The Nelson Mail
June 30, 2000

Compassion urged after false complaint

A Nelson woman who was convicted this week of making a false complaint to police should be treated with compassion not condemnation, according to a criminology lecturer.

Jan Jordan, a senior lecturer at Victoria University's Institute of Criminology, is writing her doctoral thesis on rape and the police.

Her comments follow Monday's court appearance of a 30-year-old woman in the Nelson District Court.

The woman admitted making a false statement to police, alleging two men broke into her Hampden St home and attacked her last month. The woman staged a break-in and injured herself to make it appear she had been attacked in a home invasion.

She was convicted and ordered to pay $596.94. Her name has been suppressed.

Ms Jordan said it was an unusual false complaint for rape because it involved self-mutilation. But she warned against condemning the woman, saying the false claim wasn't motivated by malice.

"She was clearly feeling very isolated and vulnerable or it wouldn't have come to this,'' she said.

The woman's lawyer, John Sandston, told the court the woman had been subject to a sexual attack several years earlier and said she was acting this out in the recent attack.

Charges were laid as the result of the incident, he said.

Ms Jordan said unresolved issues of past abuse or trauma were a reason a woman might lay a false complaint with police.

"Any trauma that is unresolved can be recreated by the victim until she gets the intervention that is required, until the issues are dealt with,'' she said.

But the stereotype of a scorned woman making a false complaint to seek revenge was unusual and would be uncovered in a thorough police investigation, she said.

She said it was "virtually impossible'' to know how many false complaints of rape were made to police each year, because no records were kept.

Surveys on the issue had suggested 50-80 percent of all rape complaints were false, but this also depended on how complaints were categorised and the opinion of individual police officers.

Ms Jordan said she had a great deal of sympathy with the police over the issue and particularly this case, but said she hoped they would see it as a positive case clearance and the woman had got the help she needed.

"Both sides need sympathy, not just the police,'' she said.

False complaints had negative effects on police and on women who had legitimate complaints.

"It's hard for police to deal with keeping that perspective when rape has one of the lowest reporting rates of any crime. In reality only 10 percent of rape complaints ever get reported and the chance of a conviction is one of the lowest of any offence,'' she said.

Detective Sergeant Wayne McCoy said thankfully there were not a lot of false complaints in Nelson. But he said the investigation had taken about 400 hours in police inquiries and pulled police off other investigations.

He refused to comment on the case, saying it was still before the courts.

The court will decide on July 17 whether the woman will be granted permanent name suppression.

Last year police recorded 423 false complaints. Sixteen of those were in Nelson and 15 were resolved by police.