According to Wikipedia, the rate of false accusation of sexual assault is somewhere between 2% - 10%. (2) Several people have used that statistic to justify treating men accused of rape as "likely to be a rapist", even if the claim is otherwise uncorroborated.
However, even though only 2 - 10% of sexual assault allegations were dismissed as false, that doesn't mean that the remaining accusations are "true"--many of them could be false as well.
If you look into the studies on false rape allegations, a sexual assault claim is counted as "false" if police find a reason to dismiss the claim: the accuser recants, their story doesn't match known facts, the accuser decides not to cooperate, etc.
But how often will there be some piece of evidence that contradicts the accuser's claims, even if they're false?
Unlike most crimes, there's rarely anything visible to a third party after the fact that distinguishes a pleasant evening from felony sexual assault. Most alleged assaults happen behind closed doors between people who know each other.
So, even if the true rate of false accusation were high, we wouldn't expect third parties to often find evidence that would cause such claims to be dismissed outright.
Another point is that women don't need to go to the police to do a lot of damage to a man's life. Simply being accused of sexual misconduct informally often results in social death. They experience some or all of the following:
* blacklisted from social events (parties, weddings, etc)
* loss of their job or denial of promotion
* abandonment by friends and family
* physical assault by friends of the "victim" as a form of street justice
Sometimes the man doesn't even know that the claims are being made against him, or who is making them. And there's few mechanisms for clearing one's name in such cases. A defamation suit may well backfire, and cause even more social damage by bringing attention to the claims, even if the man ultimately wins the case. Women who make false claims are rarely punished, and the punishments they do receive are light relative to the damage they cause.
Often the best strategy for the man is simply to move away.
Such informal attacks aren't going to show up in official false reporting statistics.
That said, false claims could actually be low. We don't really know.
One way to measure the true magnitude of false sexual misconduct accusation rates would be to add a question about false sexual misconduct claims to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
The NCVS is a national survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice of 50 - 78 K households twice a year in the United States, on the frequency of crime victimization, as well as characteristics and consequences of victimization. The survey focuses on gathering information on the following crimes: assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, rape, and robbery. (1)
The NCVS is also an imperfect measure to be sure. For example, there is no way to verify much of the information gathered. However, it's used to measure the degree to which other crimes go unreported, so it seems a natural survey to measure how often false sexual assault allegations go unreported as well.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Crime_Victimization_Survey
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape
However, even though only 2 - 10% of sexual assault allegations were dismissed as false, that doesn't mean that the remaining accusations are "true"--many of them could be false as well.
If you look into the studies on false rape allegations, a sexual assault claim is counted as "false" if police find a reason to dismiss the claim: the accuser recants, their story doesn't match known facts, the accuser decides not to cooperate, etc.
But how often will there be some piece of evidence that contradicts the accuser's claims, even if they're false?
Unlike most crimes, there's rarely anything visible to a third party after the fact that distinguishes a pleasant evening from felony sexual assault. Most alleged assaults happen behind closed doors between people who know each other.
So, even if the true rate of false accusation were high, we wouldn't expect third parties to often find evidence that would cause such claims to be dismissed outright.
Another point is that women don't need to go to the police to do a lot of damage to a man's life. Simply being accused of sexual misconduct informally often results in social death. They experience some or all of the following:
* blacklisted from social events (parties, weddings, etc)
* loss of their job or denial of promotion
* abandonment by friends and family
* physical assault by friends of the "victim" as a form of street justice
Sometimes the man doesn't even know that the claims are being made against him, or who is making them. And there's few mechanisms for clearing one's name in such cases. A defamation suit may well backfire, and cause even more social damage by bringing attention to the claims, even if the man ultimately wins the case. Women who make false claims are rarely punished, and the punishments they do receive are light relative to the damage they cause.
Often the best strategy for the man is simply to move away.
Such informal attacks aren't going to show up in official false reporting statistics.
That said, false claims could actually be low. We don't really know.
One way to measure the true magnitude of false sexual misconduct accusation rates would be to add a question about false sexual misconduct claims to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
The NCVS is a national survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice of 50 - 78 K households twice a year in the United States, on the frequency of crime victimization, as well as characteristics and consequences of victimization. The survey focuses on gathering information on the following crimes: assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, rape, and robbery. (1)
The NCVS is also an imperfect measure to be sure. For example, there is no way to verify much of the information gathered. However, it's used to measure the degree to which other crimes go unreported, so it seems a natural survey to measure how often false sexual assault allegations go unreported as well.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Crime_Victimization_Survey
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape