A false accusation of rape happens when a person states that they or another person have been raped when no rape has occurred. The issue is studied in criminal law, criminology, sociology, and public policy, with particular attention to evidentiary standards, reporting practices, and the legal handling of sexual assault allegations.
Despite many attempts to estimate the prevalence of false rape allegations, reliable evidence is scarce, and estimates vary widely across studies and remain contested. Many factors can cause prevalence estimates to be distorted, misleading, or biased.
Causes Causes of false accusations of rape fall into two broad categories: deliberate deception (lies) and non-deliberate errors (such as false memories, facilitated communication, or uncertainty about events). In stricter definitions—such as those used in academic research—only the former is typically classified or counted statistically as a false accusation of rape.
Deliberate deception An accuser may have several motivations to falsely claim they have been raped. There is disagreement on how many different categories these may be put into. Kanin (1994) listed three: revenge, producing an alibi, and getting sympathy/attention. Newman (2017) listed four: revenge, producing an alibi, personal gain, and mental illness.
According to De Zutter et al. (2017), Kanin's list is "valid but insufficient to explain all the different motives of complainants" and presents eight categories of motives: material gain, alibi, revenge, sympathy, attention, disturbed mental state, relabeling, or regret.
According to Hines and Douglas (2017), 73% of men who've experienced partner-initiated violence reported that their partner threatened to make false accusations. This is compared to 3% for men in the general population.
Non-deliberate deception False memories There are several ways in which an alleged victim can accidentally come to believe that they have been raped by the person(s) they accuse. These include: Recovered-memory therapy: memories of sexual abuse "recovered" during therapy in the absence of any supporting evidence, based on the Freudian notion of "repression" The victim's confusion of the memory of the real rapist with the memory of someone else Memory conformity: memory can become contaminated when co-witnesses discuss their recollection of events
Facilitated communication
Facilitated communication (FC) is a scientifically discredited technique that attempts to aid communication by people with autism or other communication disabilities who are non-verbal. The facilitator guides the disabled person's arm or hand and attempts to help them type on a keyboard or other device. Research indicates that the facilitator is the source of the messages obtained through FC, not the disabled person. However, the facilitator may believe they are not the source of the messages due to the ideomotor effect, which is the same effect that guides a Ouija board. There have been a number of accusations of sexual abuse made through facilitated communication. As of 1995, there were sixty known cases, with an unknown numbers of others settled without reaching public visibility.
"Don't know" According to De Zutter et al. (2017), 20% of complainants said that they did not know why they had filed a false allegation.
Presumption of guilt
Presumption of guilt refers to a tendency or practice in which, after a sexual assault or rape accusation arises, public opinion, institutions, or judicial practice assume that the accused has already committed the crime despite insufficient evidence or before investigation and trial are completed, and require the accused to prove their own innocence.
Estimates of prevalence It is difficult to assess the prevalence of false accusations.Emily Bazelon & Rachael Larimore: "How Often Do Women Falsely Cry Rape?," October 1, 2009, Slate, retrieved October 23, 2024Goodyear-Smith, Felicity: "Why and how false allegations of abuse occur: An overview," 2016, in R. Burnett (Ed.), Wrongful allegations of sexual and child abuse (pp. 99–117). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723301.003.0008, posted by American Psychological Assn. (APA) on APA PsychNet, at , retrieved October 23, 2024
Although understandable, assigning a percentage or range easily leads to misinterpretation. Researchers typically exercise great caution to avoid misleading and misuse.
Most jurisdictions lack a distinct category for false accusations. As a result, these cases are often grouped with other outcomes—such as cases lacking physical resistance or injury—under classifications like "unfounded" or "unproven". Because these categories include cases closed for multiple reasons unrelated to falsity, they cannot be used directly to measure false accusation rates. Reported rates therefore usually refer only to allegations proven false; some jurisdictions record only those demonstrating malicious intent.Gross, Bruce (Spring 2009). "False Rape Allegations: An Assault On Justice" . The Forensic Examiner
Data on false allegations typically derive from reviews of investigative and prosecutorial records within criminal justice systems, rather than from studies designed to measure prevalence. These reviews aim to assess evidentiary sufficiency for prosecution, not to classify non-prosecuted cases as "false" or "true".
A widely cited study by Stephen DiCanio (1993) suggests that verified false rape allegations account for approximately "2% to 10%" of all cases.DiCanio, M. (1993). The encyclopedia of violence: origins, attitudes, consequences. New York: Facts on File. . The prevalence rate is still unknown.
