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Allegations of Sexual
Abuse |
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The phenomenon of false rape
complaints is proving a fraught one. A Canterbury woman who is
convinced her husband has been the victim of a false rape complaint speaks
bitterly of the experience. "I would never have believed that
in a democratic country like New Zealand that people supposedly in a position
of ensuring truth and justice would fail to treat an alleged offender as
innocent until proven guilty," she says. Her family's life has been upended
by the case and says that to be accused of a sexual crime is worse than being
accused of a murder as nothing sparks the same hysteria as an allegation of
rape. Yet what happens if the allegation
is false? There are many cases on record where women have made false rape
allegations. It is a minefield, for police,
complainants, the accused and the various support agencies working with rape
victims. In February last year, a
26-year-old woman faked a vicious sex attack on the shore of Lake Taupo.
Detective Sergeant Andy Allan, of the Taupo police, reported she had
deliberately ripped her own clothes, and appeared to be unconscious when she
was found. The woman eventually admitted that
it was a hoax and was charged with making a false complaint to police. It was
her fifth false complaint in eight years. Last August, a Wellington woman
claimed she was raped by a taxi driver, but police eventually found that she
did not take a taxi home that day. Detective Senior Sergeant Shane Cotter,
who charged her with making a false claim, pointed to the wasted police time
(about $5000 worth) on a busy weekend, and an after-hours doctor's medical
examination ($1500) as well as a counsellor who had to be called. While some false complaints soon
fail, others can make it to trial. In 1995, Hamilton university
student Nick Wills was wrongly held in jail, branded a serial rapist,
harassed on campus, and lost his job and home at the university hostel. The Police Complaints Authority
eventually found the investigating officers had ignored his solid alibi and
did not investigate the complainant's claims properly. The 18-year-old
student who admitted making it all up was successfully prosecuted for doing
so. Wills was eventually paid $30,000 compensation and went on to become a
barrister. Tony Greig is a Christchurch
barrister and was a police officer for 17 years. He recalls, "It was not
unusual for the CIB squad that took over on a Monday morning to be met with
three rape allegations from the weekend. It was not unusual to have one or
two of them withdrawn within days, after being shown to be demonstrably
false." University of Canterbury
criminologist Greg Newbold refers to the Ministerial Rape Report of 1983
(used as a basis for later legislative changes) which suggests about 30 per
cent of rape allegations prove to be false. But Jan Jordan, a senior lecturer
in criminology at Victoria University, points to several overseas research
studies that indicate a false complaint rate of about 5%. Georgina Thompson, of Rape Crisis
in Wellington, argues that "the way in which the reporting of false
complaints is done gives the impression that they are common and hysteria is
created around their existence". "Our communities do not share
the same sense of outrage or concern about actual rape and sexual abuse and
the prevalence with which it occurs as it does about those that are falsely
accused." A false allegation or report to
police is an offence under section 24 of the Summary Offences Act and punishable
by three months imprisonment or a fine not exceeding $2000. Should the false complaint proceed
to an evidential stage in court, then the seriousness of the offending
increases to include such charges under the Crimes Act as perjury, and
attempting to pervert the course of justice. In a rare case last August, a
44-year-old Waikato woman at the Tauranga District Court was sentenced to
five months jail for making false complaints that she was raped by a man and
sexually assaulted by his colleague. But even if a complainant has a
history of telling untruths or shows signs of being out of touch with
reality, the police acting national crime manager, Win van der Velde,
suggests that they should be taken just as seriously as an allegation from
anyone else. However, he does suggest more diligence is required especially
in verifying the detail around the complainant's allegation. Irrespective of the existence of
false complaints, Jan Jordan thinks it is "incredibly difficult to get
the guilty convicted, let alone wrongfully convict the innocent". "All these things are
indicative that there is still an underlying culture which does have negative
attitudes towards women and has suspicious attitudes towards women who are
claiming to be sexually assaulted." One case in point Jordan mentions
is serial rapist Malcolm Rewa, reported in her book The Word of a Woman:
Police, Rape and Belief, published last October. Jordan explains that
"several of the police detectives involved in the investigation themselves
told me about the police response to a woman raped by Rewa in 1987". "She was a young Maori woman,
with gang affiliations to Highway 61 (the gang to which Rewa was affiliated),
and with some previous criminal convictions herself. She actually named Rewa
as the rapist but he had arranged an alibi to try to cover himself. "Police at the time viewed
his version of events as having greater credibility than hers and the case
was not proceeded with. Despite having a named offender in 1987, a further
known 26 women were raped or sexually assaulted by Rewa before this woman's
case was eventually heard in the 1998 trial, at which Malcolm Rewa was
finally convicted of the crimes committed against her." Thompson, who has worked at Rape
Crisis for four years, says that "I have personally worked with three
women in Wellington and I do know of other cases that other agencies have
dealt with (I believe were genuine), but weren't believed by police". Tony Greig recalls, "When I
started with the police in the 1970s, the police had an appalling approach
towards rape investigations. Unless the complaint was of the
stranger/break-in/abduction type (very rare), then a lot of pressure could be
applied to complainants to withdraw their complaints. Things changed
radically in a short space of time and in my experience the police are
usually very sympathetic towards complainants ... they try very hard to get
it right." Georgina Thompson believes that
the police "must operate from a premise that any person making a
complaint of rape is telling the truth and that this person is a victim. If
the individual is approached any differently, a system is created where the
victim making a complaint is guilty until proved innocent and perceived as a
potential liar instead of potential victim. The police have to make every
effort to investigate fairly, openly and without bias." Yet a twist in this logic presents
itself. A recent appeal to Victim Support for help by a family who believed
they were being victimised by a false complaint, and had made this clear to
police, was told by Victim Support that no help was available because there
was a charge pending. So a victim of a false complaint would need to make a
complaint to police first, which could prove difficult. Tony Greig tends to agree with
Thompson. "Police will quite properly commence an investigation on the
basis that the complaint is genuine. To carry out business any other way is
to put an unacceptable and unrealistic onus and pressure on
complainants." Back in 1996, a writer in Feminist
Review, Camille Guy, criticised the feminist movement for becoming
"chauvinistic" to the extent that criticism was not countenanced of
the violent and notorious abduction of playwright Mervyn Thompson by a group
of radical feminists on suspicion of rape. "Feminist reframing of sexual
abuse has served to bring the abuse problem into the open," Guy wrote.
"But it has also contributed to false allegations and over- zealous
interventions which have destroyed lives just as cruelly as has abuse. It is
time we opened our eyes to that." |
