'Crying wolf: False rape charges hurt real victims'

Article here.

'There are real victims in Biurny Peguero Gonzalez’s fake rape story.

In 2005, the Union City woman told authorities in New York that William McCaffrey, a construction worker from the Bronx, and two other men kidnapped and sexually assaulted her at knife point. She now admits it never happened.

McCaffrey was three years into a 20-year sentence when a judge ordered him freed, based on Gonzalez’s admission. She now faces seven years in prison herself.

The other victims in this case are the true victims of rape. Andrea Spencer-Linzie, executive director of N.J. Coalition Against Sexual Assault, estimates that 80 percent of sexual assaults go unreported, often because victims fear they won’t be believed.

"There’s a very prevalent myth that there are a lot of false allegations, so whenever there is one, it plays into the myth," she says.

That’s a real crime. And another reason Gonzalez deserves to be punished.'