Frequently cited percentage estimates refer only to cases that, following investigation, were formally determined to be demonstrably false; therefore, they should not be interpreted as implying that the remaining reports are true. In fact, given the particular nature of this offense, the proportion of allegations that can be definitively verified or definitively disproven remains low.
Sampling survey targeting a broader population (2020, 2023, 2025) The YouGov survey series on false accusations uses self-reported questionnaires administered via its online panel, with weighted samples of adults aged 18 and over. Respondents are asked whether they have ever been falsely accused of abuses.
A 2020 U.S. survey (n = 2,407) found that about 8% of adults—roughly 20.4 million people—reported such experiences. A 2023 multinational survey (U.S. n = 1,266) reported a 10% prevalence in the United States, with broadly similar rates across countries including Argentina, Australia, Canada, India, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. A 2025 multinational survey (Argentina n = 1,069; Australia n = 1,061; U.K. n = 2,081; U.S. n = 1,252) found the rate ranged from approximately 4% to 13%, with 11% in Argentina, 13% in Australia, 4% in the U.K., and 8% rate in the U.S.
Prevalence of false accusers in general population (2021) In a 2021 study, 255 U.S. women (both college students and community members) were asked whether they could imagine a situation in which they would make a claim of assault to official investigators, or to friends and family members, against a man when it was not true. The results were that 101 (39.6%) of them rated this item positively to differing degrees and 18 (7.1%) admitted to making such false claims in the past.
Statistics Canada (2018)
According to Statistics Canada, 19% and 14% of sexual assault allegations were deemed unfounded in 2016 and 2017, respectively. It also declared, however, that more severe and violent cases of sexual assault were less likely to be declared unfounded than less severe ones. Cases declared to be unfounded are cases where police determined that the assault did not occur and was not attempted.
According to the Globe and Mail, the statistics about unfounded cases are often kept secret, providing no incentive for police forces to analyze and account for them.
Archives of Sexual Behavior (2016) Claire E. Ferguson and John M. Malouff conducted a meta-analysis of confirmed false rape reporting rates in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2016, and found the rate of false reports of sexual assault was 5.2%. The authors say that the "total false reporting rate, including both confirmed and equivocal cases, would be greater than the 5% rate found here".
Los Angeles Police Department, USA (2014) Researchers Cassia Spohn, Clair White and Katharine Tellis examined data provided by the Los Angeles Police Department in the US from 2008, and found that false reports among rape cases was about 4.5 percent. Upon review of Cassia Spohn's work, the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office (LADO), which initially collaborated in the report, concluded "the perspective, conclusions and policy recommendations are inconsistent with American constitutional principles of justice, due process protections and the ethical obligations of prosecutors." The LADO noted that Spohn et al. likely had ideological biases against the accused and "failed to develop an understanding of the criminal justice system in Los Angeles County."
Crown Prosecution Service report, UK (2011–2012) A report by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) examined rape allegations in England and Wales over a 17-month period between January 2011 and May 2012. It showed that in 35 cases authorities prosecuted a person for making a false allegation, while they brought 5,651 prosecutions for rape. Keir Starmer, at the time head of the CPS, said that the "mere fact that someone did not pursue a complaint or retracted it, is not of itself evidence that it was false" and that it is a "misplaced belief" that false accusations of rape are commonplace. He added that the report also showed that a significant number of false allegations of rape (and domestic violence) "involved young, often vulnerable people. About half of the cases involved people aged 21 years old and under, and some involved people with mental health difficulties. In some cases, the person alleged to have made the false report had undoubtedly been the victim of some kind of offence, even if not the one that he or she had reported."
Lisak, USA (2010) David Lisak's study, published in 2010 in Violence Against Women, classified as demonstrably false 8 out of the 136 (5.9%) reported rapes at an American university over a ten-year period (1998 to 2007). A much larger number of reports (44.9%) were classified by the authors as "Case Did Not Proceed.
Applying International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) guidelines, a case was classified as a false report if there was evidence that a thorough investigation was pursued and that the investigation had yielded evidence that the reported sexual assault had in fact not occurred. A thorough investigation would involve, potentially, multiple interviews of the alleged perpetrator, the victim, and other witnesses, and where applicable, the collection of other forensic evidence (e.g., medical records, security camera records). For example, if key elements of a victim's account of an assault were internally inconsistent and directly contradicted by multiple witnesses and if the victim then altered those key elements of his or her account, investigators might conclude that the report was false. That conclusion would have been based not on a single interview, or on intuitions about the credibility of the victim, but on a "preponderance of evidence gathered over the course of a thorough investigation."
Burman, Lovett & Kelly, Europe (2009) In a study of the first 100 rape reports after April 1, 2004, in Scotland, researchers found that about 4% of reports were designated by police to be false.