How to deal with false rape allegations

Article here. Excerpt:

'In some studies, “A case can be classified as ‘baseless’ if, for example, a victim reports an incident that, while truthfully recounted, does not meet, in the eyes of investigators, the legal definition of a sexual assault,” Lisak and his colleagues write. “This classification is clearly distinct from a case in which a victim deliberately fabricates an account of being raped, yet the ‘unfounded’ category is very often equated with the category of ‘false allegation.’” A 1992 study of 302 rape reports made to law enforcement conducted by the British Home Office drew a distinction between cases that were “no-crimed” — or neither investigated further nor prosecuted — from reports that were determined to be false allegations. A 2005 study by the same organization dealt with alleged assaults that were classified as false reports that were deemed not credible because the alleged victim was mentally ill, intoxicated, or told inconsistent stories, which can be a sign of trauma.
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As Drs. Kimberly Lonsway and Lisak, in collaboration with retired police Sgt. Joanne Archambault, wrote in a 2009 briefing for the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women, “many ‘real’ false reports involve only a vaguely described stranger, so the victim can receive the caring attention of law enforcement officials and social service providers without the fear that someone will be arrested. Clearly, these cases can be extremely frustrating for criminal justice professionals, but they are probably best handled with appropriate referrals for social services rather than prosecution for filing a false report.”

It would be irresponsible to speculate which category the subject of “A Rape on Campus” falls into without further hard evidence. But the people who are concerned about the harm she may have done to the reputations of a group of young men shouldn’t compound the damage she’s caused by invoking her to discredit other people who may be in desperate need of help.'