The Problem of False Allegations

False allegations of rape can cause problems for all parties involved. In Germany, for instance, a female teacher accused a male colleague of rape. Heidi K. claimed that Horst Arnold had raped her in 2002 in the biology classroom. Arnold was convicted of the crime and sentenced to 5-year imprisonment. He served the full sentence. He was denied parole because he continued to proclaim his innocence. He was acquitted in a retrial in 2011. Arnold died in Saarland, Germany, in 2012 due to heart failure. On September 13, 2013, Heidi K. was convicted for 5½ years imprisonment for deprivation of freedom due to a false allegation of rape (Friedrichsen, 2013; Sapa, 2013). The case illustrates that a false allegation can result in consequences not only for the falsely accused but also for the complainant.

In the U.S., a false complainant could also be prosecuted and convicted. We are, however, unaware of the actual prosecution and conviction rate of false complainants in the USA as well as the content of such convictions. A miscarriage of justice in the U.S., however, might be indicative of the fate of false complainants of rape in the U.S. On March 12, 2009, Marie was offered a plea deal after she retracted her allegation of rape, and confessed that the allegation was false The plea deal consisted of mental health counseling and supervised probation for a year, and a fine of 500 $. Marie accepted the plea deal, despite the fact that she was a victim of the serial rapist, Marc O’Leary. In 2011, Marie was exonerated, and her record was expunged (Armstrong & Miller, 2015). Besides the judicial consequences, a false complainant might suffer psychologically from the moral consequences of filing a false allegation. An illustration hereof is the notorious case of Gary Dotson. Kathleen Crowell Webb fabricated a rape after unprotected consensual sex with her boyfriend to obtain contraceptive medication. Coincidentally, Gary Dotson resembled Kathleen’s fabricated rapist and was convicted of rape (Webb & Chapian, 1985). Kathleen recanted her false allegation of rape out of remorse, but her initial allegation was so convincing that some scholars and the judge who reviewed the case did not believe her retraction (Taylor, 1987). Gary Dotson spent years in and out of prison as a consequence of the false allegation and it was not until the advent of DNA research that he was exonerated (Heath, 2009). Kathleen wrote a book with the self-explanatory title “Forgive Me” (Webb & Chapian, 1985). False allegations of rape are not a myth but are not ubiquitous either. Ferguson and Malouff (2016) found a rate of 5% confirmed false allegations in their meta-analysis on seven studies on the prevalence of false allegations.

Motives for Filing a False Allegation

Women who have been raped often find criminal proceedings distressing. Sometimes, these criminal proceedings are referred to as secondary victimization (Bohmer & Blumberg, 1975; Doherty & Anderson, 1998; Latts & Geiselman, 1991). Why would an individual willfully and wittingly file a false allegation? In the case of Heidi K. and Arnold, it is assumed that rivalry was the ground for the false allegation. Heidi K. would have thought that her chances of getting a promotion would increase considerably if she could dispose of Arnold (Sapa, 2013). The false allegation was therefore used to gain something.

Kanin (1994) described three motives for filing a false allegation: alibi, revenge, and attention/sympathy seeking. Kanin based his list on a study he conducted in a police agency of a small metropolitan town with approximately 70,000 inhabitants in the U.S., from 1978 to 1987. Kanin collected all false allegations (N = 45) made to the police in that period. An allegation was considered false if the complainant retracted her allegation and admitted that she had filed a false allegation. The complainant had to state that she was not raped to fulfill his criterion of an allegation being false. The list by Kanin was a data-driven list. It means that the list was based on the verbalizations of the complainants during their recantation of the rape allegation.

The three motives reported by Kanin (1994) seem valid and anecdotal evidence for each motive exists. When a false rape allegation serves the alibi function, the allegation is used to cover up other behavior. In IJmuiden, the Netherlands, a woman used a false allegation of rape to cover up an adulterous affair. Her partner then caught the complainant in the act of adultery with an acquaintance. In an attempt to hide the adultery, she accused the acquaintance of raping her. Police investigation revealed that the allegation was false (ANP, 2010). In another case in the Netherlands, in Noordwijk, a 17-year-old girl used a false allegation as an explanation for being too late for her apprenticeship (Novum, 2010).

