force will make a False Accusation against a man in a higher position, or a student who is going to fail an exam will accuse a professor, or rape or that a vengeful ex, or a woman who regretted sex later.
But the realities of this is very surprising.
According to a review done by the LAPD found the reasons for a False Rape accusations is unwanted pregnancies or more commonly “Missed Curfews” by young teenagers. It turns out that 55% of False Rape Accusations according to this review are for hope of getting medical care or psychiatric medication by the very poor and destitute

It is interesting that the author chose to cite a new study rather than continue with the previous British report. Perhaps that is because that report found:

Interestingly, the majority of cases in which the complainant themselves admitted the allegation was false could be categorised as the often quoted motives of ‘revenge’ (n=8) and ‘cover-up’ (n=25). Although, as the explanations provided on the police pro formas which are summarised in Box A, reveals, the terms ‘revenge’ and ‘cover up’ do not do justice to the complexity of the circumstances involved.

Revenge included:

• Against a difficult neighbour.

• Against an ex-partner who the woman had sex with hoping this indicated reconciliation, whilst he had no intention of leaving his new partner.

• Against an ex-partner who had forced sex on previous occasions, although not on this one.

• To make an ex-partner feel sorry for her.

• Against a man who the women had sex with who ignored her the next day.

Cover up included:

• Eight cases of hiding consensual sex with another man from husbands/partners.

• Nine cases of avoiding confrontations with parents.

• Four cases where accusations arose where the complainant was being investigated for fraud or theft.

• One case of an affair with a father-in-law.

As for the statistics the author mentioned, again, they are inaccurate. Here is the table from the LAPD report:

The author claimed that 55% of the false claims were in made to receive medical care. The table shows that 10.9% sought medical care. The report contained no reference to the women’s economic status. This yet again an example of the author using an emotional appeal rather than citing the facts.
It is also worth noting that the report shows women often have multiple motives for making false accusations. This makes it difficult to point to one thing and claim it is the primary cause, be it women seeking medical attention or revenge.
The author states:

Also it is noted that half of the False Rape Accusations are made by Parents of children. Either by pressuring the child to go to the police or accusing someone of rape without the child knowing. It is also important to note that the rare Serial False Rape Accusers tend to have a history of being a legitimate victim Sexual Abuse as a child.

Again, the link was broken, so I cannot double check the LhL’s claims, however, the latter claim is something I have never read in any study, so I am hesitant to believe it is true. However, even if it is, it is yet another irrelevant point. It does not matter whether the false accuser was a victim of legitimate abuse in the past. What matters is whether the person is making a false accusation against someone now.
Likewise, it does not matter whether the parent (in most instances, the mother) is the one making the accusation. The issue is again that the accusation is false.

As this shows that the False Accuser the majority of the time aren’t the serial accusers we hear on the media nor are in tech jobs, nor college students who regret sex. Instead it is usually either the very poor looking for free medication, teenagers trying to get out of trouble and parents of children who make the vast majority of False Rape Accusations.

The LAPD report does not substantiate that claim. It is not only a lie, but a rather bizarre lie to make. It would not make it acceptable to falsely accuse someone of rape because the accuser is poor and needs medication. That is still immoral and unethical, and it is patently dishonest make lie in such a manner.
LhL then brings up yet another irrelevant point:

Also there are no corolations with the age of the accusation or the number of sexual partners of the accuser and wither their accusations are true or not. Add this to the fact that most legitimate victims lie to themselves and others saying that they weren’t sexually assaulted when they really were. This denial often is due to the fact that the majority of victims know their abusers personally before the assault and often change their stories or denied that they were as a way to cope the trauma. I can personally attest to that.

None of this has anything to do with false accusations. The issue are instances in which a person has claimed someone sexually assaulted them when that did not happen. Changing the subject to something one can defend is understandable given the weakness of one’s argument, however, it is inexcusable.
The purpose of this post was to “fact check” the claims about false accusations. So far the LhL has failed to do so. The author then addresses other studies that were not included in the list:

People who fear the False Accusation “Epidemic” that is supposedly happening like to point to the “other studies” on these issues. What are these other “studies” and why don’t I use them in my analysts? Well because they are bad. Flat out bad or rely on a misconception of the nature of sexual assault. And there are alot of them.

