Let’s begin by getting one thing straight: false allegations of rape are rare. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that false accusations are any more of a problem in sexual offences cases than in cases relating to any other crime.
And yet, still the idea that women cannot be believed when they report assault persists.
The case of Liam Allen has made international headlines. This, in and of itself, is hardly shocking because, by all accounts, it hasn’t been handled well. Allen, a 22-year-old student of criminology at the University of Greenwich, has spent close to two years on bail after being accused of rape by his ex-girlfriend.
However, instead of questioning how and why our justice system has allowed someone accused of rape to be on bail and in limbo for two years, commentators are talking about false accusations. Allen’s case fell apart at Croydon Crown Court after the judge was made aware that police officers had failed to hand over more than 40,000 text messages between him and his accuser which constituted evidence.
Allen is set to sue the Metropolitan Police over their failure to disclose evidence which, in the end, led to the case being thrown out of court. He told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire that the whole ordeal has ‘completely ripped apart’ his ‘personal life’.
In response to the collapse of this case as well as another over the summer which allegedly involved the same police officer, Scotland Yard have said they are reviewing all ongoing cases. This, undoubtedly, is a good thing. However, the truth is that false accusations are rare and a case like this says more about the problems we have within our judiciary system when it comes to how sexual offences are investigated and prosecuted than it does about false accusations.
Professor Nicole Westmarland, Director of Durham University’s Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse, told *The Debrief *‘Today’s news reveals more evidence of the need for a root and branch review of how sexual offences are investigated and prosecuted. Tinkering at the edges of a failing system has not worked for anyone, and there is a need for more widespread public trust in sexual offence prosecutions’.
Crucially, Professor Westmarland explained, if trust in the process of prosecuting sexual offenses is low then ‘victims will continue to worry about reporting [these crimes] and the public will continue to be concerned over whether false allegations are being taken forward for prosecution. In reality, there is no evidence to suggest false allegations are any more common in sexual offence cases than in other cases, but the myth continues and must be addressed through a more trusted system.’
Indeed, to give some idea of how common false allegations are: a study produced by the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales found that of 5,651 prosecutions for rape, only 35 involved false allegations.
The history of women not being believed is long. It's written in to the Old Testament of the Bible, one of the founding texts of Western society, that woman is responsible for the downfall of man. The frenzied excitement of some when a rape allegation turns out to be false demonstrates that the notion that women are, by their nature, dishonest and not the be believed persists. More than this, surely we have to look no further than the fact that it took megastars like Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow - women with money, power and influence - to come out against a sexual predator like Harvey Weinstein for other women to do the same to realise that there are women all over the world, from all walks of life, who do not speak out about harassment or assault for fear that they will not be believed.
Liam Allen's case is troubling, there can be no doubt about that. However, the truth is that rape and sexual assault are common. More common than false accusations of rape and sexual assault. Over the last year, Rape Crisis Centresacross England and Wales responded to their highest ever number of helpline calls - 202,666 in total, that’s nearly 4,000 a week. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, one in five women in England and Wales has experienced some form of sexual violence since the age of 16. So, if a woman reports a rape, the odds are, quite literally, that she is telling the truth. We shouldn’t let very serious concerns about how sexual offence cases are handled detract from this fact.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.