August 11, 2008: A teenager tells police in Lynnwood, Washington State that a man broke into her apartment and raped her. Shortly it is reported that she had admitted making it all up.
And there it might have ended, but...
This case was entered originally in this database as a false rape allegation, in fact this girl was actually raped but confessed falsely to filing a false report. The full background to this particular case can be found here.
Organisations like Women Against Rape would have us believe this is the tip of a very big iceberg, and that like this unfortunate girl, most false accusers are not really false accusers. The reality is very different, and this situation is by no means unique to sexual assault cases.
In the first place, the reader will find many cases in this database in which men have pleaded guilty to imaginary sexual assaults; the 1975 case of Wayman Camille is unquestionably one of the saddest.
Men and women confess to imaginary crimes and the crimes committed by others for many different reasons including police pressure. Camille pleaded guilty because he was facing an horrendous sentence. Some confess because the truth they told is considered unworthy of belief; remember what the man said: you couldn’t make it up.
It remains to be seen why the real victim in the current case was not believed. Actually it doesn’t, sundry reports suggest she was not right in the head – like most of us in this mad 21st Century world! There would surely have been the little matter of forensic evidence though.
The real lesson of this case is that rape is a crime that should be investigated thoroughly. If a victim – real or imagined – is not prepared to submit to a thorough investigation, then she should think twice before reporting.
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