Stating that something is “flat out bad” is not a valid explanation. One must explain why they are bad. Likewise, arguing that the studies do not understand the nature of sexual assault smacks of opinion. Again, one must demonstrate there are misconception, not simply claim it is so because the researchers do not adhere to feminist doctrine.

In basic rules of studies is the more the better. Anything that are in the low 100s are meh, anything under 100 is a meme.

That is curious given that the author cites the LAPD report, which was based on 401 cases. Indeed, most of the research the author cites is based on numbers that when broken down are barely in the double digits. Yet these are considered valid because they fit the author’s argument.
LhL then dismissed studies with larger sample sizes as unreliable because:

[…] they are working on the police definitions of False or Not. Unfortunately that means that they consider a story false if the victim:

• Failed a Polygraph

• If the victim delayed reporting their rape

• If the victim was “Intellectually Impaired”

• If the victim has signs of mental illness

• If the victim was intoxicated

• If the victim withdraw the complaint

• And if the victim was determined by police to be a “Slut”

The author does not provide any examples of this or link to a study that does any of this. The author simply declares that the higher rates cannot be trusted because they count the same things that were counted in all the research the author cited. This is true. With the exception of the polygraph, I found examples of each criteria in the studies LhL considers credible.
Incidentally, none of the examples prove that the claims are true. A person could still be a false accuser and fail a polygraph, delay reporting the “rape”, suffer from mental or cognitive disorder, have been intoxicated, withdrew the accusation, and been called names by the police. One can be a liar and receive terrible treatment. They are not mutually exclusive.
The author then makes the incredibly hypocritical argument:

These studies don’t show or prove who many accusations there are really, it just shows how many cases police view sexual assault cases as false and more importantly aren’t evidence of a massive epidemic of false rape convictions but epidemic of sexist and misguided beliefs that prevent real sexual assault victims from reaching justice.

The studies the author cited do the same thing. They use the same data and language. The only difference is the conclusions, which differ because the author chose primarily feminist studies and reports. There is a noticeable ideological angle in many of those reports, which potentially affects the conclusions those researcher drew.
To be continued in Part 3.

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Fact Checking Feminist Claims About False Rape Accusations: Part 3

By Toy Soldiers: In my prior two posts about this topic, I dissected LefthandedLunatic’s (LhL) citations regarding the frequency of false accusation. I continue my analysis below.
LhL cites a section from a report that states:

While false complaints do occur, approximately three-quarters of the incidents concluded by the police to be false appeared to have been judged to some extent at least on the basis of stereotypes regarding the complainant’s behavior, attitude, demeanor or possible motive. Suspicious file comments were made by the detectives regarding a woman who laughed while being interviewed, others who were seen as ‘attention seeking,’ and some who were said to be ‘crying rape’ for revenge or guilt motives.

This comes from one of the studies the author claims cannot be trusted, so presumably people should dismiss this comment outright. However, let us take it at face value. It is an officer’s job to discern whether a person is credible, and the officer does this by judging the person’s behavior, attitude, demeanor, and possible motive. When they file their reports, they will likely include their findings. So if it strikes them as odd for someone to laugh during an interview, the officer will make note of it. This is how officers do their job.
The author, however, disagrees:

That’s right. 75% of False Rape Accusations labeled as such by police were not because they were proven false but on the gut feelings of the police.

Again, this is how officers do their jobs. Their “gut feelings” are usually based on years of experience. It does not mean they do not make mistakes, however, it seems odd to dismiss their intuition when that is often the thing that makes them consider rape victims credible.

Which means we get plenty of false false rape accusations.

No, it does not. There is no evidence supporting that there frequent false claims of false accusations or this one:

This is probably a bigger issue then men being falsely accused of Rape.

Not only is there no evidence supporting this claim, but the implicit argument here is that is it more important to make sure police believe female rape victims than it is to ensure an innocent man does not go to jail. There is no moral or ethical defense for such an argument. You do not imprison innocent people just to make sure some cop does not disbelieve a rape victim. That is an absurd position.

