Sexual assault is a horrible, life-altering event. It is something survivors never forget but will spend their whole life trying to. Tragically, the entire system is being completely undermined by an increasingly popular trend of false rape accusations.
False reports harm the agencies sworn to protect the victims. The U Police Department kicked into overdrive after receiving a rape report from a 16-year-old girl claiming she was sexually assaulted on campus Oct. 26.
Sgt. Arb Nordgran said the U Police take every report seriously, and as such, a lot of time was used to track down a fictitious criminal. But, he said it doesn’t matter8212;it’s their job to investigate and expend every effort to get to the truth.
“It’s rewarding in a sense that the department put a lot of man-hours in…it was worth it,” Nordgran said. “It is a lot better to put the man-hours in to prove that something didn’t happen, than to not put in the man-hours and say, “Boy, it really did happen’ later on.”
It’s also unfortunate that the time, effort and energy wasted by those officers can never be recovered, and what about the tax dollars being spent?
People who willingly make fake accusations are inappropriately spending public money, and they should have to pay just like any other criminal.
The young woman who made this false report suffered no public penalties. Her name was never divulged or published, and the U Police said there will be no criminal charges. She didn’t have to pay a dime to cover the chaos she created. Apparently, the most we can hope for is a substantial grounding by her parents.
Time after time, agencies refuse to press charges against individuals making false reports. Apparently, without the threat of punishment, there is no incentive for some people to be honest. In fact, filing false rape reports seems to be the new, trendy way to avoid getting in trouble, to create an alibi or to simply gain attention.
Whatever their reasoning, false accusers are harming real victims’ decisions to report rape crimes. An August 2002, U.S. Department of Justice report based on the National Crime Victimization Survey from 1992 to 2000, found that of the 131,950 completed rapes that occurred during the period, only 36 percent of them were reported. As well, only 34 percent of the 98,970 attempted rapes and only 26 percent of the 135,550 sexual assaults were ever reported to police.
There are numerous reasons why sexual crime victims choose to not report assaults, but no one can deny the damaging effect false reports create for real victims. The fear of not being believed by the police increases with each revelation of yet another fake rape allegation. In their diligent pursuit of truth, police officers are forced to question allegations, often treating true victims like they’re the criminals.
The stigma of mistrust is easily understood when considering the detrimental harm false allegations inflict upon innocent individuals and their families. Besides their names being plastered in newspapers, on the radio and TV, they will be permanently affixed to the fake crime in numerous articles published on the Internet. Later retractions don’t erase previous condemning articles or ease the life-altering harm they inflict.
Innocent individuals are arrested based solely on an accusation. They are often treated as guilty by the public until they prove themselves innocent. They are humiliated, doubted, hated and cursed for being a despicable, vile creature. If they are lucky enough to prove their innocence, there will still be people who believe they were guilty of a violent crime.
I’m grateful the U reinstated its six-week Rape Aggression Defense class this semester. Reflecting on all that was taught about self defense, I learned the most vital defense we have is our brain. We need to be acutely aware of our surroundings at all times. Evaluating potential rape opportunities and then eliminating those vulnerabilities by planning ahead is the smartest defense.
Most importantly, victims have a responsibility to report the crime so the offender cannot harm anyone else. Misuse of this responsibility degrades the entire process. False reports physically, mentally and financially hurt the police, the public, real rape victims and innocent individuals who are wrongly accused.
The system must acknowledge the increasing trend of false accusations. Laws should be established to hold false accusers financially and criminally responsible for their actions. Maybe then individuals will think twice before concocting lies about being raped simply to avoid some trivial consequence.