RAINN's claim that perpetrators of every 995 of every 1000 rapes walk free is a LIE

I was reading an article that was discussing the myth that rape and incest are primary reasons for getting abortions ("Just 1% of women obtain an abortion because they became pregnant through rape, and less than 0.5% do so because of incest, according to the Guttmacher Institute"). Despite your stance on the abortion issue, the fact remains that people use statistical manipulation all the time to promote a personal agenda. In this instance, pro-abortionists are using the rape/incest narrative even though the stats don't add up. 

Our society rarely questions stats. In the same article, the article discusses rape statistics, claiming, "research shows 3 out of every 4 sexual assaults are not reported, and out of every 1,000 rapes only five perpetrators are convicted." Wrong, and WRONG. 

These stats are based on the underreporting myth. (Incidentally, the subject of my latest full-length article on OnceFallen.) NO ONE questions it. After all, it came from RAINN, so it must be true because "RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization." Well, I hate to "RAINN" on their parade, but this stat is a prime example of statistical manipulation. 

RAINN's claim of 995 out of 1000 rapists walking free goes like this:

• Of 1000 rapes, only 230 are reported to police
• Of 230 reports, 46 lead to arrest
• Of 46 arrests, 9 are referred to prosecutors
• Of 9 prosecutions, 5 lead to a felony conviction
• Of the 5 convictions, 4.6 will go to prison
• Therefore, 995 (or I suppose to be more precise, 995.4) will "go free"

The claim that only 230 of 1000 rapes are reported to the police are based from the National Crime Victimization Surveys (That's 23% if you prefer percentages). RAINN claims that these numbers came from the years 2010-2016. But the NCVS stats have fluctuated between 50% and 76.8% in the years of 2010 to 2016, so they did not use an average of six years, they picked the one year out of six that had the highest number and ran with it. 

But the National Crime Victimization Surveys have been misrepresented by RAINN. The NCVS covers combines sexual assaults, rapes, AND ATTEMPTS. Sexual assault is defined as "A wide range of victimizations, separate from rape or attempted rape. These crimes include attacks or attempted attacks generally involving unwanted sexual contact between victim and offender. Sexual assaults may or may not involve force and include such things as grabbing or fondling. Sexual assault also includes verbal threats." Rape is defined as “Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion and physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal, or oral penetration by the offender(s). This category also includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object, such as a bottle. Includes attempted rape, male and female victims, and both heterosexual and same sex rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape.” Because the definition of attempt is not adequately defined by the NCVS, it is open to interpretation. We live in a culture where looking at a woman too long is "stare rape."

RAINN erroneously presents every unreported incident in the NCVS must be a bona fide rape (even though RAINN seems to understand elsewhere on their own website that not every incident in the NCVS is a rape). But that is simply untrue. Interestingly, large numbers of unreported events went unreported precisely because the event was not seen as serious enough to be reported. We don't know what this event entailed precisely because the incident was no reported. Also worth noting is the fact that despite being a very large survey spanning up to 100,000 households, the number of responses to the questions related to rapes/ sexual assaults are less than 100 in nearly every year of the annual surveys, and the reasons for failing to report are often represented by even smaller numbers. 

This is a disclaimer from the 2010 NCVS:

“While the change in the rape or sexual assault rate from 2009 to 2010 is significantly different at the 90%-confidence level, care should be taken in interpreting this change because the estimates of rape/sexual assault are based on a small number of cases reported to the survey. Therefore, small absolute changes and fluctuations in the rates of victimization can result in large year-to-year percentage change estimates. For 2010, the estimate of rape or sexual assault is based on 57 unweighted cases compared to 36 unweighted cases in 2009. The measurement of rape or sexual assault represents one of the most serious challenges in the field of victimization research.” In 2010, there were 57 'unreported cases' out of sample size of nearly 71000 people: In 2010, 40974 households and 73283 individuals age 12 and older were interviewed for the NCVS. Each household was interviewed twice during the year. The response rate was 92.3% of households and 87.5% of eligible individuals."

The problem isn't so much relying on the NCVS but on the interpretation of the data. RAINN presents every unreported incident in the NCVS as an unreported rape, and that's simply untrue. This also means the rest of the statistics in RAINN's progression chart is based on the same bias as the first, most important leg of this progression chart. As not every unreported incident is the result of a completed rape, this also means the discrepancies between the number of reported incidents, the number of prosecutions and number of imprisonments are the result of many other factors (like false allegations or incidents indeed not elevating to the level of a crime, like "stare rape".) If only between 2%-8% of sex crime reports are false, as feminist and victims rights' activists proclaim, why is that not taken into account on this chart?

Sure, RAINN adds a tiny disclaimer at the bottom of the page, "(This statistic combines information from several federal government reports. Because it combines data from studies with different methodologies, it is an approximation, not a scientific estimate. Please see the original sources for more detailed information. These statistics are updated annually and as new information is published.)" "Sexual violence is notoriously difficult to measure, and there is no single source of data that provides a complete picture of the crime."