There have been plenty of documented cases of police pressuring victims to sign false confessions claiming they made up their sexual assaults.

Those are terrible cases. The author, however, does not present any evidence showing that this is a common issue. For all we know, it could occur at a lower rate than discovered false accusations, and according to LhL, that would make them unworthy of concern.

Its why one of the major reasons why out of 1000 rapes only 6 rapists will go to jail while for robberies 20 will go to jail and 33 of assault and battery.

No, the reason is because it is easier to prove a robbery or assaulty happened. Thieves typically have the items they stole, and victims of assault and battery typically report the crime soon after it happened, making it easier to prove they were wounded. Contrast that with rape cases, which are often reported months later, with all the evidence gone, often include conflicting accounts from the accuser and the accused, and often have victims who may not be forthcoming. All of those affect the state’s ability to prosecute the case.
LhL then shifts to attacking the men’s rights movement:

Using Fear as a Weapon
Why do we talk about False Rape Allegations all the time, and how its used as a political weapon.

This is quite hypocritical considering how feminists turned rape accusation into a political weapon, as demonstrated during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. It seems that is acceptable, but arguing that men should not be falsely accused of crimes that never happened goes too far.

Though most rational people don’t see this as such a major issues within far conservatism and the Manosphere you tend to see false accusations be pushed as the major issue against men.

That is likely due to the number of instances of men accused of sexual violence who lost their jobs and reputations without even being charged with a crime. In some instances, the acts being described are not technically illegal. No charges could be filed, yet these men have been labeled as sex predators and treated as guilty of the worst sins. These men’s names are often made public, while their accusers remain protected. Should nothing come of the accusation–no charges, no lawsuits–the result is simply a man’s life destroyed based on the unsubstantiated claim of one woman.
One would expect most rational people to take issue with this, which is why one finds so many people on all sides of the political spectrum concerned about false accusations.

In fact I decided to do my own study where I went to /r/MenRights typed it “Rape” and look at the 102 top posts by /r/menrights on the subject. I only accepted posts of two categories, male victims of sexual assault and stories on false rape accusations. As expected /r/MenRights had more posts about false rape then male victims of rape.

Perhaps if LhL should have looked up more than one metric Had LhL looked up ‘male victim’ or ‘male victimization’ or ‘female abusers’, the author may have found more examples. The searches are also defaulted to sort by relevance, so if the key word is not in the post or the thread, it will not show up in the list. That does not mean there were not other posts discussing sexual violence against men or false accusations.
The author claims to have found 57 posts about false accusations and 44 about male victims. I do not think a seven-post difference proves that men’s rights activists do not care about male victims. However, inaccurate information about male victims does demonstrate a lack of concern:

As you can see despite the fact that men are 1 in 33 in odds of being raped, that 1 in 10 rape victims are male, and as stated before only 0.005% of rape accusations lead to a man being arrested as stated above.

I can say with great confidence that all of those numbers are wrong, and based on sexist methodology that excluded various types of male victimization, with the exception of the last statistic, which the author made up.

MRAs post more about and care more about false rape accusations then male victims of sexual assault. Why is that? Why do we even talk about false rape so much if its more rare than males being raped? I get a suspicion that plenty who champion this cause are arguing disingenuously.

There are more posts about feminism, toxic masculinity, men embracing femininity, and trans issues on Men’s Lib than there are about male victims of sexual violence. By the author’s own logic, the members of /r/MensLib express disingenuous concern for male victims.

False Accusations are rampant enough that only segregation can solve it
Yeaaaa… This covers harassment as well. Plenty of people have been using the fear of false rape accusations against men as proof that women should be “isolated”.

It would have been helpful if the author provided evidence of this, however, no link was given. Fortunately, I know to use a search engine, and I found this: Women-only co-working spaces are the newest rage in the #MeToo age. It would appear there is someone arguing women should be isolated from men: other women.

They also openly brag to each other that they “won’t hire more qualified women because I am too scared of a lawsuit”. As stated before the case of someone falsely accusing someone else in the workplace environment is ultra rare as most false rapes come from children or the homeless, and the vast majority don’t name suspects.

