It’s interesting that you can find a ton of various stats on false rape allegations

arobotstolemyuterus:

thepeacockangel:

but nothing or next to nothing on false accusations of assault, theft or anything else pretty much (except domestic violence).  It’s almost like people believe victims of crimes that don’t disproportionately affect women tend to not be doubted or something

Also, I know someone who was falsely accused of burglary (the false accusation was most likely racially motivated, because of course it was). He was arrested, but never charged. You want to hear something funny (not really)? People who saw how his life was affected by the allegation and have genuine empathy for what he went through don’t go around derailing conversations about burglary to talk about how they know someone who was falsely accused, and how it ruins lives, and how you have to be skeptical. It’s like they recognize that this was largely an outlier and that most people don’t go around making up allegations.

Also, about those statistics, because I study this (or, rather, something adjacent to this, but I need to know this): Most of the statistics are actually about “unfounded” reports, which can mean a lot of things. They can mean that there was not enough evidence to pursue it further. They can mean that the police don’t believe the report (and we all know how well police, in general, do at handling these sorts of things). It can be that the report was made in the wrong jurisdiction and the police decide not to follow up with the paperwork. It can be that the statute of limitations has passed. It can be a third party report that misunderstands or misconstrues what happened (angry parent). It can be that what is reported is not a crime but should be (for instance, in Ohio, the definition of marital rape doesn’t included drugging). It could include a genuine false report in which no perpetrator is named. In short, of the small sliver of reports that are “unfounded” and considered false, there are a lot of things that could happen aside from the stereotype of “woman vindictively accuses man of rape.” And when that happens, 9 times out of 10, it’s racially motivated, and furthermore, there are a number of steps along the way that protect the wrongfully accused. So, like, it’s not even a problem of the magnitude of even the smallest statistical numbers. 

This is all good info, which I have seen before (except for the story about the false accusation of burglary), but deserves distribution