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Abstract: 

This piece addresses commonly held misconceptions about the rate of false reporting of rape and other sexual crimes. The notion that women frequently lie about being sexually assaulted persists despite robust research findings to the contrary. As reported in this article and elsewhere, the rate of deliberate false reporting of sexual victimization is relatively low, similar to reports of other crimes; for sex crimes, it is somewhere in the range of 2% to 8% (8% to 10% in the U.S. and U.K.). This is significantly lower than what many people, including members of law enforcement, generally assume. Here, authors Hanif Quereshi and Jee Yearn Kim report on a study of systematic investigations of sexual assault cases in which the allegations were deemed to be false. These cases occurred in the U.S., the U.K., and India, and in all three countries, the statistics on “false rapes” were found to be grossly inflated, thus posing danger, and torrents of injustice, to genuine victims.

Keywords: False Allegations of Rape; Overidentification of False Rape Cases

Affiliations:  1: Haryana, India Police Dept; 2: University of Cincinnati.