Harassment and rape are not the same thing. This is conflation is one of the reasons that men fear hiring women. Secondly, in the conflation, LhL states that children are responsible for most false rape accusations, yet the author also said:

Also it is noted that half of the False Rape Accusations are made by Parents of children. Either by pressuring the child to go to the police or accusing someone of rape without the child knowing.

As I have stated before, feminists are consistently inconsistent.

If anything men should be worried about sexual harassment from coworkers as it is way more statistically likely that men will be a victim of sexual harassment then falsely accuse of harassment themselves.

That is a curious argument. Women are more likely to sexually harass men than falsely them. One would think such enterprising women would exploit the threat of a false accusation to ensure their victims did not report them. After all, who are we more likely to believe: the man claiming a woman harassed him or the woman claiming the man harassed her?

So the people who say that this is a measure that must be taken to protect men are flat out Neo-Segregationists.

How fortunate that no one argues for such a thing, however, the author will not be deterred from burning this straw man argument to cinders:

Flat out they don’t really care about false accusations but want to use it as an excuse to treat women as second class citizens at work or to push them out of the work force entirely. If you truely fear false accusations have a third party witness. Simple enough, its common practice within the medical profession to have a third party for sensitive treatment so both sides are calm. A third party benefits both those who fear harassment and false accusations of harassment and assault. Jumping to pushing women out of the workforce is straight up sawing your foot off over a hangnail.

That makes sense. If a man fears a potential false accusation, having a third party present would help, although the woman could still argue that of course the third party would support the man’s story or accuse the third party of assaulting her as well. It seems like a better idea would be to discourage women from making false accusations.

False Rape Accusers should get same length sentence as Rapists
This is a common cry for those within the MRA movement is that these false accusers are getting off to easy. That they ruin countless men lives and only get slap of the wrists. But that shows a great error in their thinking is the trust that the criminal justice system gives just punishments to rapists in the first place. If we are going to punish false accusers the same way that we do punish rapists then false accusers should get:
10 Years of probation
3 Months of Jail
5 Years of probation

That would still be significantly more than the ‘no charges’ false accusers typically receive. It is also a disingenuous argument. Most rapists do not receive probation, and using the most egregious examples is dishonest.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, sex offenders receive an average sentence of 12.2 years and serve 61.9% of that sentence, or about 7.5 years. That is not a slap on the wrist.

That of course doesn’t count the countless who have sexually assaulted and get away with it.

It is interesting that LhL wants to count unknown rapists, but does not want to count unknown false accusers.

If MRAs called for this guideline I can’t help to feel they would be even more disappointed in the sentencing expecting 20 years but IRL only getting a few months. If we treated false rape accusers the same as rapists then we as a society wouldn’t take them that seriously.

This is perhaps the oddest straw man argument I have ever encountered. We as a society already do not take false accusers seriously. That is literally the men’s rights complaint. Contrast that with how we treat men and boys accused of rape. As I noted above, we plaster their names in the media, we socially ostracize them, we threaten them with violence, and we assume they are guilty.
Should they be arrested and jailed, they face physical and sexual violence from other inmates. Should they be convicted, they will likely serve several years in jail or prison. Upon release, we require them to add their names and photos and essentially any contact information to a sex offender database so that they can be tracked. This database includes the most violent offenders with people who masturbated in public.
Does that sound like society does not take rape, at least the rape of women, seriously?

Also I want to quickly address the other MRAs call for those who have been falsely accused to be placed on the Sex Offender Registry Lists. Uuuuuuuhhh What?!?

Which men’s rights activist wants falsely accused men placed on the sex offender registry? That makes so little sense that I must assume the author meant false accuser. Either way, I do not know of anyone arguing for putting false accusers on registries.

This is improper use of such a list number 1, and 2 that publicly available list would then create a public list of people you can rape without repercussions.

If that is the case, would not the existing registries already create a list of rapeable people? There is no one lower on the human ladder than a sex offender. One would expect that if people were so inclined to abuse this list, they would have done so by now.

Think about it. If you publicly branded people as “False Rape Accuser” then which people would rapists target?

I am fairly certain that this is not how rape works. Some rapists may look for targets via government registries, however, I do not think it is often. I do not think most rapists put that much planning into their actions.

