re: DOE tells Princeton "Clear and Convincing" Is Too High of a Burden

We know about the psychological impact of rape. Perhaps the salient follow up is, "What is the psychological impact of false rape accusation and conviction?"

We know false allegations occur.
So what is the threshold for establishing the accuser's guilt?
What is the penalty for the accuser lying?

quote:

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50% of all forcible rape complaints reported on two large Midwestern state universities were false allegations.
44% were of a seemingly trivial and spiteful nature.

Archives of Sexual Behavior, VoL 23, No. 1 1994

In 1988, we gained access to the police records of two large Midwestern state universities. With the assistance of the chief investigating officers for rape offenses, all forcible rape complaints during the past 3 years were examined. Since the two schools produced a roughly comparable number of rape complaints and false rape allegations, the false allegation cases were combined, n = 32. This represents exactly 50% of all forcible rape complaints reported on both campuses. Quite unexpectedly then, we find that these university women, when filing a rape complaint, were as likely to file a false as a valid charge. Other reports from university police agencies support these findings (Jay, 1991).

In both police agencies, the taking of the complaint and the follow-up investigation was the exclusive responsibility of a ranking female officer. Neither agency employed the polygraph and neither declared the complaint false without a recantation of the charge. Most striking is the patterning of the reasons for the false allegations given by the complainants, a patterning similar to that found for the nonstudent city complainants. Approximately one half (53%) of the false charges were verbalized as serving an alibi function. In every case, consensual sexual involvement led to problems whose solution seemed to be found in the filing of a rape charge. The complaints motivated by revenge, about 44%, were of the same seemingly trivial and spiteful nature as those encountered by the city police agency. Only one complainant fell into the attention/sympathy category. These unanticipated but supportive parallel findings on university populations suggest that the complications and conflicts of heterosexual involvements are independent of educational level. In fact, we found nothing substantially different here from those cases encountered by our city police agency.

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So while we may not know how many campus rapes go unreported, we do know that false allegations occur. We do know in some studies, of the rapes which were reported, 50% were false allegations. We do know those false allegations were deliberately rendered for secondary gain. Presumably those charges came at no consequence whatsoever to the accuser.

Oh, and by the way, who is the most frequently targeted demographic?
Black males.