What portion of all sexual assault allegations in the U.S. are false?
Correct Answer
Per an academic work about sexual assault: "There is no shortage of politicians, victim's advocates, and news articles claiming that the nationwide false report rate for rape and sexual assault is almost nonexistent, presenting a figure of around 2%. This figure is not only inaccurate, but also it has no basis in reality." For example, people misrepresent a study from Australia as proof of the "2%" figure, but this is only the portion of rapes reported to police in which the accusers were criminally liable for making false accusations. The study also found that: (1) Investigators "were confident or reasonably confident that the victim was making a false report" in another 9.5% of the cases. (2) Another 15.1% were cases in which the allegations were withdrawn. (3) Another 46.4% of the cases resulted in no further police action. As such, a 2006 paper in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling explains that "there is currently no way of knowing" the actual figure.
DocumentationFalse Sexual Assault Claims