Putting extra laws and punishments on this mush smaller issue of False Rape Accusations put more pressure on legitimate victims of sexual assault.

No, it does not. It simply requires the state to actually punish those who knowingly try to put innocent people in jail.

Under the existing law there are cases of legit victims being classified by police as false victims. If you add additional punishment then we will punish legitimate victims of rape 20 years in prison for just reporting their rape and police not believing in them.

That is not how the law works. In order to file charges, the police would need some evidence of a false accusation. In order for a conviction, the state would need to prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt. It is highly unlikely that a rape victim will face a 20-year sentence for the police disbelieving a claim.

And that will have a chilling effect on the rest of victims of sexual assault out there. Its hard enough as is, but if you are unable to prove it and you “act like a slut” then you could face jail time.

Again, that is not the law works, at least not for false accusers. If you are accused of rape, however, yes, the law will take someone’s word over yours, regardless of the lack of evidence supporting the claim. That is how someone like Brian Banks could end up in jail and on parole despite never committing a crime.

To me this ultimately proves why these issues come up in groups like /r/Menrights more often then male sexual assault. Because its being used as a weapon to try to push society and law to a more regressive state then before.

How is it regressive to ask that false accusers face a harsher penalty that they have never face? To bear false witness against a person is a morally reprehensible act. To do this with intent of imprisoning someone is even worse. Why should such a person not face the same penalty she wanted to inflict on someone else?

Men Rights Movement is a Regressive Wolf in a Progressive Sheep clothing. They don’t really care about victims of false allegations. More its a means to justify “Moving the burden of proof to a reasonable level” that makes it impossible for many legitimate victims to seek justice.

The burden of proof should always be beyond a reasonable doubt. If you cannot provide enough evidence to meet that standard, then the accused person should not go to jail. The reason for this standard is to prevent innocent people from being imprisoned. That is the moral and ethical standard because it is a gross violation to take away someone’s freedom. If we are going to do that, we must be sure that person deserves it.
Similarly, if a person commits a crime, they should face a fair punishment for it. It unfair for someone to claim she was raped by Henry Ballister, have his name and picture plastered on every social media site, every news channel, every online magazine, and then when we discover that she lied, she remains anonymous and faces no penalty at all. She gets to go on with her life as if nothing happened, while Henry’s name will forever bring up articles about being a rapist.
I genuinely do not understand why LhL thinks this is a fair outcome.

For Tucker Carlson and other ultra conservatives its just a means to justify removing women from the workforce and back into houses. That’s what this whole issue is to the far right, just a vehicle to push for radical and extremist policy.

This is an utterly irrelevant argument designed to trash the right. It has no bearing on false accusations, although Carlson was a victim of one himself.

That’s why /r/MenRights and Reddit as a whole under reports on male victims of rape. Because admitting that rape of men is a common thing only helps prove that rape in general is a very common affair and that the 1 in 6 statistic was right the whole time.

Until recently, the /r/MenRights was the primary place on reddit where one could find any mention of the 1 in 6 statistic being treated as legitimate. Feminists routinely dismissed the number as a MRA lie. The only reason feminists accepted the number, at least in public, is because the rest of society actually began to listen male victim advocates.
So there is a deep irony in watching a feminist attempt to use this statistic to attack the very people who introduced it to them.

That Rape is a real problem in western society and forces them to stop ignoring it.
So remember this TL;DR when you think about False Rape Accusations.

Yes, false accusations are not real problem. There are no victims. It is completely harmless. In fact, it never happens. The real problem is that bad things happen to women.
That is the feminism I remember. The dismissive, dishonest, disingenuous, misleading ideology that regards any problems men face as illegitimate unless they can somehow blame men for causing those problems.
It is possible to care about two issues simultaneously. One can want to prevent sexual violence and want to prevent false accusations. One can acknowledge that many women do not report their assaults and that many women lie about being assaulted. One need not choose one issue over the other.
This is precisely the same false dichotomy feminists presented when I began this blog. I see that while feminists have learned, to a degree, to dress themselves up, it does not take much to get them to reveal their true opinions about men’s issues.

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