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False Allegations about False Allegations Peter Zohrab 2019

I was told about an article by Margaret Gardener -- apparently because its research is based on data collected by her organisation, the False Allegation Support Organisation (FASO). My comments below relate to the introductory, theoretical parts of their article. Their actual analysis of the data is relatively uninteresting, as far as I am concerned. The article is:

Rumney, P. and McCartan, K. (2017) Purported false allegations of rape, child abuse and non-sexual violence: Nature, characteristics and implications. Journal of Criminal Law, 81 (6). pp. 497-520. ISSN 0022-0183 Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/25256

The article states (on pages 4-5):

I do not know how common they are, but it is undeniable that false allegations are easily made and the authors do not, in fact, provide any evidence that they are not easily made. The issue of how common they are is discussed at some length in their article and I will comment below on that issue. The authors also do not provide any evidence as to the exact prevalence of "negative cultural attitudes towards women in which they are portrayed as unbelievable, malicious liars." They do not specify whether these attitudes imply that all women lie all of the time. If not, I would want to know whether the authors believe that women never lie. Do the authors believe that people have never observed women lying? Do the authors believe that such attitudes about women (if they exist) could not possibly be based on real-life observation?

To the contrary, I would argue that the authors' remarks are informed by compulsorily positive Feminist cultural attitudes towards women, which are especially prevalent in the modern, female-dominated university (See my article, Cambridge University is a Women's Kindergarten: a review of The Essential Difference, by Simon Baron-Cohen) . My argument is supported by the fact that the short passage quoted above contains three footnotes, all of which refer (in whole or in part) to articles in Feminist or Gender Studies journals or otherwise explicitly Feminist articles. Footnote 25 refers to several articles, including one in the Journal of Gender Studies, footnote 26 refers to an article in the journal Violence Against Women and footnote 27 refers to an article which describes itself as a "Feminist Analysis" in its very title! This makes me think that the authors are yet another couple of academics who are setting out to whitewash all female activity and place as much blame as possible onto men.

Bear in mind, also, that there is research which indicates that testosterone reduces lying in men (Wibral M, Dohmen T, Klingmüller D, Weber B, Falk A (2012) Testosterone Administration Reduces Lying in Men. PLoS ONE 7(10): e46774. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0046774). Since women have less testosterone than men, I would like to see research into the issue of whether this causes women to tell more lies than men do. However, we are unlikely to see the Feminist universities conduct such research (fairly, at least) in the near future!

The authors go on to claim that "allegations arising from a malicious motive are a relatively small subset of the total number of false allegations" (p.5). However, that statement relates to their vague "straw man" of the alleged cultural portrayal of women as "unbelievable, malicious liars". I doubt that there are many people who consider that all woman are always unbelievable, or that all their lies are necessarily malicious. If a woman has confessed to having made a false allegation, that proves that she is (at least sometimes) a liar. How can you then simply believe what she says about her motivation? She may be tempted to mitigate the seriousness of her lying by inventing a false motivation for it. Some false allegations may also arise from a mixture of motives. Kanin "False Rape Allegations" (Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1994) found that 27% of false allegations were motivated by a desire for revenge, 18% were motivated by a desire for attention/sympathy and 56% were were motivated by a desire to give an alternative explanation for an encounter with a male. However, I am not assuming that these statistics are necessarily correct -- because we can't trust the veracity of an admitted liar. The authors go on to state, "... there are (sic) a number of types of non-malicious false allegation which likely comprise most cases (p. 5)." They provide no evidence that these other types comprise most cases of false allegations.

As regards the issue of how common false allegations are, the authors note that estimates of the rate of false allegations range from 0.6% to 90% (p. 11). They then make the following excellent point:

Then the authors go on to discuss the fact that varying methodologies have been used by researchers of false allegations. They cite a publication in "The National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women" as having somehow shown that "many studies have little, or no credibility" (p. 11). They then describe that publication and one in the journal "Violence Against Women" as "the more rigorous international studies" (p. 11). These are obviously Feminist publications. It should surprise no one, therefore, that these two publications, which are spoken of so highly by Rumney and McCartan, suggest very low rates of false allegations (2-8% and 2-10%) !

Conclusion

This article consistently restricts its approval to Feminist publications and prefers authors who claim that false allegations are very rare. The article can therefore be regarded as a Feminist whitewash of the topic of false allegations.

-- Hamill, Jasper (2019): "Men are more disadvantaged than women in the UK, US and most of Europe, scientists claim." Metro, 4 Jan 2019.

 

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