In revenge cases, according to Kanin (1994), the allegation is used to retaliate. On March 24, 1988, Inge V. filed an allegation of rape against the ex-lover of her mother, Ad Schagen (Korver, 1991b, 1991c). The alleged rapist supposedly used a lot of violence, ripping the clothes of Inge, hitting, strangulating, and tying her to the bed. Inge V. gave detailed descriptions of the alleged rapes to the police. Nobody believed in the innocence of Ad Schagen. It was not until his second lawyer studied the criminal file painstakingly that doubts concerning the truthfulness of the allegation arose. Inge V., for example, claimed to have been raped by Ad Schagen while her mother was playing tennis. The lawyer discovered that the mother of Inge V. did not play tennis at all. The lawyer made a list of all the discrepancies, inconsistencies, and contradictions and forwarded the list to the public prosecutor. The list led the public prosecutor to dismiss the case. In 1991, Inge V. confessed to the police that she had filed a false allegation. Later that year, she said in an interview with journalist Henny Korver in De Telegraaf newspaper that she had filed the allegation out of revenge. She hated the lovers of her mother and wanted to hurt Ad Schagen and her mother (Korver, 1991a). She was convicted of filing a false allegation of rape and was given a suspended sentence of 6 months and a fine of 100 Dutch guilders (±50 euro) (Korver, 1991d).

If the third kind of motives applies, when an allegation is used to attract sympathy or attention, the rape is usually disclosed to close friends or caregivers and involves unknown perpetrators. Kanin (1994) concluded that this motive for filing an allegation was the most socially harmless. Even if most false allegations that are done to attract attention involve unknown perpetrators, it certainly is not always the case. On March 18, 2009, at 11:28 p.m. a woman phoned the Dutch police that she had been abducted and raped in a car. She gave a detailed description of the car. On March 29, 2009, at 12.27 p.m., the same woman called the police again and told the police that she had been raped once more. The perpetrators managed to get hold of her when she opened the door of her home to walk her dogs. The perpetrators tied her to her chair, blindfolded her, and raped her. Later, she was tied to her bed and was repeatedly raped in a cruel manner. The alleged rapists had been pinching her, pulling her hair, and beating her. She called the police again on April 20, 2009, at 1:12 p.m. and filed a new allegation of rape later that day. Because of her detailed description of the car, the alleged rapists could promptly be identified. The men had alibis for one of the events, and the police investigation revealed that she had faked the rapes herself. Because of the sadomasochistic nature of the consensual sexual encounters the woman had, rape-consistent injuries were present. On July 26, 2011, she was convicted of repeatedly filing a false allegation of rape. She had filed the false allegations of rape to attract attention. Psychologists diagnosed her with a histrionic and borderline personality disorder (District Court Zutphen, 2011).

The Shortcomings of the List

The three major categories of alibi, revenge, and sympathy or attention were also found by other researchers (McNamara, McDonald, & Lawrence, 2012). McNamara et al. studied 30 false allegations that were submitted by other law enforcement agencies to the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ (FBI) National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) during a 15-year period. The majority of false allegations were filed by women (n = 22). Thirteen women filed a false allegation of rape, while nine women filed nonsexual false allegations. The men in the sample all filed nonsexual false allegations. The nonsexual false allegations involved crimes such as stalking, threats, abduction, attempted murder, and extortion. It is impossible to draw any conclusion based on the study by McNamara et al. due to the small and atypical sample. Nevertheless, McNamara et al. reported the same motives as Kanin (1994), thus supporting the list to some extent.

The list, however, is not exhaustive. For example, the motive of gain is not included in the list. One could argue that revenge, an alibi, and attention or sympathy are also some form of gain. The difference, however, is that revenge, an alibi, and attention or sympathy are emotional gains while a motive like a promotion to a better job is more a material gain. McNamara et al. (2012) also reported that some complainants were motivated by profit, i.e., material gain. But there are still other motives for a complainant to file a false allegation. McNamara et al. reported one more motivator, mental illness. Sometimes complainants file false allegations of rape following sexual hallucinations (Balasubramaniam & Park, 2003). The complainants are convinced that they were raped and had no intention to file a false allegation. Their lack of intention makes it a special subgroup of complainants. In other cases, complainants file a false allegation as a consequence of pseudologia fantastica, i.e., pathologic lying (Dubois, 1987). Thus, complainants can file a false allegation because of a disturbed mental state.