If these numbers are not scientific, but mere estimations, why present it as settled fact? Almost no one reads the fine print. Almost no one is going to click onto a different page to read how these stats are interpreted by RAINN or by their original sources. Instead, RAINN misleads people, whether intentional or not. (I believe it is intentional.) After all, RAINN teaches this in the form of a meme, and memes don't cover the details. 

The belief that only 5 out of 1000 rapists end up in prison is UNTRUE. It is time for RAINN to stop lying to us. 

Addressing the #MeToo narrative of "underreported sexual assaults" and "only 2% of sexual assault claims are false"

I found even the title of this chart to be misleading. 

This morning, I read an article from The Economist entitled, "After a year of #MeToo, American opinion has shifted against victims." The very title implies every accuser is a "victim." The article laments the growing skepticism against people making high-profile accusations:

"Yet surveys suggest that this year-long storm of allegations, confessions and firings has actually made Americans more sceptical about sexual harassment... The share of American adults responding that men who sexually harassed women at work 20 years ago should keep their jobs has risen from 28% to 36%. The proportion who think that women who complain about sexual harassment cause more problems than they solve has grown from 29% to 31%. And 18% of Americans now think that false accusations of sexual assault are a bigger problem than attacks that go unreported or unpunished, compared with 13% in November last year."

The article adds the following statement: "According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Centre, an American non-profit organisation, 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to police, whereas between 2% and 10% of assault cases are falsely reported."

This statement is very misleading. Below is my comment left on the website. If anything, we have overestimated underreporting while minimizing the number of false accusations. This discussion is worthy of a complete analysis on my main site, but for now, I wanted to share a few thought on this subject.

*****

The statement about 63% of rapes/ sexual assaults going unreported while only 2%-10% of sex assault claims are false is an intentionally misleading statement by the victim advocate cult.

The claim that 63% of sexual assaults/ rapes go unreported is a bold conclusion stemming from the National Crime Victimization Survey. The NCVS is a “self-report study” that includes “attempted” as well as “completed” acts, including “verbal threats.” The study relies on the survey taker, not a trained law enforcement official, to determine whether an act is an “unreported crime.” It is completely up to the survey taker to determine an act is a "crime."

But what are "attempts" and "verbal threats"? Some feminists feel looking at a woman too long is "stare rape." If a woman goes to a bar and gets drunk, she can decide if her subsequent sexual acts are consensual or not. There were feminist discussions considering whether a guy who was about his feelings about his lover just to engage in intercourse or who cheated on them during a relationship was rape.   A woman made headlines recently for accusing a child of "sexual assault" after his backpack brushed against her backside. Had there not been security cameras and witnesses, she would have been accounted this alleged one in five women.

The NCVS understands it has limitations: “The estimates of rape/sexual assault are based on a small number of cases reported to the survey. Therefore, small absolute changes and fluctuations in the rates of victimization can result in large year-to-year percentage change estimates. For 2010, the estimate of rape or sexual assault is based on 57 unweighted cases compared to 36 unweighted cases in 2009." That is 57 "unreported cases" out of sample size of nearly 71000 people: In 2010, 40974 households and 73283 individuals age 12 and older were interviewed for the NCVS. Each household was interviewed twice during the year. The response rate was 92.3% of households and 87.5% of eligible individuals." Still, the survey strongly suggests the amount of under-reporting may be over-reported. (2010 NCVS summary)

The NCVS claims of underreporting dropped from 63.7% to 50% in the 2000s but has climbed to 67% in recent years. No doubt the campus rape scare and MeToo claims play roles in this, but with those movements came false claims. Remember the Jackie UVA case in Rolling Stone? Then Janice Dickinson admitted she lied about Bill Cosby harassing her to sell memoirs. Now we have the Kavanaugh case. While Ms. Ford stated certain memories of an assault were "indelible in the hippocampus," so were the memories of many people who made widespread claims of the 1980s and 1990s about satanic pedophiles and child sacrifices in daycare centers across America. Only problem was those claims were proven false, just as a fair number of these claims today are found to be without merit.

But even if only 2% and 10% of sexual assault claims are false, that means there are between 18,080 and 90,400 falsely accused people forced to register as "sex offenders" right now.

We used to have something in this country called "innocent until proven guilty." We've seen that concept under attack by campus sex assault accusations leading to college inquisitions in which presumed innocence was a foreign concept. We're now seeing the consequences of those actions. And now we see the MeToo Movement calling for similar inquisitions. Well, for every action is an equal and opposite reaction. MeToo is past due for a backlash, and the Kavanaugh hearings have become the Jackie UVA of the MeToo movement.

-- Derek Logue of OnceFallen