Letter from the editors

"Also, only 2% of reported rapes are false reports." This is wrong. I run the world's leading site dedicated to giving voice to persons falsely accused of rape, The False Rape Society. Apparently the speakers are under the mistaken notion that in order to raise awareness about rape and to lend credibility to rape accusers, you need to denigrate the victimization of the falsely accused by declaring false rape claims essentially non-existent. The fact is, you can, and should, abhor both rape and false rerporting without resorting to knee jerk distortions of indisputable facts.

See, e.g., E. Greer, The Truth Behind Legal Dominance Feminism's 'Two Percent False Rape Claim' Figure, 33 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 947, a scholarly law review article that traced the two percent false rape canard to its untrustworthy source. Yet that two percent lie is still cited by paid sexual assault counselors. See also, "Until Proven Innocent," the widely praised (praised even by the New York Times, which the book skewers -- as well as almost every other major U.S. news source) and painstaking study of the Duke Lacrosse non-rape case. Authors Stuart Taylor and Professor K.C. Johnson explain that the exact number of false claims is elusive but "[t]he standard assertion by feminists that only 2 percent" or sexual assault claims "are false, which traces to Susan Brownmiller's 1975 book 'Against Our Will,' is without empirical foundation and belied by a wealth of empirical data. These data suggest that at least 9 percent and probably closer to half" of all sexual assault claims "are false . . . ." (Page 374.)

For most rape claims, we honestly don't know what happened. We would have to evaluate the evidence in a case-by-case basis to know, and nobody does that. We know that about 15 percent of these claims end in conviction and we can be reasonably certain most of these were actual rapes despite the fact that some men and boys are wrongly convicted. We know that anywhere from 8 to 50 percent are "false," not just unfounded, depending on the study. Most fall in the ambiguous gray where we just don't know what happened. It is fair to assert that more rapes are committed than lead to conviction and that more false claims occur than we can say with certainty. But rape/false rape claims do not lend themselves to certainty. To suggest certainty that 98% of all rape claims are actual rapes is simply wrong by any measure.

Whatever the exact number, every impartial, objective study shows false rape claims are a significant problem. As reported by "False Rape Allegations" by Eugene Kanin, Archives of Sexual Behavior Feb 1994 v23 n1 p81(12), Professor Kanin’s landmark study of a mid-size Midwestern city over the course of nine years found that 41 percent of all rape claims were not just false but recanted. The percentage of false claims was likely higher. Kanin also studied the police records of two unnamed large state universities and found that in three years, 50 percent of the 64 rapes reported to campus police were determined to be false.” Kanin was a feminist icon, widely cited for his studies on male aggression, but after people like me started citing this landmark study, he became a nitwit, incapable of doing simple research. Go figure.

In addition, a massive Air Force study in 1985 studied 556 rape allegations. It found that 27% of the accusers recanted, and an independent evaluation revealed a false accusation rate of 60%. McDowell, Charles P., Ph.D. “False Allegations.” Forensic Science Digest, (publication of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations), Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 1985), p. 64.

Some of strongest supporters of my site are rape victims. They loathe and despise false accusers. If you really want to help rape victims, you will work to eradicate the false accusers instead of putting your head in the sand and pretending they are a myth. They are hurting rape victims' credibility while well-intentioned rape advocates tell people, "look the other way, nothing to see here."

Does the above in any manner diminish the awfulness of rape? Absolutely not. The point is, we can all work to combat both rape and false reporting without slinking into divisive gender politics or the ideological trivialization of false reporting just because its primary victims are men.

PIERCE HARLAN
False Rape Society

Just a quick correction: SOS of the Family Justice Center

Actually IMS brought over a projector. IMS is a department within the Library. CTS (IT) ONLY does classrooms that are for general academic use. I understand the confusion. It is discussing that people steal from a budget strapped institution. I hope the criminal is caught and restitution will be applied.