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The Dominion
January 16, 2002
False witness
by Sarah Prestwood
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."
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