SAVE: Ground-Breaking Surveys: 10% of Persons Are Falsely Accused

False allegations of abuse harm the innocent, rob true victims of needed services, and undermine the workings of justice. In May, SAVE conducted the first nationwide phone survey about this vexing problem, with 11% of respondents saying they had been falsely accused of domestic violence, child abuse or sexual assault.

To confirm the numbers, last month we repeated the survey, again calling over 10,000 persons on their landline phones. With both surveys combined; we can now report that about one in 10 persons have been falsely accused of abuse.

Other highlights from our surveys:

• One in six of the respondents personally knew someone who has been falsely accused of abuse
• About twice as many persons have been falsely accused of child abuse as domestic violence or sexual abuse
• Three-quarters of the falsely accused persons were male
• Nearly seven in 10 of the accusers were female
• In over a quarter of the cases, the accusation was made as part of a child custody dispute

For more details, see: http://www.saveservices.org/falsely-accused/survey

To bring an end to false accusations of abuse, you can join SAVE's Campaign 2012. SAVE provides the flyers and questions for candidates to use at townhalls and other events to bring false allegations and other DV reforms into the political arena: http://www.saveservices.org/campaign-2012.

Sincerely,

Teri Stoddard, Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments
www.saveservices.org