A Dutch defense lawyer, Veraart (2006), described two other motives for filing a false allegation. Sometimes consensual sex is afterward presented by the complainant as rape to the police, because of its disappointing or shameful character. The relabeling, however, is not internalized as the complainant is still aware of the fact that she was not raped at all because the sexual encounter was consensual. If consensual sex afterward is, due to external pressure or influence, relabeled as rape, the complainant might not have desired the sexual encounter but did consent without any abuse of power or manipulation by the other party. The complainant, however, did not convey her lack of desire. Unwanted but consensual sex is common (Bay-Cheng & Eliseo-Arras, 2008; Erickson & Rapkin, 1991; O’Sullivan & Allgeier, 1998; Philips, 2000). In the study conducted by O’Sullivan and Allgeier, 26% of men and 50% of women reported at least one occasion in which they had engaged in unwanted, but consented, sexual activity in a 2-week period. The element of a not wanting, a lack of desire, is used to justify the false allegation of rape. But the complainant is still aware of the fact that she was not raped and consented to the sexual encounter. Lay people tend to associate rape with not wanting. De Zutter, Horselenberg, and van Koppen (2017) conducted a quasi-experiment in which they asked 35 women to fabricate rape and file a false allegation. They found that the fabricated stories of rape, the false allegations, resembled unwanted sex. Studies on fabricated rape have consistently shown that lay people tend to associate not wanting sex with rape (De Zutter, Horselenberg, & van Koppen, 2016; De Zutter et al., 2017). Thus, if a complainant recounts her unwanted consensual sexual encounter to friends and family, her social environment will react with the label of rape. Once the consensual sexual encounter is labeled rape by the environment, it creates a proverbial point of no return in the head of the complainant who decides to file a false allegation of rape at the police station instead of confronting her social environment with the assertion that their label is invalid (Veraart, 1997, 2006). Sometimes scholars have been said to engage in the process of relabeling consensual sexual encounters as rape. Sommers (1995) argued in her book “Who Stole Feminism?” that relabeling by scholars caused an inflation of the prevalence rates of rape reported by some scholars in the USA, because only one in four women who were labeled victims of rape by scientists in these studies believed that they were, in fact, raped.

If regret is the motive to file a false allegation, the complainant experiences negative feelings such as disgust, shame, and sorrow. The negative feelings are typically noticed by close friends or relatives who will ask about the source of the negative feelings. The sexual encounter may then be labeled as rape by others. The complainant may not have the courage to admit that she also played a vital role in the sexual encounter. The complainants are often persuaded by others to file a false allegation (Veraart, 1997).

In sum, there are several motives to file a false allegation: material gain, alibi, revenge, sympathy, attention, a disturbed mental state, relabeling, or regret. Gain is the underlying driving force of every form of motive with one exception: Complainants with sexual hallucinations have no interest in either emotional or material gain. Although most motives can be reduced to some form of gain, the underlying emotional states are so diverse that it makes sense to treat them as separate motives. As a consequence, we argue that the list proposed by Kanin (1994) is not adequate because it does not cover all the motives provided by complainants.

We propose an expanded list in which gain is the predominant factor. In the list, complainants file a false allegation out of material gain, emotional gain, or mental disturbance. The list can be subdivided into eight different categories: material gain, alibi, revenge, sympathy, attention, a disturbed mental state, relabeling, or regret. The aim of the current study was to test the validity of the list.

Ground Truth

In studies in which the truthfulness of allegations of rape plays a role, it is important to establish ground truth. Ground truth is a term used to define what happened (DeAndrea, Tom Tong, Liang, Levine, & Walther, 2012; Horowitz, 2009; Iacono, 2008; Swets, 1988). The term is often used to define the accuracy of diagnostic systems, and the outcome of a test is compared to the ground truth (Swets, 1988). If we apply ground truth to false allegations of rape, it means that allegations classified as false are, in reality, false allegations of rape, while allegations classified as true are, in reality, true allegations of rape. In that sense, false negatives, true allegations in the sample of false allegations should be avoided as much as possible.

Researchers on allegations of rape have used different concepts to represent ground truth in their studies. Some researchers used the judicial outcome as a substitute for ground truth (Rassin & Van der Sleen, 2005). That is, however, not a correct representation of ground truth because sometimes guilty people are discharged, and sometimes innocent people get convicted, as in the case of Gary Dotson (Gross, Jacoby, Matheson, Montgomery, & Patil, 2005). Other researchers deemed all allegations of rape to be true unless they received the unfounded or no crime-label by police officers (Rumney, 2006). In that case, police officers decide whether an allegation of rape is false. Police officers, however, sometimes use the unfounded or no crime-label incorrectly. Police officers label allegations as unfounded in the case of marital rape or due to a variety of evidence problems, regardless of the ground truth (Gregory & Lees, 1996). A final approach is to take a retraction by the claimant as proof of a false allegation (Kanin, 1994). Sometimes claimants, though, retract their allegation due to police pressure (e.g., when they are not believed or told that there is no possibility to obtain a conviction) (Haket, 2007). In conclusion, it is not easy to obtain ground truth. Therefore, stringent criteria should be used in studies on allegations of rape to avoid false negatives.