http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/index/0,1008,1069741a1938,FF.html

Dominion
Wellington
Wednesday January 16, 2002

False witness

Rape is a sickening crime that can blight the victim's life, so why would any woman want to invent it, asks Sarah Prestwood

The new year in Porirua delivered a sickening headline. A 16-year-old girl, babysitting her two brothers at a Porirua park, was abducted, blindfolded, and gang-raped. Public outrage put pressure on police to make a hasty arrest.

This week delivered an unexpected twist. Police now believe the alleged kidnapping and rape never happened and that the girl fabricated the story.

Rape is an angry word with dangerous consequences. Though most women who report rape are telling the truth, a small minority go to police with stories filled with sexual deceit. Their motivation can be anything from revenge to a reaction against childhood sexual abuse.

A victim who makes a false rape complaint wants to tell you a story, and she wants to make sure you believe her, says Detective Sergeant Dave Henwood of the Criminal Profiling Unit, who analyses hundreds of interview tapes from sex offenders and victims in an effort to work out who is telling the truth.

The South Auckland-based unit was launched after the arrests of notorious serial rapists Joseph Thompson, who has 61 sexual violation convictions, and Malcolm Rewa, who attacked 24 women between 1987 and 1996.

Mr Henwood says there are "red flags" that indicate when a women is making a false complaint, but he is reluctant to give out the details for fear of igniting the problem.

"When a woman gives you a false statement, she generally doesn't know what it's like to be raped, and she gives you a version of how she thinks a rapist is going to behave," he says.

Rapists generally fall into different categories, though the women will describe a certain type that crosses a variety of the subgroups, he says. They give few details of the actual assault, but the background to the attack is very detailed, as this is the part of the story based on truth.

Their motivation can range from seeking sympathy from their boyfriends, revenge, explaining a pregnancy, or why they were late for work.

Defining a false complaint is a grey area. A woman can fabricate a story, or will frequently believe she really was raped, even when the facts prove otherwise. Alcohol can play a key role in distorting the truth.

"It's never clear-cut," says Mr Henwood. "In many cases a woman might believe she has been raped, but she was too drunk to remember the circumstances."

Earlier last year police charged a Mt Victoria stripper with making a false complaint after she claimed she was sexually assaulted in Lukes Lane, central Wellington.

Detective Sergeant Steve Vaughan, the Wellington CIB boss who headed the Lukes Lane inquiry, says it is always disappointing when a complainant is discovered to be concealing the truth. "It's difficult when you get to a point in an inquiry and you realise that there's a high probability that it hasn't happened, but you're still subjected to a lot of pressure from within police, the media, the victim and the community to get a result."

Police attitudes have greatly altered towards rape victims since the 1970s, when they were often viewed with suspicion and mistrust. "All rape complaints are taken very seriously till proven otherwise," he says. "We don't stand in judgment, and we also don't want to discourage people from making complaints."

Police headquarters do not keep figures on the number of false rape complaints made each year, but it is extremely rare for anyone to be charged.

Earlier this week Tauranga District Court was told how a woman lied to police that she had been raped and then made a false ACC claim. Under new law changes, people who claim to have been sexually abused can receive ACC payouts without having to complain to police. Campaigners against false allegations of sexual abuse are fearful that the changes, which take effect from April 1, could lead to an increase in ACC claims.

Rape survivor support groups dispute this view. Wellington's Sexual Abuse Help Foundation manager Marian Kleist says false complaints are often over-reported in the media, deterring survivors from coming forward in case they are not believed.

However, the failure to acknowledge false rape complaints is an insult to women who have genuinely been sexually abused, according to Felicity Goodyear-Smith, former head of the now disbanded organisation Casualties of Sexual Allegations.

She has attracted much criticism for her controversial views on rape and false allegations. "If we don't acknowledge that, along with real rape, there are also false allegations, then it is discrediting the whole issue and does a disservice to the genuine cases," she says.

Dr Goodyear-Smith helped set up the Auckland rape support group Help in the early 1980s after working as a police doctor. "We need to have a presumption of innocent till proven guilty, as both the victims and offender must be treated with respect. The presumption of guilt in police investigation introduces a bias from the outset."

She takes a hard line against women who make false complaints and believes the penalty should be comparable with sending an innocent man to prison. "If you are prepared to do that to someone else, then you have to live with the consequences. If we actually had a law with teeth, it would reduce the number of false allegations."

Victoria University lecturer Jan Jordan, who has studied the experiences of rape victims and the police, says the issue needs to be put into context. "We have an overinflated perception of the number of false complaints compared to what the reality is."

Women treat rape seriously and do not use the word lightly, she says. When they do make a false complaint, there may be underlying problems regarding unresolved historical abuse, or a previous rape, and they are seldom likely to be motivated by spite or revenge. "An elaborate hoax is very rare and usually leans towards underlying problems and a cry for help."

In the 1980s a woman raped by Rewa was turned away by police who considered her complaint to be false. Rewa went on to rape more than 20 women.

"It still angers me that when David Dougherty's conviction was overturned everyone was quick to feel sorry for him," Ms Jordan says. "But what about the woman in the Malcolm Rewa case who wasn't believed and was ignored for so long? We don't feel sorry for the victims whose attacker is never prosecuted or convicted."